No Final Defeat.
Tony Benn, a long-time socialist MP for the UK Labour party, endured more defeats than most of us could stomach. Brought up in the left-Labour party of the 70s, he watched as Thatcher won brutal victories and systematically dismembered social housing, services, and the union movement. Even more insultingly, he lived through the hard-right turn of Blairite Labour and its disastrous support for foreign wars abroad and further austerity at home. By the time of his death in 2014, a left-wing Labour party was a glimmer of a dream. He lived just long enough to see the start of Corbyn’s rise, and mercifully, passed before his fall. Despite the horrors he witnesses (and was largely powerless to stop), Benn never stopped the fight. He once, famously, said:
There is no final victory, as there is no final defeat. There is just the same battle. To be fought, over and over again. So toughen up, bloody toughen up.
I became politically active just in time for the halcyon days of Bernie’s 2016 run. The first vote I ever cast was at a caucus primary in Colorado — the night Bernie’s victory became essentially impossible. I was devastated. The future diverged sharply before me, and I could only stand witness to the better path’s amputation. The following November, I sat shaking in my Freshman dorm room as the unimaginable became reality: Trump won. Again, I watched as a better path was lopped off at the bend. In the years that followed, I became an activist for a dozen causes. I fought for climate justice, for unions, for racial justice, for tenants rights. I was arrested, my friends were water-cannoned and rubber-bulleted. I fought, and I lost more than I won.
I will do it all again. If you believe, as I do, that these problems can be solved — that we can defeat fascism, emancipate the working class, and face down climate change — then there is simply no room for panic, defeatism, or terror. The enemy we face is powerful, their agenda is evil, and their opposition weak. Many millions will suffer needlessly while millions more look away. But through the terror, war, repression, and catastrophe, we will stand and fight. Not for an honorable defeat, nor expecting a final victory, but because every block contested, picket held, and life saved is a victory worth winning. Every day a path diverges before us, and every day we get to choose the future we will fight to create.
