Sí, Se Puede! Dolores Huerta, Health Care Workers, Chile, 1619 and the Hope of “Regeneration”

I’m writing this on New Year’s Eve, refreshed and full of holiday cheer that’s been tempered somewhat, I have to admit, by a rustling of forebodings that were hard to dispel at first — fears brought on by COVID spiking among the unvaccinated, the steady march across the country of the ferociously contagious Omicron variant, unnaturally warm winter weather here, forecasts of more drought next year, wildfires in freezing Colorado, revelations from the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capital and evidence of a ruthless politics of lies all scheming to create a gloomy aura of futility that Bigger Lies and Bigger Liars will proclaim, one day, that only an American Fuhrer can overcome.

It felt at times this holiday that the country was verging on a terrible, aggressive state of mind known as nihilism, a philosophical breeding ground teeming with demons. When you believe in nothing but your anger and hate and fear and superstition, you live in psychological habitat of overwhelming negativity that leads some people to give up in despair and duck and cover from the world, while driving others to use any means, including calculated deceit, murderous violence and toxic rumor mongering, to achieve destructive goals that no one understands or believes in but them.

Nihilism has no room for hope, or generosity, or service. It is a dead end that creates nothing but more dead ends. No light can get out; no light can get in. But this time of year, no matter how you look at it — as long as it is not a humbuggian dismissal — is all about light, all about “the great turning” into sunshine and the green and growing edge of hope and springtime that it feeds.

Right around the winter solstice, something enormously positive broke through my miasma of trepidation. It came as a verbal memory when I was thinking about planting my garden. “Sí, se puede!” I heard it loud and clear. “You’re not too old and beaten up to make a beautiful garden again,” I heard myself say. “Can you do anything else to help?” I asked myself. “Can you volunteer your skills, put aside more money for charitable giving, send more to the AARP Foundation to help impoverished seniors, cut down your consuming and driving, get more involved in Conservation Voters of New Mexico, help out with light and gas bills? Can you figure out more ways to help?” The answer was so simple. “Sí, se puede.” Yes, you can. Yes, I can. Yes, we can.

I felt so clearly this solstice that “yes” is as much an empowering force as “no” can be a neutralizing and deflating one. I remembered Dolores Huerta, who invented “Sí, se puede” as a battle cry for the United Farm Workers and who worked for decades with Cesar Chavez and a vast congregation of inspired people who believed enough in justice, equality, fairness and compassion to work their whole lives to give them life. I remembered Chavez’s fasts in the l960s, 70s and 80s devoted to non-violent social change for farm workers. I remembered Dolores Huerta standing beside Robert F. Kennedy the night he was assassinated in 1968, and 20 years later when she was beaten mercilessly by a San Francisco policeman in a peaceful protest against the candidacy of soon-to-be president George H.W. Bush and his miserly conservative policies.

The solstice felt particularly brilliant this year. It was so bright, you couldn’t help but see the possibilities. You could feel that the spirit of “Sí, se puede” is alive and giving us all it’s got here at home in New Mexico, too. I’m lucky to be friends with many physicians, nurses and other health care workers. Members of my family are in their professional midst as well. In this age of pandemic, with hospitals filled to overflowing, the calling of those friends and family puts them in constant danger, risks their own health in the service of others and loads them with what must be at times almost unbearable stress. My gratitude and admiration for them is boundless. I think of the misery they witness, the unnecessary deaths and tragic suffering, the pressure from families, the sense of exhaustion that they endure to live the ethics of their profession. The example of their spirit is galvanizing.

And then last week, Chile — once not long ago ruled by a ruthless and usurping dictator — elected a 35-year-old environmentally savvy leader, Gabriel Boric, who will lead the effort to re-write the nation’s constitution to put the Chilean people in the forefront of sensible ecological responses to global warming. The new constitution is also expected to create a model for equitable resources management, especially in the mining of lithium, Chile’s most valuable export, and a key ingredient in the electronic, and electric, revolution picking up momentum as the world moves inexorably away from using fossil fuels. Mined from brine under desert landscapes, and in the homelands of indigenous peoples, lithium extraction and processing centers in Chile are so polluted that they are considered “sacrifice zones” by those who profit from them, but not by those who live near them. The world will be watching to see if Boric and his government is agile and artful enough to withstand the forces of greed and corruption that get rich from labor exploitation and global warming. And if he can live up to his own admonition not to forget “justice, truth, respect.”

The spirit of “Sí, se puede” seems to be picking up speed wherever one looks these days. The 1619 Project, despite the controversies swirling around it, makes it clear to all of us, children included, that for much of the world, and our country in particular, the comforts of some rest on the misery of others, an intolerable condition that must be ended once and for all. Environmental economist Paul Hawken’s new book, “Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation,” published this year, strikes a powerful blow against nihilism and its shoulder-shrugging twin, arrogant cynicism.

In the opening pages of his book, Hawken quotes Dr. Joeri Rogelj, one of the lead authors of the Sixth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, saying that he made “a remarkable statement: ‘It is our best understanding that, if we bring carbon dioxide [emissions] down to net zero, the warming will level off. The climate will stabilize within a decade or two. There will be very little to no additional warming. Our best estimate is zero.’” Remarkable, and vastly hopeful, indeed.

Hawken’s new book is a must read for sure. “Sí, se puede” motivates this collection of essays by experts in wonderfully compelling ways, with over 120 chapters on everything from oceans and “sea forestation,” agroforestry and fire ecology, grazing ecology, “rewilding” pollinators and bioregions, to degraded land restoration, vermiculture, “acts of restorative kindness” and climate emergency philanthropy. It covers “net zero cities,” urban farming, carbon architecture, “eating everything,” wind and solar energy, electrifying “everything” and creating climate action systems.

Hawken’s book lets us know that the atmosphere of futility and hopelessness are nihilistic constructs and not the final word on reality and on what’s possible. It’s true that both “Sí, se puede” and the door slamming of “NO,” are based on conjecture. But “SÍ” fuels action, while NO has completely run out of gas.

“Sí, se puede!” That’s not the rallying cry of quixotic naïfs, as the slick purveyors of NO would have us believe. It’s a verbal talisman for those of us who can’t and won’t give up on the future. There’s still so much that we can do — if we expect no grandiose results and just want to help as best we can by trying to give the best we’ve got.

*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it

(Image derived from photo by Lorie Shaull)