The teleprompters seemed to be climate science deniers.  It was as if the political class at the microphones of Philadelphia and Cleveland suffered from a deep racial fear or even sexual fear – of the Earth.  

Directly addressing the crisis of our lives was impossible.  For Earth activists the conventions were an unnatural but familiar disaster.  Hillary’s single sentence for the climate pushed it into the laundry list of progressive issues.  I was slowly slumping in paralysis like everyone else.  

Then I remembered a piece by Czeslaw Milosz, the world poet. I dredged it out and re-read it. He instructs us to get through the succession of liars to a great moment of truth, which he describes as a spring day’s return by the Earth.  The name of the poem is “Slow River” and it ends with these words:

Three times will the liars have conquered
before the great truth appears alive
and in the splendor of one moment
stand spring and the sky, the seas, the lands.

Doesn’t this tell activists to stay in motion?  Isn’t this an invitation to look out across the future from the bright moments of Bernie and Black Lives and Occupy?