From the moment she launched her campaign, Harris’ team presented her as the “change” candidate with a progressive vision for our country’s future. Even as she grappled with her role in a currently unpopular administration, Harris created a clear contrast between herself and an opponent who openly pines for an oppressive past where white men were not turned into social pariahs for perpetuating racism, sexism, queerphobia and ableism.

But her ever-present smile and laugh — a laugh that never came at the expense of others — was another way she contrasted herself with the menacing and intimidating Trump.

That contrast wasn’t enough for Harris to win, but he appealed to a collective history of Black Americans that sees joy and pleasure as essential to our ability to survive — not as antithetical to our progress. We survived slavery. We have survived unimaginable brutality generation after generation. We have survived the loss of our history, our languages ​​and our cultures.

And yet we inherently understand the need for joy and practice it in every moment. We communicate together at barbecues and family gatherings where we dance and laugh together. We invent art forms, like hip-hop, that change the world. We celebrate our very ability to survive because we understand the struggle for liberation as a sacred practice that requires not only organization, but also our ability to foresee a future better than this one. Or, as the poet lamented Lucille Clifton wrote:: “come celebrate / with me that every day / something tried to kill me / and failed.”

Joy is an organizing strategy. As Adrienne Maree Brown writes in her 2019 book “Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good,” “Pleasure activism is the work we do to reclaim our whole, happy, and satisfying selves from the impacts, illusions and limits of oppression and/or supremacy. To get through the next four years, we will need many things: strategy, courage, and a clear-eyed understanding of how fascist and authoritarian movements arise and how we can collectively resist them. We will also need joy, rest, and other gentler survival skills that can help our bodies strengthen against oppressive headwinds.

Joy is a central organizing principle that has been present in almost every liberation movement, from the abolition movement to end slavery to the civil rights movement to the Black Power movement to the movement for LGBTQ rights , the labor movement and all the movements that have preceded it and will be. come later. If we want to maintain a movement that will survive the Trump presidency, we cannot sacrifice ourselves in the process. We’re going to need each other. We will have to take care of our neighbors. We will need to be, as Brown describes it, “warriors of imagination” capable of imagining a world beyond the one in which we currently exist. We will need to strengthen our bonds with each other – through mutual aid, through radical kindness. and by organizing around shared commitments.

And we will have to laugh. We’re going to have to invest in the arts and read the books we feel called to read and resist on every level, including within ourselves.

This could be the positive side of this anxiety-inducing moment. “What we took away from the (Shirley) Chisholm effect was the possibility that existed for a bold black woman in 1972 to have the audacity to run for president all the way to the convention,” said Glynda C. Carr, president and co-founder. higher heights, said The Guardian. “And the direct byproduct of that Chisholm effect was a Barbara Lee – Congresswoman Barbara Lee. There are one, two or more who will be inspired by a Kamala Harris and that cannot be lost. I’m looking forward to the Kamala effect.

If this is the Kamala Harris effect – showing us that joy will get us through and that we need to rely on ourselves and those we love and cherish – then it’s timely.