Why I'm Thankful in 2020

The year 2020 has become almost synonymous with awfulness. From impeachment to pandemic to structural racism and disputed elections, and then back to pandemic, many of us have undoubtedly been crossing our fingers and waiting for it to end.

I lost my father in May of 2020, to the same unforgiving illness that later claimed John Lewis. Both were born in the year 1940, during the Second World War. On the surface they had little in common. One was born in the American South in the era of Jim Crow, the other on the South Side of Chicago in a segregated ethnic enclave. But they both saw their country in terms of its promise of equality and opportunity, not its guarantee of privilege, and they both grieved at the ignorance and hatred they perceived emanating from our nation's highest office.

As I left my father's side, the last time I was able to see him in his apartment with my mother outside Chicago, the world was shrouded in rain. I drove back to Michigan engulfed in my own contemplation. Why was I still alive? People were dying every day from an insidious plague. George Floyd perished under a policeman's knee in Minneapolis, a city with a reputation for being nice. Soon the streets would be filled with chants of protest.

My family and I joined in some of these demonstrations. We had to be a witness to what was happening. In our own city of Dearborn, which has its own ugly history of racial segregation, a peaceful crowd gathered to march up and down Michigan Avenue. They were young and old, black and brown and white, including those who may never have marched before. We shouted the names of the lives lost to the senseless violence of police, and I saw cars slowing down on the street, African American drivers rolling down their windows and saying "Thank you!" My eyes filled with tears. Maybe the nation was starting to see.

Of course, it wasn't going to be that easy. Real change never is, and where it will lead we don't yet know. There are those who don't want to see. But 2020 saw a resurgence of engagement at every level, "from the streets to the suites" as a formerly incarcerated friend of mine likes to say. Those who know the devil well stared him down in Detroit and elected a candidate who at least speaks a language of healing. In our prisons, there are people who I have the privilege to know. They cry out for the chance to show us how to bind our wounds. They have seen the worst of humanity, and yet emerged with a message of redemption. Will we hear them?

Like my own father, I have primarily been a witness, not a participant in these movements. I have been blessed in my life to know some of those whose waking lives are devoted to making their communities better, and I have found that their hope feeds my own. I have seen the next generation making what John Lewis called "good trouble," and it heartens me. When we finally cut the ribbon on the Fort Street Bridge Park in October of 2020, I was able to say some words of gratitude, to honor the spirit of struggle and collaboration, and the belief in a better world that brought us together. For all those who are not here to see it, we are obliged to look beyond the darkness of the present day and dream of what may be.

It is why we are still alive.

Paul Draus

Professor of Sociology - The University of Michigan-Dearborn