What we choose to honor in our past shapes our future. That is why efforts to rethink Columbus Day and establish Indigenous Peoples Day are welcome. Across the country this year, the first holiday since the massive resistance to the Dakota Pipeline, people are reflecting on how we look at our history, whose voices we care about, and whose lives matter.

This week, as much of the nation’s attention has been riveted to the devastation of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, the Michigan Legislature is quietly continuing its efforts to destroy local democracy.

This weekend, the Detroit Independent Freedom Schools joined 25 communities around the country in a national conversation about the crisis in public education. The national effort was organized as part of the #WeChoose Campaign of #Journey4Justice. The conversation was designed as an opportunity to focus resistance to privatization and an opportunity to talk about transforming education so that all our children can learn in “loving educational experiences” that “cultivate community strength, self-determination, and build movement-based futures.”

Denying scientific data. Attacking the press. Claiming stories questioning you are a hoax. Exaggerating election results. Denying a history of racism. Embracing business interests against all else. These appear to be the hallmarks of those in political authority today. And these are not limited to Donald Trump, corporations, or right-wing conspiracy nuts. Consider Democratic Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. He is more of a denier and defender of corporate power every day.

In the spring of 1968, I joined thousands of other people occupying the Washington Mall. Still in shock from the murder of Martin Luther King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference decided to move forward with Dr. King’s dream of confronting the soul of America on racism, materialism, and militarism. The Poor People’s Campaign was a difficult, dispirited, and confused effort to keep the movement alive after the death of King.

Donald Trump will not last. In two, four, or eight years, he will be gone. In the meantime, he will destroy people and places we hold dear. He has already done so. But his extraordinary vileness can trap us into thinking he is the problem. Rather, he is a crude, visible expression of ways of thinking and being that are normal in the United States. Yes, he is a racist, self-aggrandizing, arrogant man willing to do anything to advance his own self-interest. But so is the system that produced him.

While outrage, anger, and the acknowledgment of the moral vacuum of the White House dominated the media this week, another story of Nazis, the Klan and killing emerged in Greensboro, North Carolina. There, after nearly 40 years, the Greensboro City Council voted to apologize for the murder of 5 people who gathered to peacefully protest the Klan and Nazis in 1979.

Before the tires screamed in Charlottesville, many Americans were deeply troubled by the images of white men, holding torches against the night, chanting, “You will not remove us.” “Jew will not remove us.” These are images we had hoped belonged to a distant, bloody past. Now it is clear. They intend to seize the future, returning the country to its worst, most violent, and vicious days.

Public Private Partnerships (PPP) are a key weapon in privatization. This is a soft-sounding term for a vicious set of practices. PPPs are often the vehicles that shift public dollars into private hands, turning essential goods and services into profit centers. Healthcare, education, water, energy, public safety, housing, transportation, and even military services are turned into profits at the expense of people. The justification for this is the logic that companies, driven by competition and business imperatives, will provide better, cheaper services.

Mayor Duggan is acting like a mini-Donald Trump. This week he went after scientists. Duggan simply refuses to accept the fact that his policy on water shutoffs is a failure. He is risking the health and safety of the city by refusing to declare a moratorium on shutoffs. He ignores the advice of economic experts that shutoffs make no economic sense. He denies clear evidence that his assistance programs are not adequate to protect people. This week he demonstrated a new level of bullying and paranoia, spying on activists and confusing a meeting of health professionals with potentially violent protests.

Throughout the city, people are talking about the Detroit Rebellion, now 50 years in the past. The debate between riot and rebellion still surges, igniting energy and argument. The meaning of it all is still analyzed, and the images still inspiring. In all of these conversations, fear lingers. Will it happen again?

Across the country, people in small towns and cities are experimenting with new ways to create change. While we have experienced a national catastrophe on the presidential level, municipal governments are showing deep resilience as citizens find ways to address income inequality, climate catastrophe, and basic needs for health, welfare, and education.

There are no easy answers or quick fixes now. Each passing day it is clear that the institutions and shared practices that many of us called upon to make our world a little better are no longer capable of providing solutions. Instead they are supporting the brutality required to protect the property and privilege of the few.

Much of the media coverage this week focused on Donald Trump’s feud with journalists. In what can only be characterized as a scathing editorial, the New York Times described Trump’s behavior as coarse, vengeful, embarrassing, nasty, creepy, denigrating, awkward, vulgar, and repugnant.

This year the Allied Media Conference offered a space for gatherings prior to the opening session. I participated in the Puerto Rico/Detroit Solidarity exchange. The purpose of the gathering was to give people an opportunity to learn together about our mutual experiences as targets of financial attacks under the guise of bankruptcies. We hoped that by talking together we would be able to “imagine new pathways toward the liberation of our communities and build relationships that we will need to continue working together.”

Shortly after the national elections, the organizers of the Allied Media Conference (AMC) in Detroit issued a statement “Get Ready Stay Ready.” They said, “We offer the AMC as a space for our movements to converge and explore how we can use media-based organizing to dig up the roots of systemic hatred and violence. We offer the AMC as a space to create art that detoxifies the soil of this culture, so we can grow without its centuries of poison.” After nearly two decades of patient building, the organizers recognized that they had created a unique and important space to help all of us think together about how we can most intentionally respond to this political crisis.

I saw my first young person in the neighborhood walking with her graduation cap on the way to church this week. It is a common sight in Detroit at this time of year. All over the city, young people mark their graduation from high school or college by wearing caps and gowns as they go to community gatherings or just walking down the street with friends.

As the Michigan Elite gathering on Mackinac Island for their annual celebration of one another came to a close, another gathering took shape in Detroit. Actors, musicians, writers, poets, and cultural workers of all kinds gathered in the heart of the Cass Corridor for the 22nd annual Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference (PTO). Its theme was “Breaking the Silence.” Sessions explored storytelling and transformation, inclusion, and collaboration. Conversations on language, power, choreography, and laughter flowed through the gathering.

No one thinks the budget proposed by the White House will get much support. The details will change. Various interests will do their best to protect vital programs and services.

But there is an element of casual cruelty behind these projections that we need to address. Our elders, our children, and the people who care for them are especially targeted as excess expenditures. These projections are a clear articulation of values and policies from an administration that delights in chaos, manipulation, and lies.

A few days after the national reflections on the 50th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s call to break the silence and engage in a radical revolution of values against racism, materialism, and militarism, Rev. Dr. William Barber II announced a renewed Poor People’s Campaign.