I’ve come to the conclusion — and some of you will tell me this is just wishful thinking — that we are in a new 60s.

I believe Trump and his ilk have inadvertently ushered in a new protest era that will leap us forward (speaking, of course, as a bleeding-heart, tree-hugging liberal.) In the beginning of this new century, we had become too complacent about the progress we’d made (speaking, of course, as a middle-class white woman). We thought how much better things had gotten since World War II for women and POC and LGBTQ. After all, there were women in the Senate, a black man in the White House and homosexuals were getting legally married.

We thought there was no going back from that.

Trump is the anti-Kennedy. His supporters are the anti-King/ Rosa Parks/ Malcolm X of the 2010s. (Fun new meme game — who matches best with whom?) They remind us that there is always a possibility of retroaction.

Try this on for hope and optimism — we will come out of this better and stronger. Like the six-million-dollar man, we will rebuild and improve our country and make it better than before.

This is what I choose to believe and work and hope for.

Things have changed, but history is not erased by change, and the examples of the past still hold out new possibilities for all of us, opportunities to remake, for a new generation, the conditions from which we ourselves have benefited… Progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive. — Zadie Smith