The Best Metaphor for the Moment We Are In
We have to help each other survive and prosper
Peggy Flanagan, the Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota who is running for the open Senate seat there, and one of the most exciting candidates running this year (please help her out), has maybe the best metaphor for 2026. She says that what the people in Minnesota have been going through is neither a sprint nor a marathon: it is a relay race. People working together, moving forward, handing the baton off to each other as the race goes on.
With Tom Homan’s announcement that the Minneapolis ICE surge was drawing down, maybe- maybe- things will get better for the courageous Minnesotans who have been dealing with the federal occupation of their city these last months. We can only hope so, although we know that everything coming out of the administration’s mouths seem to be lies.
But no matter what happens next in Minnesota, the relay race continues. Our side in this long and hard fight will need to continue to support each other, take care of each other, and come to each other’s common defense when we are attacked by ICE, the DOJ, or any other Trump administration department that is running amuck.
And it’s not just when government agencies attack. The Trump administration and Republican members of Congress are leaving big corporate CEOs free to screw us in any nasty way they think will make them more money: closing factories, cutting wages (or committing wage theft) and health care and retirement benefits, busting unions, forcing workers to sign non-compete clauses, price gouging and jacking up utility prices, junk fees, crushing small business competition, polluting our air and water, and all the other ways Big Business abuses its powers.
We have to show solidarity in the face of regular working folks getting hurt every day, whether from Trump’s government which values cruelty over dignity, or from the predatory monopolistic corporations Trump is letting run wild.
We are in battle over two different definitions of the word freedom.
Trump defines freedom as the freedom for his followers, and for the Epstein class of elites who give them money, to do anything they want, to whomever they want, whenever they want to do it. They think they are so rich and so powerful that nothing they do will ever be held to account.
Progressives define freedom as the ability to build good lives for their families and their community, to have dignity at the workplace, to live in a trusted community where they won’t be seized by masked secret police because of the color of their skin, or be taken advantage of wealthy and powerful corporations who don’t care about their families’ well-being.
That is the choice in front of us: which side are you on? I’m on the side of the relay team fighting for dignity and community.