Yesterday, some of our neighbors from Japan invited us over to take part in one of their family traditions. After a delicious home-cooked meal, they taught us the art of Japanese calligraphy. The slow, deliberate brush strokes discouraged haste, forced me to be mindful of the moment I was in, and encouraged me to accept the “mistakes” I made in writing as simply how the brush strokes were meant to be.

Every year, their family would write their New Year’s resolution in Kanji. Familiar characters drawn would be renewal, positivity, love, or family. I wrote victory. This year, let those of us in the resistance work even harder, redouble our efforts, and force this regime into irrelevance. I know you all have been working hard, sacrificing your time, your effort, and your mental and emotional capacities into fighting Trump and his goons on every front. You could have put your head in the sand and tried to ignore it. You could have justified your inaction by saying you need to protect your family, and that the apocalypse isn’t happening just because it’s not happening to you. But you didn’t.

And, as we all know, the reward for hard work is more hard work. This year, the midterms are our best hope to throw these fascists out of power before they can truly consolidate. In the meantime, many of our brothers and sisters, friends and family, are still in real physical and legal danger. So we will continue to protest, call our elected officials, and organize in our community. We will continue to oppose this regime at every turn and to defend those who cannot defend themselves. We will pledge ourselves to victory because, in the struggle against authoritarianism, there is no other acceptable outcome.