I am firmly against uniting until justice has been served and repentance sought by the parties that were in power and did the harm. Without actual redress of harm, there is no unity. Period. Anyone who says different is more invested in quiet than in good, right, or justice. https://twitter.com/engagedmom/status/1325594121696927752

And if that means that we don't get bipartisan support for the bills that benefit the most people? I'm sorry, but we can't NOT do the right thing because of that.

The virus won't wait for them to come around. The climate won't wait for them to come around. Our rent won't wait.

It sucks and it'll be hard to do because it takes courage, but that's what leaders do.

Leaving people to suffer and get sick and starve and lose their homes and die when we could try something, anything, to mitigate that is wrong. Morally wrong. I don't care about your argument. Leaving the planet and those on it to suffer is wrong. Morally wrong.

I will argue "how" to get this done with you. But I will not engage in moral arguments of *whether* to control the virus, or do something about the climate, or whether people deserve healthcare. No. There's no middle ground there.

This is why I have no interest in working with someone who has shown, time and again, that they are only interested in obstruction and not finding a way to move forward and get things done. You need shared goals for a compromise and unity to work.

The only thing to do with someone committed to obstruction is to try and cordon them off so that the adults in the room can do the hard work of figuring out solutions to real problems.

Obstruction is an immature game that insults everyone by not acknowledging how serious our problems are.

We would do well to point that out and call it what it is.

Also, to be clear, the Dems are good at obstructing as well. Anyone calling for unity now is an obstacle to healing. Anyone talking about "going back to normal" is an obstacle to healing. Anyone acting like a new president and veep means we're good now is an obstacle to healing.

We have a massive amount of work to do.

As a small city rabbi, I'm a spiritual leader to libertarians, DSA members, Dems, Reagan Republicans, black activists, Trump voters. I deeply love them all, and try hard to hold them all kindly, to show them how to do well by each other.

I can only do that by investing in real kindness and justice. Thread about that here: https://twitter.com/RebbeSMZ/status/1325555271331008512?s=19

Kindness means that I remind my Trump voters of who he's harming. If they make the decision to support him, they need to understand. I remind my establishment Dems that morality isn't partisan, and calls for unity hurt minorities.

I remind my DSA members that ideological purity only goes so far and it's a strength to ally with people on the issues you can. I remind my Reagan Republicans that if they don't want people thinking Republican=Trump, THEY need to influence their party, and so on. That's kindness.

But I digress. I started this thread about unity and repentance and how you can't have the first without the second.

Our nation needs a collective repentance project. We've done so much to hurt each other, to hurt minorities, to rip the social fabric that should tie us together.

Only after that, after the bonds between us have been mended, after we've all repented for our winding and ensured that it never can happen again, is unity possible.

Until then, we do the work - we say we're sorry. We rebuild the things that lift people out of degradation.

That's the work we need to do right now.