In anticipation of Senator Dan Sullivan’s annual address to the Alaska Legislature next week (February 18), I have written the address I would like to hear. Let us Alaskans envision alternatives to what we are currently enduring and work diligently to actualize a timeline we can be proud of. I encourage others to write their own dream addresses and share them using #InsteadofDan.
“Camai! Thank you for this opportunity to share with you, Alaska legislators, some of the steps we have taken to recover from the recent dark era in our nation’s history. I’m speaking of that vast GOP-led conspiracy to nullify our Constitution. I won’t lie to you. Those were some shocking, terrifying times. Thankfully, the treasonous regime and its enablers have been held to account. Constitutional and statutory changes help to assure that a hostile government takeover won’t happen again.
Just as importantly, we are now working on healing and repair, so that we no longer countenance conditions that allow fascism to take root. We are deep in the process of transitional justice and enabling restitution for victims and survivors. Those trying times made us Americans recognize the many faces of survival. Our justice and restitution efforts extend to those traumatized in Trump’s concentration camps and his pogroms of ethnic cleansing. It includes the women and men abused by Epstein’s network and other survivors of sexual abuse. It includes those who have survived American weapons profiteering. It centers the descendants of enslaved Americans and Native Americans whose land was stolen and then poisoned. It uplifts working class people of all backgrounds who have never gotten a day’s break from predatory capitalism.
Through our Restitution and Care Act, we are making care and justice the core of our economic and educational systems. Only through a healing effort that is material as well as spiritual will we be able to recover from the generational pains inflicted by generations of greed.
I am but one of many who celebrated the passage of the 28th Amendment, which codified the rights of future generations, and the 29th Amendment, which finally saw FDR’s economic bill of rights become reality. Your ratification means our future descendants and the millions of species with whom we share this earth have the opportunity to exist at all. The mandate of these amendments mean we have expanded Medicare so the U.S. finally joins the developed world in providing universal healthcare. We have expanded housing co-ops to every town as a way to fulfill Americans’ right to housing and to break the power of private equity. We are re-training workers and educating our youth as we transition our economy to centering the care of people, community, and nature. We are working diligently to sunset the few remaining fossil fuel systems as our energy retrofit program has decreased costs and improved health across the land. And we have finally outlawed billionaires. No one will gain such wealth and power off the backs of their fellow humans or the extraction of our finite planet ever again!
You, Alaskans, rose up in peaceful revolt against the tyranny of the regime and against the neoliberal elite who also profited from the depravity of white supremacy, inequality, and exploitation. It is because of your bravery, solidarity, and selflessness that the United States has truly become free. Free from medical debt. Free from the military-industrial complex. Free from surveillance capitalism. Free from the greed of the 1%.
There is so much work yet to be done so that seven generations from now our descendants can live meaningful existences in abundant, multi-species bioregions. But with dedication to our principles of care, justice, equality and stewardship, we are on our way. Indeed, already our daily lives are filled with greater purpose.
Remember Minneapolis. Honor the salmon. God bless the land and waters that we care for and that care for us. God bless Alaska and these United States. Quyana! Gunalchéesh! Háw’aa! Mahsi’choo!”