The People in Violet Light
There are those who sneer at the purple revolution. They say it is a trick of color, a mere mixing of red and blue. They say it is a refuge for the guilty, an escape hatch for those who lit the fire and now wish to stand by the water. They say it is softness. Compromise. Amnesty. They are wrong. Purple is not forgiveness. Purple is not a pardon. Purple is the color of bruises, and the bruise remembers the strike. Purple is the twilight hour, when the old order trembles and the new presses at the edges. Purple is the horizon that does not belong to kings or presidents, but to the people who look toward it. Purple is the light that leaks through when we finally rise together. We do not forget who led us here. We do not absolve the architects of cruelty, the profiteers of suffering, the hands that tightened the noose. Their names are known; their actions are recorded; their debts to humanity will remain unpaid until justice has its day. But while they divide us, they dine. While we quarrel over red and blue, they count their gold and tighten their chains. And so we will not remain divided. We cannot remain divided. Because when the people are divided, the oligarchy thrives. And when the people are united, the oligarchy falls. I see a future where the people in violet light stand shoulder to shoulder. Where the farmer and the teacher, the nurse and the student, the worker and the artist stand not as enemies, but as kin. Where differences of creed or party cannot drown out the common cry of humanity. Where the child matters more than the border, where the hungry mouth matters more than the billionaire’s yacht, where justice is not bartered for votes but demanded as birthright. I see a people who do not confuse unity with absolution. Who know that unity is the bare minimum required to aid humanity in this burning moment of history. We do not forget. We do not forgive. But we rise together. And that rising is enough to crack the empire’s spine. Some will say it is naïve. Some will say it is dangerous. But history remembers that the abolitionist stood beside the immigrant, that the factory worker stood beside the suffragette, that the marcher in Selma stood beside the marcher in Stonewall. Every revolution is born of unlikely kinship. Every victory of the people is written in violet light. And so let them misname it. Let them call it weakness. Let them mock its hue. We know better. The purple revolution is not a pastel of compromise— it is the bruise that says, “enough.” It is the dawn that says, “together.” It is the smoke in the streets that says, “no more.” It is not red. It is not blue. It is what happens when the people stop fighting each other long enough to fight for each other. It is the pulse of solidarity, the heartbeat of defiance, the color of a new horizon. We are the people in violet light. And when the people rise in violet light, no empire survives the morning.
In the trenches,
—Rebecca M. Bell
www.rmbellwrites.com
