One late afternoon long ago at the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, I was with a group of birders when we located a pride of sleeping lions. As evening approached, they yawned big-fanged yawns and slowly roused. About 10 in total, scarred veterans and prime young hunters.
It was time for them to hunt. But first they licked one another, pressed bodies and indulged in much face rubbing. They reaffirmed, “Yes, we are together, we remain as one.” Only then did they set off.
Their tawny bodies flowed up into the tall golden grass along the ridge of a low hill. One sat; the others kept walking. Ten yards on, another sat while the others walked. And so on until the ridge was lined with a hidden picket fence of hungry lions all attentively gazing onto a plain where a herd of unsuspecting zebras grazed. Then one, who’d remained standing, poured herself downhill. Her job was to flank and then spook the zebras into running uphill, directly into her veteran sisters and their spry younger hunters.
Rubbing noses does not catch a zebra. But only after the lions rubbed noses and reaffirmed a shared identity were the zebras in any danger. Those lions showed me that a sense of community is prerequisite for coordinated strategy. They did not succeed in that hunt. But they would try again. Failure, these lions had learned, is necessary for success.
Like the lions, I learned about success through failures. My earliest lessons were in seemingly lost causes. As a child poring over picture books in Suffolk County on Long Island, N.Y., my favorite was about birds of prey — eagles, ospreys, peregrine falcons — all endangered at the time. By my teens I’d read sickening accounts of how DDT was causing their eggs to break. I assumed I’d never see any of these magnificent raptors: Complete extinction was expected. I had seen “landscapers” in our neighborhood spraying trees, insects raining down, and robins eating those insects and going into convulsions right in the street, while I was walking home from school.
But in 1966, several adamant people sued the county’s mosquito commission to stop the indiscriminate spraying of DDT in our salt marshes. They shocked everyone by winning, a prelude to the banning of the destructive pesticide nationwide in 1972 when I was in high school. Half a century later, those doomed birds have recovered. Art Cooley, a high school biology teacher who led the effort in Suffolk County, reflected years later, “It’s possible for a small group of people who are committed and have their facts right to really make a change in the way society does business.” Sometimes facing what seems hopeless is how we realize what is possible.
As individuals we cannot always formulate the full fix. But we can be a part of a movement to forge one. And I believe a fix to correct the depredations of the White House’s current occupant is coming.
The Trump administration continues slashing funds and services that have protected families and seniors; kept our land, air and waters clean; kept poor children fed and vaccinated; enabled American science to be on the cutting edge of medicine and technology; honored the nation’s social safety net; and on and on. Summer jobs that our students had lined up on public lands and in laboratories have been canceled and former students have lost their full-time dream jobs. Everyone will be touched by one or more of these assaults.
We have seen acquiescence by tech billionaires, big law firms caving to the president, and dozens of colleges and universities abandoning their commitment to diversity.
But acquiescence is futile. Keeping one’s head down is stupid. As the historian Timothy Snyder noted in his book, “On Tyranny,” appeasement is how people cede their power to would-be tyrants.
The public, states, the judiciary and private institutions are stepping up. The administration is facing a barrage of legal challenges to its policies. So far, as of May 22, in at least 170 rulings, courts have stayed some of the administration’s polices. We are now seeing united opposition by 150 universities and several big law firms.
As the administration dismantles agencies and policies that protect people, we must all say, very publicly, what is on our minds. We must support the courts and people skilled at defending the Constitution. We can reverse fear and acquiescence, energize public engagement, and demonstrate how unpopular these moves are. If the rule of law holds, if voters wake Congress, the country will come back on keel.
We need a laser focus on election integrity for 2026 and 2028. Without functional elections, we’re lost.
We must support independent media.
The huge cuts to scientific research and government agencies threaten to derail cutting-edge medical and environmental research that can save lives and perhaps protect agriculture and coastal communities from the chaos of warming and extreme weather. We must loudly oppose those cuts. Already universities are slowing admissions of Ph.D. students. One missing generation of scientists means the end of U.S. dominance; no one will be on hand to train a new generation.
Like those waking lions, we don’t know how the coming challenges will play out. We know that there will be failures and that success is possible. But it’s important that we now reaffirm our sense of pride, our shared purpose, our dedication to our common good. As the lions showed me, community comes before strategy.
So many people are waiting in the tall grass of decency, ready to rush out to restore the nation that we have all loved, the great America that promises liberty and justice for all.
So let us rouse and rub noses and greet and remind ourselves who we are.
Carl Safina, an ecologist, is a professor at Stony Brook University on Long Island. He is the author, most recently, of “Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe.”
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