Each year at Thanksgiving, I count my blessings. And I have many: good health, two wonderful, healthy children, a wealth of close and caring friends, a good job, phenomenal colleagues, and many opportunities to continue learning. I cherish these things because I know how easily any one or all of them might be lost. And I know in facing any number of struggles, there are people who stand beside me to whom I can turn.

There are also many, many people and organizations to whom I am deeply grateful and with which I feel blessed to be affiliated. They provide both inspiration and support in too many ways to count, through their work, dedication, courage, and commitment to justice for all people. I will not even attempt individual names. You know who you are.

Today, I want to give thanks to all of you:

To the Rewire staff, many of whom have carried us through a relentless and challenging period of growth over more than two years, and whose work has not only made us who we are today but carried us to the beginning of a new journey of growth and development.

To our board of directors, which has seen us through many phases of rapid growth, supported a bold vision for our future, and given their time and energy to helping make us the best we can be.

To our funders, who believe in us deeply and have invested the non-profit venture capital necessary to build a solid foundation and begin the journey to a more powerful future.

To the many, many colleagues in the reproductive and sexual justice movement and the broader movements for justice with whom we work daily. These are the people who understand that control over one’s own body is a fundamental human right, and also an essential condition for every other basic freedom. They understand that the power of such freedom is threatening to many, creating a highly contested battleground in the United States and throughout the world. I am thankful for those who work every day to protect the rights of pregnant women, and the rights of women who choose not to be pregnant, to those who work to expose the epidemic of rape, assault, and violence of all kinds. I am thankful to all those who work to ensure that we build a world where having a child also means being able to raise that child with the resources needed for his or her development and to live freely from violence, discrimination, and hatred.

To the many individuals and groups in justice movements who continue to fight every single day to ensure that every person in the world has access to the most fundamental building blocks of an equitable world: high-quality health care from birth to death; high-quality education from preschool through graduate school; housing, food, and freedom from violence; freedom from stigma and discrimination; just laws and policies; access to fair courts; and so many other things. These are the people who fight to ensure that the basic human rights of undocumented persons in the United States are recognized no less than the basic human rights of Wall Street investors. These are the people who fight the unending attacks on reproductive and sexual health care, on LGBT persons, on fair wages, on teachers and public sector workers, on the environment, and in other areas too numerous to name. These people fight every day, and no matter the defeat or conditions on Monday, get up on Tuesday and say, “What do we need to do better?”

To the many colleagues and organizations in movements working to protect and promote the human rights of people of color, whose very humanity remains under attack in so many corners of this country. The people who know that the election of a Black president did not mean the end of racism, discrimination, and hate—that it instead blew the lid off the deeply embedded racism that boils just below the surface in the United States, whose worst perpetrators want to pretend it does not exist.

To the many sisters in the women of color reproductive justice movement particularly, who work unceasingly, sometimes themselves living in poverty while working for justice. I am indebted to you, but also appalled at the conditions you’re faced with and the ways in which traditional sources of funding ignore your efforts. I thank you for your relentless honesty and commitment, and am committed to you in return.

To the many who fight for the rights of all workers, to earn not just “minimum wages”—a term that says everything you need to know about how we value such work—and not just “living wages,” but wages that reflect a societal commitment to enabling people to build a life, aspire and achieve their dreams, and raise children, and ensure the most fundamental conditions of humanity.

To the many who fight for government for all, not for the few. To those who organize, strategize, and mobilize, I thank you.

To those who fight each day, against what seem to be insurmountable odds, to save humanity from itself by ensuring we save our planet. You recognize and understand that what is at stake is not just our future, but the future of all the children around the world who have little say in the devastation and destruction of our world, but who will have to live with the consequences. I thank you every day for the work you are doing to avoid true catastrophe.

To the providers of safe abortion care, family planning, and other reproductive health services whose services are profoundly critical, and whose livelihoods and lives are under constant, and sometimes deadly, attack. Your bravery and commitment to the fundamental human right to health care and bodily integrity leave me in awe.

And to our readers, whose dedication to our issues has enabled us to grow in audience, readership, and visibility.

I want to thank all of you for the blessings of being affiliated with you and inspired by you each and every day. Many if not most of you are a part of several of the groups named here, because the work each of us does and the vision we share is integrated and integral to a world in which justice is the basic platform on which we can all build a future.

Saying thank you does not feel like much, but it is one way to recognize and appreciate how much you all mean to me every single day.

Jodi Jacobson