Thank you Martin Luther King

I cannot share in this national orgasm of hope.  My failure is not being looked upon kindly by those who know me best.  They feel the least I can do is be less cynical about the prospects for the future.  My difficulty stems from years and years of serious activism.  The person I have been friends with for the longest period teases me that I once had her marching for Chimpanzees in Detroit, and march we did.  We were involved.  We stayed involved.  We are still involved.  She is the basis for the online nick which I have used for many years.  We might not have been born sisters but we were sisters in every sense of the world. She founded an organization that helps inner city children with personal items and sleeping bags to assure that they have a warm safe place to sleep. Because of circumstances I moved frequently and my activism moved with me.   I have lived in Michigan, Florida, California, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut,  New York and Maryland.  I have had temporary residences in Georgia and Arkansas.  I have always known the names and phone numbers of my congressional representatives and they regularly have heard my arguments on current issues.   I have argued causes and equality for over 50 years and I have no intention of stopping now.  Barbara Mikulski's office staff in Maryland have actually gone so far as to assure me that I was not alone in my concerns. 

I am not unemotional.  I have sat in the Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta and cried feeling the drama of Martin Luther King and his message, after having seen his poorly maintained gravesite.   I have struggled through the deaths of John, Martin and Bobby.  I have learned that some things we did counted.  The woman in Atlanta who shared a lunch table with me, angered when I said we had not done enough in the 60's said. "Never say that again, you got me out.  I went from a one room cabin in Mississippi to being the head of a department in a major college.  You made that happen".  I have stood silently with people who thought that equality meant equal rights and equal pay.

Yes, thankfully, we will have a new president. This is an amazing period of history that it is a privilege to experience. But after the throngs of people go home from the train stops, and concerts and events of the next week I will still be at my desk gathering the information I will need to make my phone calls on the issues of today.  I wonder how many of the emotionally sated will do anything more than say "they were part of history".  I wonder how many will actually become involved in the process of holding their government responsible.  I wonder how many have any clue how much 1.2 trillion dollars really is.

There was a popular TV show on which a character ranted about the lack of involvement in the last eight years.  "Certainly Americans will rise up and refuse to let this happen"  Will the throngs of  people understand that election fraud,  war in Iraq,  WMD's, Abu Ghraib, Iraqi victims,  signing statements and executive orders,  Katrina, immigration, health care, poverty,  the racism, and lack of education was in fact all of our faults? Will they see the circle of poverty that surrounds the celebratory events of the week to come as they enter and leave the district? Did Obama note the boarded up buildings as he rode the train into Baltimore?

I was asked how I was going to volunteer tomorrow to celebrate Martin Luther King day.  I will not volunteer tomorrow.  I will honor the man upon whose shoulders our new president stands.  I will pray that he understands there were a lot of shoulders, mine and Wren included.