I Have A Dream, Too
6:01 p.m., April 4, 1968. I was 8 years old when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot and killed in my hometown: Memphis, Tennessee. My family had finished supper and settled in to watch TV when we saw the news bulletins. Walter Cronkite was talking about us, our city. I remember seeing the tanks on TV, rolling down the streets downtown, only a few miles from our neighborhood. Fires flared on camera, angry black people shaking fists, screaming, and weeping, wailing. My mother and father cried. A curfew was declared, city-wide, every night for what seemed like weeks, and the streets were empty and silent. Still, Daddy pulled his shotgun from the hall closet and and kept it, loaded, by his bedside.
They played pieces of Dr. King’s speech on TV over and over in the days to come, from the 1963 March on Washington:
“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. . . .
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Last week, Republicans held their convention in Tampa. Last night, Democrats got rolling in North Carolina. The nation seems irreparably split in two. Some friends have given up, disgusted and scared, but feeling helpless. “Its all corrupt anyway,” they grumble. “Both parties are the same. Doesn’t matter who you vote for. . . .”
John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America and other bestsellers, wrote a moving, powerful piece about hope in these times at Yes! about this, seen through the lens of a movie called Thrive that’s been making the rounds. In essence, the movie claims there’s a tiny cabal of billionaires set to take over the world. The whole idea left me feeling overwhelmed and depressed, despite the movie’s upbeat music and graphics. Mr. Robbins’ piece restored my hope.
“This way of thinking has an allure, for it distracts and absolves us from the troubling truth that the real source of the problem is in all of us, and in the economic systems we have collectively produced. If the ills of the world are the deliberate intentions of malevolent beings, then we don’t have to take responsibility for our problems because they are being done to us. . . .
As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart.”
Here’s a link to the whole article.
President Obama talked about hope in 2008, and he tapped into that higher feeling so many of us shared, or wanted to feel, ignited by Dr. King in the 60’s. It breaks my heart, and angers me, to hear some political players making fun of that now, the “hopey-changey thing”, with a wink and a heavy dose of cynicism. That sells books, no doubt about it. Children live in full trust, at least until they have it beaten out of them. We children of the Sixties had that hope hammered out of us by a bullet. Dare to dream, we learned, and you too, will be silenced. Now, we seem so beaten down as a generation that all it takes is for one television network to make fun of us for feeling hope, and we throw up our hands and say, “Oh well, maybe they’re right. Hope and change really are just a childish dream.”
Okay, so there may be a tiny cabal of wealthy families engineering world domination, as the movie Thrive maintains, but I agree with John Robbins — its just another excuse for us to surrender hope, and our own power. What the cynics who profit from our disappointment are missing is this: The hope that President Obama ushered in was borne of the fulfillment of Dr. King’s dream. It is the miracle of Vision, the manifestation of a vision, strongly and consistently held, nearly fifty years after the words were spoken. This is not the time to abandon hope. Nothing has failed. The miracle happened, and nothing can erase that.
In the 1800’s, Sarah Josepha Hale helped poor widows in Boston, organizing other women to sew new clothes for them and their children. She raised money to complete the Bunker Hill monument, to join together and remember what our soldiers fought for. She knew the importance of joining together with a single benevolent vision, and pushed to have Thanksgiving declared a national holiday. Dr. King understood the power of a vision, too.
One thing I heard repeatedly from the Republican convention stage was, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” That tag line worked for Ronald Reagan, and it may work to elect Mr. Romney. But I think we’re bigger than that. Let’s ask a bigger question: What is my unique vision for this country, and for the world? Not just a better life for me, but for my neighbors, whatever color or party, and for the generations to come. Then: Which candidate best moves us, however slowly, in that direction?
For a vision of a kinder politics, a vision I share, here’s another great speech, First Lady Michelle Obama at last night’s convention.
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