Emotions have run with me. To see Barack Obama on the stage at Grant Park in Chicago, a city I love after 15 years of being one of her sons, a black man in a mostly white country, with the most challenging historical blocks and barriers arrayed against him, a man who grew up poor, lived in Hawai'i and Indonesia, once spent a homeless night in New York City, with Kenya and Kansas in his blood, to know he would stand there as the newly-elected US president seemed nearly hard to believe, if I hadn't worked hard myself to see this day.
I remember Martin Luther King's crusade and assassination, of the murders of Robert Kennedy, Ruben Salazar, Mark Hampton, George Jackson, Malcolm X, Rudy Lozano, and many others in the 60s and 70s, of personal friends and revolutionaries, gone and beaten, who's bones we stand on today. I've been in struggle for forty years--for civil rights, social justice, economic justice, environmental justice, and human rights for all. I saw the legacy of our organizations, plans, marches, defeats and triumphs up on that stage. President-elect Barack Obama's words last night echoed the speeches and poems so many have written before and since then. It goes back more than a hundred years to the end of slavery, to before then when blacks organized with whites and others to end the chains on all men.
Who made this happen? It was young people, who finally believe a dream is possible in this country; it was Black and Brown, who for all the perceived divisions, still face similar numbers in the country's misery index; and it was white people, progressives, yes, but also millions of working class and poor whites who even if they harbored racist thoughts, voted for a new response to a dying economy hitting at all our homes, savings, livelihoods.
This is a moment of a lifetime that, unfortunately, Obama's grandmother and my mother (who both passed on recently) could not see happen. But their spirits, like those of all the ancestors, have paved the way and prepared us for this day.
In Hawai'i last week, I spent time with indigenous elders and teachers from various tribes in the US and other countries--and many powerful youth and activists from all walks of life. I learned how many native prophecies--be they Mohawk, Lakota, Hopi or Samoan--are similar to what the Mayan prophecies for 2012 have long concluded. As we enter the coming time shifts and alignments, change is happening at all levels: galactic, earth, as well as in societies.
It's time for us to come together, to break through the old static ideas and paradigms, to ride a dynamic of change that is sweeping all of us, to look at the world and realize the immense possibilities in it, and to organize with great social energy (and by tapping into the regenerative powers in the earth and in our humanity) to realize these possibilities.
Barack Obama's election is a step, although an extremely powerful one, in this process, meeting all expectations of these prophecies. We cannot sit stil, however. We cannot let this moment pass. Yes, let's celebrate. But now it's also time to go to work. Don't believe for a second the fascists, retrogradists, war mongerers, and detractors aren't organizing now to stop this movement. Reach out, be dignified, has Obama has been, but keep organizing forward. I hope to find avenues through this blog and other outlets to contribute to what we have to do as we enter the end of one era and the beginnings of another.
Today I'm in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (I've been in battle states these past few weeks). I'm speaking at the all-women's Salem Academy and College to the school and community. I plan to express and continue the spirit of this historical moment.
c/s
I remember Martin Luther King's crusade and assassination, of the murders of Robert Kennedy, Ruben Salazar, Mark Hampton, George Jackson, Malcolm X, Rudy Lozano, and many others in the 60s and 70s, of personal friends and revolutionaries, gone and beaten, who's bones we stand on today. I've been in struggle for forty years--for civil rights, social justice, economic justice, environmental justice, and human rights for all. I saw the legacy of our organizations, plans, marches, defeats and triumphs up on that stage. President-elect Barack Obama's words last night echoed the speeches and poems so many have written before and since then. It goes back more than a hundred years to the end of slavery, to before then when blacks organized with whites and others to end the chains on all men.
Who made this happen? It was young people, who finally believe a dream is possible in this country; it was Black and Brown, who for all the perceived divisions, still face similar numbers in the country's misery index; and it was white people, progressives, yes, but also millions of working class and poor whites who even if they harbored racist thoughts, voted for a new response to a dying economy hitting at all our homes, savings, livelihoods.
This is a moment of a lifetime that, unfortunately, Obama's grandmother and my mother (who both passed on recently) could not see happen. But their spirits, like those of all the ancestors, have paved the way and prepared us for this day.
In Hawai'i last week, I spent time with indigenous elders and teachers from various tribes in the US and other countries--and many powerful youth and activists from all walks of life. I learned how many native prophecies--be they Mohawk, Lakota, Hopi or Samoan--are similar to what the Mayan prophecies for 2012 have long concluded. As we enter the coming time shifts and alignments, change is happening at all levels: galactic, earth, as well as in societies.
It's time for us to come together, to break through the old static ideas and paradigms, to ride a dynamic of change that is sweeping all of us, to look at the world and realize the immense possibilities in it, and to organize with great social energy (and by tapping into the regenerative powers in the earth and in our humanity) to realize these possibilities.
Barack Obama's election is a step, although an extremely powerful one, in this process, meeting all expectations of these prophecies. We cannot sit stil, however. We cannot let this moment pass. Yes, let's celebrate. But now it's also time to go to work. Don't believe for a second the fascists, retrogradists, war mongerers, and detractors aren't organizing now to stop this movement. Reach out, be dignified, has Obama has been, but keep organizing forward. I hope to find avenues through this blog and other outlets to contribute to what we have to do as we enter the end of one era and the beginnings of another.
Today I'm in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (I've been in battle states these past few weeks). I'm speaking at the all-women's Salem Academy and College to the school and community. I plan to express and continue the spirit of this historical moment.
c/s
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