Reclaiming “We”
It’s not about adopting their politics, compromising our own, or even tolerating their tactics. It’s about reclaiming “We” — The same “We” that Dr. King and civil rights workers sang about in “We Shall Overcome.”
Tag: Martin Luther King
Don’t Kill the Health Reform Bill. Improve It.
The blogosphere is aflame with debate over the Senate health care bill. I’ve just been sent 10 reasons (in one blog post) why progressives should kill the bill and start over in the battle to really reform health care. Administration spokespeople add fuel to the flames when they lecture critics on the left about how […]
Moral Authority: Walking the Walk versus Talking the Talk
One of the most schizoid aspects of Age of Reagan was the peculiar division of labor that developed between conservatives and progressives over the question of morality. Somewhere on the road between 1980 and 1994, the conservatives seized and locked down exclusive U.S. franchise rights on talking the moral talk—and proceeded to wring every possible […]
What Religious Progressives Bring To The Party
I spent several days over last weekend as a volunteer webworker covering the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in Salt Lake City. These annual confabs are always a highlight of the summer for me as a UU. They’re also one of the best shows going if you want to remember, all the way down, what it […]
America’s Mountaintop Moment
“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountain top. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just […]
Dr. King’s Modern Legacy
In the days just before and after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 80th birthday, I had the opportunity to visit two places that are integral to his modern day legacy: Washington, DC and the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. As I witnessed the inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation’s 44th president, I thought […]
Never Failing, Always Failed
Sometimes the most pointed — or preposterous — comes from unexpected sources. This time, it’s The Onion providing the former and the Wall Street Journal serving up the latter. The best satire comes wrapped around a grain of discomforting truth. Daniel De Groot unwrapped one in a headline from The Onion that should give Democrats […]
How Do We Seize The Obama Moment?
When Sen. Barack Obama receives the Democratic presidential nomination before 75,000 people in Denver’s Mile High Stadium on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, new possibilities will be born. Obama may not be a “movement” progressive in the way that Reagan was a “movement” conservative, and he may […]
A Fighter, and a Friend
Living in D.C., you can’t help; crossing paths with some famous political names. In fact, you get used to it. But, as with most things, you never forget your first. And Ted Kennedy was my first. I was still new to D.C., having moved up from Georgia in the Summer of 1994 to work for […]
Jeremiah Wright: What (Else) Is Going On
Jeremiah Wright is everywhere this week — and the media doesn’t quite know what to make of it. Mostly, they’re stuck so hard in the election horse-race narrative that they only question they can think to ask is: Does having Wright out there hurt Obama, or help him? Lost in the tortured pondering over this […]