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President John F. Kennedy called Inauguration Day “a celebration of freedom – symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning – signifying renewal, as well as change.” This year, that is dramatically true. President-elect Barack Obama will place his hand on the same Bible President Abraham Lincoln used to take the oath of office. When he does so, at noon on Tuesday, Americans of every party will celebrate both renewal and a long-needed change.
When Obama spoke at Ebenezer Baptist Church last year on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, he told how the walls of Jericho were too strong and too high for the Israelites to pass through. But the Israelites were inspired by God to cry out together. Through the power of unity, the walls came tumbling down.
Our 44th President told the gathering that on the eve of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired people not with anger, but with a “fierce urgency” to come together. Dr. King said, “Unity is the great need of this hour. Unity is how we shall overcome.”
As we celebrate Dr. King’s birthday and the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, Dr. King’s words remind us of how this nation will overcome the multitude of problems we now face. The straightforward truth is: We must face them together. We must be bold. And we must act now.
No campaign for social or economic change has ever succeeded in our nation without unity and urgency. In 1968, the sanitation workers of AFSCME Local 1733 united and stood up to the political leaders of Memphis and demanded to be treated with respect and dignity. Their cause was righteous. Their demands were just. And when Dr. King joined their cause, he spoke for an entire movement of people committed to fairness and equality. He insisted on “the fierce urgency of now.”
Today’s challenges demand no less of us. Think of the extraordinary circumstances that face us today – two wars that are costing lives, damaging our reputation and draining our treasury of needed resources here at home; an economy that threatens the fundamental existence of the middle class at risk; an unsustainable health care system that wreaks havoc on families, overwhelms government budgets and makes businesses uncompetitive; and a state and local fiscal crisis that could cripple the ability of government to meet the ever-increasing demand for vital services.
As AFSCME stood with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. we are now standing with President-elect Barack Obama, calling for unity and urgency to deal with our current crisis. He will need our help to repair the damage that has been done during the past eight years. He will need our hearts, our minds and our spirit. That is why AFSCME has launched the “Make America Happen” campaign, to create jobs and jumpstart our economy, secure health care for all and protect our beleaguered middle class. As we celebrate Dr. King’s legacy and Barack Obama’s inauguration, you can join us as well. Just click here.
14 Comments
Very nicely said.
Recommended.
thank you – clicked, signed, and recommended
Hi everyone….. night out with the girls…… went to a Turkish restaurant….. and talked for hours, ate a lot and had some of the best hot tea…..
Not sure what, if anything, I’m going to put up for the inauguration, but am thinking “Free at Last…” would look awfully good.
when it comes to slaughtering poor brown children in palestine, i am guessing that obama will not bring change i can believe in
400 dead children and accounting and complete u.s. political support from both parties
sick sick stuff
*waving*
Perfect.
hi suzanne! you’re soon in for a treat!
looking forward to getting it scarlet.
late late nite is up at the mothership
Obama is not MLK.
i support unions and i support AFSCME, but using the memory of MLK as a marketing tool for a politician who doesn’t even champion the same causes is low.
and btw, i’m not signing up you’re working to undermine years of effort for single payer health care.
Many of the noted Black Republicans leaders have been a disaster…from the Supreme court judge, Secretary of State, Colin Powell and his UN speech lies…Republicans should be painted with the tar brush Watts of Oklahoma. Working within the republican party philosophy is an automatic taint.
Joining up with republicans means supporting trickle down economics elitism and war. No taxes on the rich.
Those same people in the Dem party might be better public servants…but the republicans and aspecially the neocons and fundies govern on ideology and religion. Not Consitutional tenets.
Compromising by unity is a disater waiting to happen. As Nobel Prize recipient Paul Krugman points out unity does not work. Take an agenda that works and compromise it to get full support of congress is bad public policy.
America needs to make up to the rest of the nations, for what Bushco and his handlers were allowed to do by an “Aisle Crossing” democrat majority of 2006…and a wimpy minority that let war crimes, illegal extremely costly wars get started on false premises. That was a unified vote that led to a humanitarian disaster and war crimes and crimes aginst humanity.
No… unity of mixing bad policy with good policy will lead to failure.
We need more than hyperbole and recuing big banks that created this problem.
We need to help American workers get good jobs with benefits. We need to bailout our state from the budget crunches that are taking away the safety net from the poor and disabled. We need reasonable housing…not the mcmansion bubble program that Buschco and his corporate cronies…the one that got poor people to put in their life savings then lost it all to the bank speculators on foreclusures while tha banks made bets with Credit Default Swaps (see the cover of a resent issue of the Nation) we need to restore those folks.
No platitudes please… no promise of Change you can believe while going down the same road in most cases which is unity of which you speak. Rap Brown, Core, Thr Black Panthers never wanted anymore of the republican justice at the point of police dogs, bullets, prisons and tear gas. But the prison are populated, the largest by far in the world, with people of color.
We need food on the table, medical services universally and we need decent and affordable housing. That is not and was not the direction we have been going.
This year started off with the execution of a young Black man by a BART guard. It started out with the artillery shelling both land and Naval batteries rainingg white phosphorus on civilian populations. People who were given no where to escape and they were bombed from above with American fighter bombers and bombs. ANd still are at this moment.
We are not united on so many issues that are wrong as in holding political criminals in the BushCo administration accountable for their crimes.
Reestablishing the rule of law, the Judicial, Legislative and Executive balance of power is step one. And their are many republican think tanks, southern republicans and corporations and banks that do not support these restorations of liberty and justice. Protecting the environment.
When the Obama campaigners came to my door last spring with the platitudes of change without a detailed plan the red lights went on. When the jews of Europe read “Arbiet Machen Zie Frei” as they entered work camps, they had to have the same hunches. I will not give up my constitutional birth right for unity.
Can you sell unity to “K Street” corporate lobbyist? Those powerful wealthy interest that fund political campaigns to keep the levers of power in the corporate hands?
50 states have cut their safety nets for the poor, That is not change that I can believe in.
Equal rights for all groups gays, African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans. Asians and the rest of the eclectic groups that make up our nation. A decent lifestyle and a functional middle class with liing wages.
here’s martin luther ing in his own words:
urgency? – YES!
now? – YES!
but i don’t know see any of that unity – in fact, MLK sounds a lot more like the good rev. jeremiah wright than president elect obama.
and here’s the beginning of one of my favorite posts from paul rosenberg: Martin Luther King and The Moral Imperative For Polarization
i hope you will read the entire piece, and especially MLK’s “letter from birmingham jail.” here’s a bit of what i had in mind when i first read your post:
As a member of the Democratic Coalition, what MLK said then, still resonates with me to this day.
I can vividly recall when Governor Carter pleaded with Governor Raul Castro of Arizona for his endorsement in his run for the Presidency back in 1975. And much to my great joy, Castro did endorse Carter for President, and thusly, Carter, Castro and Coretta Scott King utilized Castro’s “Pinata One” [Castro’s airplane] to criss cross America during the Carter’s campaign.
And I mention this for the sole purpose in recognizing that Carter’s public policy for Human Rights was crafted on Pinata One. Given Castro’s experience as our former Ambassador within our Spanish-speaking Hemisphere relative to our foreign policy, Governor Castro had considerable personal experience in addressing this lack of Human Rights on a daily basis. Consequently, as a Chicano, our implementation of Human Rights as a national behavior, not only started long before MLK, but continues to to this day, despite the past 8 years of Bush’s lack of impetus for Respect and Decency.
Si Se Puede! when it comes to “improving lives!”