Our Biggest Mistake
I've been paying attention to presidential elections since I was in eighth grade. There's a common refrain one hears every election cycle. We heard it in 2000 and again in 2004. We're hearing it again now in 2008:
This is the most important election we've had in years.
No doubt this is probably true. Elections such as this one can be quite important, especially when the country has been guided in such a terrible and dangerous direction as it has in the last seven years. The significance of this year's presidential election cannot be understated. The stakes are too great. The future is too important to simply cast this off as just another election between, in the words of Helen Keller, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee.
Quite often we place many of our hopes and dreams into one individual. This year for many of us that individual is Barack Obama. Many of us also pray that President Obama will also be fortunate enough to have a strong Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. If this happens, the country's tragic economic, social, and political trajectory will hopefully be reversed.
But putting too much hope in one person (or a group of people) in government is our biggest mistake. There are too many things that we should have no reason to believe will change under an Obama presidency (see my previous post on that issue). We must remember that, in the words of Frederick Douglass, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress.... Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will...." Douglass was speaking about the abolition of the vile institution of slavery in the United States. His argument has been echoed by participants and leaders of radical movements throughout history: The demand for change must come from the people through constant and vigilant struggle.
Voting is not what has made the greatest positive impact on the daily lives of Americans. It has not been the government or its leading officials taking the reins of leadership and directing the country toward a better, more humane course.
No, it has been the people, the very heart and soul and morale voice of the nation. Slavery was abolished not because Abraham Lincoln all of a sudden saw the light but because of the tireless and unpopular struggle of black and white abolitionists and the slaves themselves urging and fighting for America to live up to its ideals. It was not FDR and the national government, in the grips of the Great Depression, who led the charge for the right of workers to unionize, for a minimum wage, for safer working conditions. It was the labor movement, the people who put their livelihood and lives at risk to obtain the most basic of human rights. It was not President Woodrow Wilson or any one political party that led the way in granting women the right to vote but instead the over 100-year struggle among women who engaged in protests, petition drives, and acts of civil disobedience to show that women were equal to men and that they deserved the most fundamental of political rights in America. And in the 1950s and 60s, the people's movements beginning with the Civil Rights Movement and leading to the movements for women's liberation, American Indian emancipation, Chicano rights, and the end to a brutal and illegal war that propelled the government into action.
Yes, let us vote and be proud to do it. Let us hope and pray that a president Barack Obama (or John McCain, if you're so inclined) can help usher in a significant of positive change and transformation in this nation. But let us not forget that the real, deep, impacting changes we seek must be borne in our own desire to make a better world for our children and must translate into patient but vigiliant action. But be sure, once we leave that voting booth, the president-elect and the rest of the government must be held accountable. The people must lead in the direction we want this country to go, not the other way around. Otherwise, we may as well not vote at all.
This is the most important election we've had in years.
No doubt this is probably true. Elections such as this one can be quite important, especially when the country has been guided in such a terrible and dangerous direction as it has in the last seven years. The significance of this year's presidential election cannot be understated. The stakes are too great. The future is too important to simply cast this off as just another election between, in the words of Helen Keller, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee.
Quite often we place many of our hopes and dreams into one individual. This year for many of us that individual is Barack Obama. Many of us also pray that President Obama will also be fortunate enough to have a strong Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. If this happens, the country's tragic economic, social, and political trajectory will hopefully be reversed.
But putting too much hope in one person (or a group of people) in government is our biggest mistake. There are too many things that we should have no reason to believe will change under an Obama presidency (see my previous post on that issue). We must remember that, in the words of Frederick Douglass, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress.... Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will...." Douglass was speaking about the abolition of the vile institution of slavery in the United States. His argument has been echoed by participants and leaders of radical movements throughout history: The demand for change must come from the people through constant and vigilant struggle.
Voting is not what has made the greatest positive impact on the daily lives of Americans. It has not been the government or its leading officials taking the reins of leadership and directing the country toward a better, more humane course.
No, it has been the people, the very heart and soul and morale voice of the nation. Slavery was abolished not because Abraham Lincoln all of a sudden saw the light but because of the tireless and unpopular struggle of black and white abolitionists and the slaves themselves urging and fighting for America to live up to its ideals. It was not FDR and the national government, in the grips of the Great Depression, who led the charge for the right of workers to unionize, for a minimum wage, for safer working conditions. It was the labor movement, the people who put their livelihood and lives at risk to obtain the most basic of human rights. It was not President Woodrow Wilson or any one political party that led the way in granting women the right to vote but instead the over 100-year struggle among women who engaged in protests, petition drives, and acts of civil disobedience to show that women were equal to men and that they deserved the most fundamental of political rights in America. And in the 1950s and 60s, the people's movements beginning with the Civil Rights Movement and leading to the movements for women's liberation, American Indian emancipation, Chicano rights, and the end to a brutal and illegal war that propelled the government into action.
Yes, let us vote and be proud to do it. Let us hope and pray that a president Barack Obama (or John McCain, if you're so inclined) can help usher in a significant of positive change and transformation in this nation. But let us not forget that the real, deep, impacting changes we seek must be borne in our own desire to make a better world for our children and must translate into patient but vigiliant action. But be sure, once we leave that voting booth, the president-elect and the rest of the government must be held accountable. The people must lead in the direction we want this country to go, not the other way around. Otherwise, we may as well not vote at all.
