Listen up people. Stop that whining and sniveling about the
inauguration. Shake off the weight and oppression of despair and
depression. We can't afford a collective nervous breakdown, wringing our hands
and wailing in disbelief. We are here now. GET UP!!! HAVE YOUR CONSTITUTION,
SHOWER AND A GOOD BREAKFAST!!! Put on the air of authority and your armor of
conviction.
TODAY is day one, ground zero of the march to the 2018 and
2020 elections to reclaim the progress that we made over the last eight years.
We cannot go back, there is no "go back"
for us. And now, we need to put our collective shoulders to the plow and forge
ahead. We cannot sit down and have a pity party. Extreme oppression is nothing
new, it has been here all along. Many are shocked and devastated by how ugly it
is, how blatant it is and pervasive it is, but it is what it is. And now that
your blinders are off, don't forget it. Know it and know that in order to
change this entire schism, we have to get busy, starting with today. We have a great
and compelling cause which is the saving of our nation from these tyrants for
not only ourselves, but for future generations as well. Put on your kickass
boots because we may find ourselves as the ground troops of the war to save our
great nation.
That means EVERYBODY has to be
registered to vote and VOTE. That means EVERYBODY has to raise hell with our
elected officials BEFORE they vote on legislation. That means holding ALL of
our elected officials accountable at the local, state and national levels. That
means if you are interested in SERVING you need to get off the sidelines,
prepare yourself, qualify yourself and JUMP IN!! Ok, I get it, you are angry
because you had been hoodwinked into comfortability and complacency and thought
that we had made permanent progress. We made significant progress, but
many people did not have the skills, the training, the education, the where
with all to make the same sort of progress and they are angry. They think
that your progress is at their expense. It is sooooo much easier to blame
you and me than to look in the mirror and admit that they have failed
themselves. That because their gamble in taking a job at the mill or the
factory failed them. They are pissed off that now it is obvious that they
did need education to get ahead, or a trade, or military service or something
other than just a dead end job that has now been eliminated by a machine.
And they are angry that they are middle aged, ill prepared and now are too
tired, to ill, to ignorant, to poor, to weary to do the hustle necessary to
change their life trajectory.
But that is not our problem, our
problem is that we don't want to have to fight. We don't. We want
all of the fighting to be behind us. We are tired too. We are
frustrated and angry that here we are 30, 40 years later and still having to
fight the same fight, which appears even bigger and more ominous than when we
were young and strong and invincible. . We have to fight the same fight over
and over because democracy is not a static institution. It is ever
evolving and as it evolves there are those who repeatedly seek to take rights
away from you and from me that they demand for themselves and take for
granted. What we want is to coast and be able to "enjoy" the fruits
of our labor and the early investment in the American dream program. But,
to"enjoy" it, you have to keep working at it. Every day there are
attacks on our civil liberties, our right to exist and to be treated with
decency, our right to a piece of the pie. And attacks on our right to sit at
the table or just to a place in the sun just like everybody else. And that is
where we find ourselves TODAY.
Ok, so by hook and crook, Donald
Trump got elected as president. It is not the end of the world.. We have
survived far greater travesties, from genocide, the slave trade, slavery, the
Holocaust, Jim Crow and any number of other atrocities. So what
that skirmish was lost to Trump and his minions. As my mother, the late Rev.
Dr. Beatrice D. Woodson Luther would say, as she said to me whenever things
weren't going like I wanted, "the race is not won necessarily by the
swift, but by they that persevere." And persevere we must!! We gotta suck
it up, swear about how unfair it is, and get busy trying to form a more perfect
union, in our lifetimes. Let's get in gear, and let's go people!!!! IJS
