Written by Don Washington   

Many of us feel the President Obama has let us down and that the political system has failed us all. The truth is that this is always the way it's been. As my grandfather said: "Democracy is the battle that never ends, you are fighting for something or losing everything. Don't you be the prick-rat-bastard that gives away somebody's rights who hasn't even been born yet because you could not get directly involved in democracy today."

Democracy, the country is always in trouble and these are dark and hopeful times. They are dark because the forces of organized money are waging an endless war ordinary people both here and abroad; but hopeful because it has brought us together. We are the children of faith and social justice and history tells us that together we are an unstoppable coalition and a reflection of the very best virtues and values of our country. We will one day come together to compel this President or the next to pursue social justice and protect ordinary people from the powerful and selfish.

We are part of a line of activists and advocates, community, faith and labor leaders, students, citizens and public officials who have always worked to hold the powerful accountable and we are called upon to do so again. We are the descendants of King and Gandhi; Sojourner Truth and Cesar Chavez, Mary McDowell, Eugene Debs, Grace Lee Boggs and A. Phillip Randolph. We, and people like us, ordinary, conscientious, hard working, open society loving and community minded people created unions to fight for and win the worker’s rights struggles of the twenties and thirties were and the progressive movement that secured the legal existence of civil rights in the sixties and seventies. People like us are the souls working to create a world built on human rights and just economics; instead of blood and oil and greed and we will prevail.

We have the burden and privilege to be the moral voice that ended slavery and Apartheid and we will do what we have always done, save this nation from the short-sighted and venal. We have historically had the honor and responsibility of standing up as principled people in defense of liberty and for justice and peace. We are the patriots who have saved this country from zealots and bigots again and again because dissent is democracy and a moral voice is one that speaks truth not to power but about power to call others to confront it and correct it.

We are called upon once again to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and sister to brother, across lines of faith, race, creed and class to prevent the plutocrats and oligarchs from destroying the very freedoms it purports to defend. We are the place where America’s best values and greatest hopes come together and we refuse to allow our nation to be reduced a unilateralist bully; whose policies are driven by objectivist evil and powered by barely veiled racism and economic violence.

I say all of that to say this. We must remember that the Bush Administration did not change its positions on civil liberties, social justice, economic inequality and foreign policy after September 11th; it just took advantage of our shared sorrow to greatly diminish them. And now we must have the courage to call out the Obama Administration for not living up to its promise to restore civil liberties and social justice and to address economic inequality while correcting a foreign policy that was forged from unholy alloy of lies and avarice.

We have to have the mettle to understand that the tripartite evils of militarism, racism and materialism have gained ascendancy in our country again and we have bring them down. We have to throw the spanner of protest and action into the gears of the war machine that enriches its corporate benefactors; assaults the environment and attacks the rights of anyone not fortunate enough to born into power or privilege. It is on us to end this madness and we already know that it will not be easy.

We will answer them with teach-ins, rallies, civil disobedience and the enunciation of a positive set of policies to change the way the world works. We will fight for change by voting and writing and marching and debating these small-minded men at every turn and we will bring their misdeeds to the American people and our good, great people will cast them out. We will not allow them hide behind tragedy, or sully the American flag with actions that go against the values it flies for.

We will not allow them to use faith to justify aggression and avarice. We will demand an ethical foreign policy grounded in international law not unilateral force and we will win. We will win because we are the children of faith and social justice and we shall overcome.