Yesterday, on the 40th anniversary of the tragic murder of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Barack Obama came to my hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana and gave a reverent speech discussing the relationship between class and race. After much reflection, I want to share with you what this speech meant to me personally and why I will ultimately be supporting Senator Obama.
(Cross-posted from Fort Wayne Politics)
Many young Americans cannot imagine back to a time when our country was completely segregated along racial lines. This forced and government-mandated segregation is an abstract concept to me and something I will never be able to fully comprehend. When Senator Obama speaks of Dr Martin Luther King Jr's fight for racial justice I have no frame of reference - it is a picture of America that I would rather close a blind eye to in hopes that I simply forget.
But as Obama pointed out today, we cannot forget, because to do so would only discourage the acknowledgment of how the politics of the past have led to the problems of present.
We were told by Senator Obama that racial justice is inseparable from economic justice; that they are both "part of a larger struggle for freedom, dignity and humanity." This is the America I can see and it was never clearer than in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Members of the media labeled the victims as refugees, but they were American citizens - the ones left behind in the march towards prosperity. The privileged among us scoffed at these people - why didn't they just leave? Of course it's mighty hard to leave when you have nowhere to go and no means to get there.
That tragic event cemented the ideal of class struggle in my mind. There will always be an aristocratic few that have more money and wield more power, but we all deserve our freedom, dignity and humanity.
I remember my own parents telling me stories of their childhood and growing up poor. My father described how my grandfather ran out and left my grandmother with 7 kids and no means to support them. My grandmother and her children did not choose that path but there they were and they needed help. Our government stepped up and helped them; she received welfare and it helped my family get through a tough time - building a foundation for future generations. Now my grandmother is a proud woman, and she probably would never admit she needed the help but she did, and I'm glad our government was there to do so.
Today we hear the stories of purported "welfare queens" and deadbeats gaming the system but we don't hear the tales of my grandmother and the countless others just like her. Why is that? Have we become so jaded that we no longer think government is capable of helping its citizens? I know that has become rallying cry of some in our country but I reject that notion. Of course there is a level of personal responsibility we all must adhere to, but there might come a time when we just need a little help.
The entire debate has become so polarized that it's boiled down to the nanny-state vs the anarchists but there is a middle ground. I think we all are willing to help those that are willing to help themselves. More than anything I think Senator Obama can help bridge that divide in our country. Hope and change are not words of empty rhetoric - it's a mantra for a new revolution. A revolution of people that are willing to say that the status quo will no longer suffice, that Washington is broken, and we need to adhere to a set of new politics in order to identify new solutions to age-old problems.
On May 6th I will be joining this revolution - I'm voting for Barack Obama...