Summer Park County Fair Moon
Politics is about so much more than elections and campaigns. It’s even about more than governing. Politics are about heart, about the deepest dreams we have for our common life. My political river has its headwaters in the Roosevelt liberalism of my parents, the hard-nosed politics of the labor movement of the 1950’s, especially the UAW, and in my childhood friends and their parents whose lives were the reality I knew affected by both of these.
Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic Convention last night, which I just watched in its entirety, brought me to tears. This articulate, eloquent black woman spoke of the true purpose of politics as the world we leave behind for our children. She spoke of Hillary Clinton as the woman we could entrust with that world. The first lady, a black woman, speaking on behalf of the first woman candidate for president and the likely winner, cheered on by Latinos and African-Americans and women and LGBT delegates, made me believe in the promise of our country. Still. Again.
That political river with its headwaters in Alexandria blue-collar Midwestern America altered its course during the heady politics of the late 60’s and early 1970’s. A powerful tributary which came down like a mountain stream in May carried with it a vision of an America which could actually collect on the promissory note long owed to the Indians and to the descendants of the enslaved. It was fed by the rhetoric and actions of such men as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. It was fed by the consciousness changing politics of such women as Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. It was fed by the grape boycotts of Caesar Chavez. It was fed by the anger and dismay of all who thought the Vietnam War was a mistake, a mistake so costly in human lives and treasure that it represented a fundamental denial of the purpose of politics given voice last night by Michelle Obama.
In Michelle’s speech the early politics of the working classes and the Rooseveltian compact with the elderly and the veteran and the poor flowed into a mightier river, the one created by the confluence of mid-century liberalism with the radical analysis of the 1960’s. In this moment there is a chance, an opportunity to reawaken the labor movement, to reinforce the voice given by Barack and Michelle Obama to African-Americans, to lift the Latinos and Asian-Americans to full citizenship. And this chance comes with the voice of a woman, one whose own political agenda has been pushed to the left by the wonderful, quixotic campaign of a 74 year old Vermont democratic socialist.
This is the nation for which I have yearned and fought and worried all these years. Those were the tears that fell this morning as I watched her speech. Tears of realization, tears of hope coming to fruition. At 69 it feels good to see at least the possibility of a mighty, mighty river finding its way to the ocean of justice.