Byron Williams is one of my favorite columnists from WorkingForChange.ComThe profound changes in this country that led to abolishment of slavery, women having the right to vote, the end of Jim Crow Segregation and the war in Vietnam all began as minority opinions. -- Byron Williams: Hope in 2005
Here's his most recent article. My only addition to his comments is: I really don't want to be 'dead' before my 'minority' opinions become the norm. But perhaps it won't be that way - this time. Things seem to be speeding up ... there is a 'been there, done that' awareness that's helping us get back to center/right much quicker than before.
Plus, there is a part of me that truly believes we'll live to see the results that we're working so hard for now.
Well, hope so anyway ....
Here's his column in full:
~d
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http://www.workingforchange.com/article ... emid=18324
Hope in 2005
Byron Williams - byronspeaks.com
01.04.05 - If 1992 was the political "Year of the Woman," then I predict that 2005 will be the year of the "Prisoner to Hope." I reached this conclusion based on my participation at a recent post-election speaking engagement.
During the question and answer period, I was asked a very direct and poignant question: "How can we have hope?"
As a result of the question, three individuals immediately came to mind: Martin Luther King Jr., Susan B. Anthony and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who rejected Hitler's Germany. His understanding of Christianity caused him to take public stands against the Holocaust, South African Apartheid, and the British occupation of India.
Bonhoeffer's efforts in assisting Jews to escape to Switzerland led to his arrest and imprisonment in the spring 1943. He was executed in a concentration camp on April 9, 1945.
Susan B. Anthony was a primary figure in the Women's Suffrage movement. Through the National Women's Suffrage Association she began a nationwide campaign to win women the right to vote.
On Thanksgiving Day, 1872, a defiant Anthony was arrested for the following: "This government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex... which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every home of the nation."
Prior to her death in 1906, Anthony stated her belief that "Failure is impossible." By the time she died, four states had granted voting rights to women.
In 1965, King made a "people-to-people" tour of northern cities. But the growing militancy of black people in Watts and Harlem, and even in Mississippi and Alabama, caused Dr. King to reassess the nonviolent civil rights movement.
King was troubled about the American involvement in the war in Vietnam and saw the connection between the war and America's failure to improve the lives of the poor domestically. In 1967, King began speaking directly against the Vietnam War, although many civil rights advocates, black and white, criticized King's stance.
Bonhoeffer was executed days prior to Hitler's suicide and Germany's Surrender. Anthony died 14 years before the 19th Amendment was ratified, giving women the right to vote. And King never lived to see that he was indeed right on the war question.
All three engaged in a hope that was bigger than themselves. It was based on a truth that they believed to be self-evident, that change needed to occur.
"How can we have hope?" is not a question that we have the luxury to pose. Implicit in the question is a sense of hopelessness.
Contrary to how many may feel, present-day America is far from any Dark Ages redux. But we are challenged in 2005 to reclaim the democratic traditions that have spoken loudest when in the minority.
The profound changes in this country that led to abolishment of slavery, women having the right to vote, the end of Jim Crow Segregation and the war in Vietnam all began as minority opinions.
The lived examples of Bonhoeffer, Anthony, and King remind us that realized hope is not something that one can confine to time. If one's hope is based on what one can see, know that such hope is accompanied by an expiration date. And that would make one a prisoner to hopelessness, rather than the prisoner of hope that is so desperately needed in 2005.
(c) 2004, byronspeaks.com
URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article ... emid=18324
