February 01, 2009

What do we do now?

From Grace Lee Boggs: "All over the country there are small groups like ours. As the crisis deepens, forcing us to look to each other to survive, our local efforts can create Communities of Hope, Cities of Hope, Regions of Hope, and overall, a New America of Hope; This is what we need to do now..."

"During the Inauguration on Jan. 20, I had the opportunity to talk on Democracy Now with Alice Walker, who was covering the historic event with Amy Goodman.

I said that I was struck by the grimness of Obama’s face as he walked to his seat on the podium. I felt a disconnect between that grimness and the jubilation of the millions awaiting his arrival. I also thought that his speech (in which he invoked past presidents), lacked the “Together We Can” energy of the campaign and the love, the turning to one another and the legacy of past grassroots struggles that were in Margaret Alexander’s poem and Rev. Lowery’s benediction. It reflected, instead, the difficulties, complexities, burdens and constraints of the Oval Office, and the reality that, as President and Commander-in-Chief, Barack Obama is now responsible not only for reviving a failed economic system but extricating us from two failed wars in the Mideast and rescuing an obsolete school system.

And I wondered how we, the people, can bridge this disconnect.

Alice said that she was also troubled at the weight of the responsibility that Obama must be feeling, because “now, after all, he, the President, and his word, will have so much clout in the world. There should be some way that ordinary citizens could really show an understanding of what we are asking of this family. This is some of what has to be going through his mind as he takes on this office of President of the United States at a time when everything is falling apart.” ...

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Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership   Boggs Center Website       

Novelist Alice Walker and Activist Grace Lee Boggs React to Obama’s Inauguration, Democracy Now! January 21, 2009

The Color Purple author Alice Walker shares a poem she wrote to mark the inauguration. And she speaks with legendary 93-year-old civil rights activist and philosopher Grace Lee Boggs. [includes rush transcript]
Guests:

Alice Walker, Pulitzer-winning author of The Color Purple.

Grace Lee Boggs, 93-year-old civil rights and environmental justice activist. She has lived in Detroit for fifty-four years and writes for the weekly Michigan Citizen. In 1992, she co-founded the Detroit Summer youth program, and her autobiography Living for Change was published in 1998.