To Believe in America

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"My Weekly Say"
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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
-- Declaration of Independence

Marriage Equality. Affordable Housing and Equal Citizenship for Katrina survivors. Equal Justice under the law – and Equal Access to the Bench.

I’m just going to deliver the punch line here: I believe in America, damn it. I do.

This was another in what has been a series of weeks – or consecutive news cycles – packed with significant political and historical moments. For many, the disappointments seemed to mount as the week progressed – or regressed.

And while many an eye was trained on domestic developments, debacles, and distortions, the world scene appeared to move in fast forward. Innocent civilians in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan struggled under the weight of suicide bombings, evacuations, street wars, “legitimate wars”, drug wars and (as yet) undeclared wars. And as many of that country’s civilians continued to suffer in dire poverty this week, North Korea’s leaders tested bombs with the strategic and political foresight of a teenager armed with M80 firecrackers.

Yet news coverage, and my unofficial poll at the barbershop, showed that America’s antipathy still begins, and generally stays, at home. My Facebook page demonstrated the same trend. That’s where I came across words from our Declaration of Independence this week. A friend, one of the most brilliant minds I know, thought it a good idea to toss out a little somethin’ somethin’ from the founding fathers, who had a few good ideas about liberty and freedoms, despite their tragic confusion about the incompatibility of these ideas with the act slaveholding.

Many folks have been trying to pick up on a bit of that lofty liberty mojo recently. Last week, while defending his argument that torture is kinda un-American and just plain wrong, our President took a whack at reminding folks of the nation’s founding principles by planting himself in front of copy of the constitution at the National Archives.

(This was a relief, actually. I’d just assumed the previous administration had burned all of those.)

Apparently, he was trying to underscore this whole idea that such behavior is – wait for it – outside the bounds of our founding (and defining?) documents. Poor thing. It’s like he’s never read the Patriot Act.

And really, I’m not sure how successful he was. This week, my barber trimmed me up during a rather lively discussion on President Obama’s fair-to-middling transparency on such matters.

Her comments - and I quote: “I’m for torture. I am, if it will save the country. And if you don’t have the stomach for it, step aside, and I’ll handle it.”

For Torture? Seriously? Is this a new T-shirt slogan? (Please don’t answer that).

Don’t get me started on racial history, and black folks, and lynching, and Jim Crow, and torture. We just don’t have time this week.

But really: For Torture?

I know what you’re wondering. But no, Rahsul wasn’t at the shop. He still hasn’t gotten back to me on the math’matix for Malcolm and Lorraine.

But back to the point. This week made it a little harder than usual to believe in America.

The California Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8, continuing the ban on same-sex marriage in the state. Apparently, the Court found that a tyranny of the majority makes sense. Want to cast a vote to restrict the lives, privacy, and full citizenship of others?

That’s sensible, if you're not particularly hung up on the Bill of Rights.

Sort of how it would have made sense to let the people of Kansas vote on whether they liked the idea of school desegregation, rather than going through the whole hassle of Brown v. Board of Education.

True, many in the legal and activist communities predicted this outcome. Still, I'd hoped the Fourteenth Amendment would carry a little weight in the deliberations.

This was not a test America should have failed.

It was a stinging, timely reminder that the same hatred and silence that killed 15-year-old Sakia Gunn in an anti-gay hate crime still festers, even as we commemorated what would have been her 20th birthday.

We owe Sakia, and the many children like her, a better America than this one. But so far, we’re still missing the mark.

This week also brought news of the ejection of thousands from FEMA trailers in Louisiana. The substandard, formaldehyde laced, unreliably built structures have been the cause of illness and bizarre accidents for years now. Yet for many families, who battled fate and the elements for months before receiving the late-arriving monstrosities, FEMA trailers became homes. And as they filed paperwork, fought with insurance companies, and jumped the hoops of inadequate government programs, many began to realize the relief wasn’t coming. The reconstruction wasn’t happening. The insurance wasn’t paying. They weren’t getting their lives back.

And now, they can’t go even back to those damned trailers.

*Credits: C. Cole, Los Angeles Times; LaTrice Dixon; Shawn Poynter.

To Believe in America, PART 2

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"My Weekly Say"
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Hard week to believe in America, folks. And yet some people still do.

Omar Edwards did. The African-American police officer, 25, joined the New York Police Department two years ago. On Thursday night, he was working as a plain-clothes patrolman. He was in pursuit of a suspected car thief, gun drawn, when Andrew Dunton, a white officer, took him for a criminal and shot him dead.

The shot to his back – yes, his back – was fatal.

Apparently, being a youthful plain-clothes officer of color is dangerous business, at least in Gotham City. African-American officer Christopher Ridley of Mount Vernon, 23, and Latino NYPD officer Eric Hernandez, 24, met the same fate in recent years.

There’s a troubling irony here.

Despite misleading stereotypes, black men have made an overwhelming contribution to law and order and to upholding and defending the nation. Consider the fact that black men and women are overrepresented in every branch of the military – making up at least 27.5 percent of the Army, for example, while being only 12.5 percent of the U.S. population. Many of America’s police forces reflect this overwhelming sense service and patriotism among blacks. In fact, Officer Edwards' father-in-law joined the NYPD as a young black man - he's been there nearly 20 years.

These young folk believe in America.

Yet far too often (and once is too often) America repays them with unwarranted killings, paltry excuses, and little justice. And like the innocent civilian Sean Bell, 23, shot 50 times last year on the night of has bachelor party, Omar Edwards was betrayed by the status quo of a nation missing the mark.

Philadelphia's 2008 Brave New Voices Team Takes on Sean Bell's Killing



Since we know each other so deeply, family, I'll go ahead and tell you I was a little pissed off this week. I’ll admit that I was tempted to break down into the “ugly cry” and fall, wailing, over what I perceived to be the very casket of justice. Took me a minute to pull myself together.

This week brought forth some difficult questions for many of us. And yet I believe in America, as so many of us do.

I grappled with my disappointment in our many glaring failures this week, but in doing so, I returned to the words of Declaration of Independence. These truths – that all are created equal – represent the best of this country’s ideals.

America can live out its creed. It must, really. And even when Americans get it wrong – the hallowed documents generally get it right. Because really, this journey toward a more perfect union often isn’t about us as individuals: It’s about a country on a mission.

Yes, the journey to justice remains a strange and tangled mystery. But perhaps the forces conspire with the committed faithful to bring our faithful documents closer to truth.

For many folks, that journey begins in the courts.

This week, America tried to figure out what to do with President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Critics couldn’t decide whether she was a racist white man in a Latina’s body or an anti-white “reverse racist” (a term that says more about her critics than Sotomayor herself).

But let’s face it folks, that one’s sewn up. She’ll be confirmed. The rest is theatre.

Perhaps we should look elsewhere.

Take republican Theodore Bevry Olson, who served as G.W. Bush’s United States Solicitor General and who also served on the board of directors for the ultra-conservative American Spectator Magazine. This is the man who – to be frank – won George W. the presidency in Bush v. Gore.

Anyway, he and former Bush v. Gore rival attorney David Boies have decided to join forces.

And they’re suing to overturn Proposition 8 in California. That’s right. Super-duper uber-conservative Olson’s building a case for equal marriage in Cali, in defiance of many gay rights groups who believe the move may be ill-timed. (Have you seen this man’s trial record, by the way?)





It may be of interest to some folks, though I don’t know how relevant it is, that Boies has certainly encountered Sotomayor in the past. Boies represented New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner during the 1994-94 Major League Baseball strike dispute. It was Sotomayor who issued an injunction which, according to the President, might have saved baseball as we know it.

It's also possible Olson and Sotomayor have crossed paths once or twice. In fact, she was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H. W. Bush, not George W., with whom Olson formed such a close professional bond.

But it's kind of cosmic when you think about it.

If, say, this unlikely duo were to find themselves appealing their case to the U.S. Supreme Court in the near future, it would be like one big ol' reunion.

Sotomayor, Boies, and Olson all together again.

Not because this could impact the case – it wouldn’t of course. And not because there is any grand plan in the works…

There I go getting off track. I can get a little dreamy, wishful, and hopeful sometimes, and I don’t see what this has to do with anything.

I appreciate y’all checking out the roundup. Let me just wrap this up. . .

Where was I?

The path to justice and a more perfect union in America remains a strange and tangled mystery.

But I still believe in America, folks. I still believe our country has the capacity to astound us with the sheer force and alchemic power of each progressive leap.

History teaches me that miracle moments happen in this country – moments that couldn’t have been imagined just a decade, a year, a day before.

And I relish those moments.

Because even when so many Americans get it wrong, America can still get it right.

And too, I get these hunches.

Do it again, America. I Believe.

*Photo Credits: Matthew Cavanaugh/EPA