A Vision, but Not Yet a Pathway

Proverbs says that without a vision, the people will perish. America is not so much in search of a vision as it is a pathway to the one it has always known.

We got the vision. A land where all are created equal. Where all are judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.

This has always been our vision. It's just that we have always met impediments to the full achievement of that vision.

Colonialism

White privilege

White supremacy

Slavery

Jim Crow

The new Jim Crow

Homophobia

transphobia

Xenophobia

Patriarchy

Sexism

Racism

Throughout our history we have kept the dream before us and have struggled to climb to the top of the mountain that Martin dreamed of crossing over into the promised land.

Abolition sought this vision. It moved us forwardbut it didn't get us all the way there.

The civil war sought this vision. It moved us forward, but it fell short. Lincoln himself raised our most important question as a the nation in the midst of that war on the bloodied fields of Gettsburg: can a nation so conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal, long stand. Can it?

Reconstruction sought this vision. It moved us forward, but it didn't get us all the way there.

The struggle for the vote, for both blacks and women, sought this vision. They moved us forward, .but it didn't get us all the way there.

The creation of labor unions sought this vision. It moved us forwardbut it didn't get us all the way there.

The civil rights movement, the voting rights act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Rights Act of 1967 all sought this vision. They moved us forwardbut it didn't get us all the way there.

The courts overturning SB1070 here in Arizona and gutting this presidents so called Muslim ban moved us forward, but it didn't get us all the way there.

The marriage equality Supreme Court decision overturning one man one woman legislation sought this vision. It moved us forward, but it didn't get us all the way there.

The deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray and Rumain Brisbon and Trayvon Martin birthed the Black Lives Matter movement that also sought this vision. It has moved us forward, but Charlottesville and Heather Heyer remind us that we are not all the way there.

There are obstacles standing in the way of our fulfillment of the dream.

The ongoing evil systemic white power and the white communitys seemingly intractable addiction to its white privilege.

That's an obstacle.

A president who speaks audaciously and openly about sexually harassing and assaulting women without recrimination, who lowers the rhetorical bar by calling Mexicans rapists, murderers and drug dealers and Muslims terrorists, who makes fun of the disabled, and who bragged he could shoot someone on 5th avenue without losing the support of his followers.

That's an obstacle.

An immigration policy that makes scapegoats of the poorest among us and invites an entire nation to fear the foreigner and the alien among us, the very ones our God throughout our sacred texts has asked us to greet with love and compassion.

That's an obstacle

But we have met these obstacles before. We have consistently overcome them, because the arc of history always bends toward justice.

We have met and overcome them before because of the heroism of a Sojourner Truth and a Harriett Tubman, a Lucretia Mott and a Susan B. Anthony, a Cesar Chavez and Rosa Parks, a Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, a Barbara Boxer and an Elizabeth Warren ; nasty women who persisted and bad hombres who looked evil in the eye and didn't flinch.

And always when it looked like this nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal; this nation that extends its golden lamp to the poor, the tempest-tossed, the huddled masses yearning to breath free; this nation that promised to all life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness always, when it looked again as if to would not stand, the vision of what it could be inspired sheroes and heroes to muster the courage and conviction necessary to not let the vision die.

And so it was in the week after Charlottesville, the week after our own president could not find the dignity to disown and condemn the nazis and white nationalists who killed Heather Heyer, a freedom fighter in the ranks of a Medgar Evers, in the week after violence and vitriol spewed forth in all its ugliness, Boston happened.

Boston, where on Friday night 1,500 people crammed into Temple Israel and worshiped while another 4,500 who could not get in watched on live feed, Jew and Muslim and Christian and Buddhist and atheist; where the Governor of Massachusetts cited the Beatitudes, saying blessed are the peacemakers; where the states attorney general called nazis not only lawless but godless and said that no one should be president whose refuses to condemn nazi violence.

Boston, where on Saturday 40,000 marched in the streets chanting justice for blacks, justice for latinas, justice for the disabled, justice for the gay and the lesbian, justice for women, justice for trans and bi, justice for the Jew and the Muslim, justice for the Native American, justice for all.

Boston, where the people stood Boston strong and climbed to the rooftops and hung from windows and lined the sidewalks and stood on their porches and sang with us as we marched, patting us on the backs and weeping because the vision was coming alive.

Boston, where the nazis uttered but a whimper and were carried off in shame as a nation rose up and said, not this, not here, not you, not today.

And today, today Phoenix rises up from the ashes of Americas racist and shameful past to display the rising hopes of a new day. A day where no sheriff will escape the same arm of a law he violated by enforcing his own brand of racial profiling, and no president of this great land will travel great distances to pardon him. A day when no immigrant or refugee will cross these borders to be met with fear and disdain. A day when gay, lesbian, bi, trans, and questioning find the land free, the Bathroom safe, and the law without discrimination. A day when our black and brown skin siblings will live in the house of their choosing, earn the money their labor and their education afford them the full right to make, and escape arrest, conviction and incarceration in the same manner our justice system has worked for their white counterparts. A day when any candidate for the highest office in this land who makes fun of a person in a wheel chair or brags about grabbing a womans pussy is exiled before elected. A day when all are finally created equal and can claim their god given, inalienable rights of life, of liberty, and of the pursuit of a happiness of their choosing.

You want that day?

Yes, I know you do.

Then on we march.

Then on we fight.

Then on we hope.

Then on we vote.

Then on we organize.

Then on we dream.

We have a dream. We have a vision. We simply will not stop, and will not be stopped, until it is fully realized.

Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us continue to run with perseverance this race set before us. Grateful for their words, their courage, their conviction, and yes, at times their blood we stand today as an ongoing testament to their vision and we serve as today's best hope for finally fulfilling this nations bold dream.