In Search of Our Beloved Community

Middle school kids have loads of loud energy and my normal school life is a loud affair.  Often, the end of the day school day finds me in search of some stillness and quiet.  But the pandemic has rather reversed that calculation and so music provides company as I work.  I listen to many types of music but reserve a soft spot for the songs and artists who feed my soul.  U2 is on that list.

There is a U2 song, “One,” that I have always loved.  It’s a sad song, about a break-up, I suspect, but there is a line that recurs in the chorus about love and humanity that doesn’t feel broken or lost or hurt.  To me, it feels like a mantra of hope: “we get to carry each other.”

Not “have to.”  

Not “must.”  

Not “should.”  

But “get to.”  I’ve thought of that line so much over the years but especially this year, when the pandemic has meant that so much feels uncertain and different; even at times careening out of control.  When I’ve felt powerless in the face of it all, I’ve reminded myself to find the strength to carry someone else.

Martin Luther King Day is always a chance to remind myself of what matters, what’s truly important, and how we must all do our part for justice in the beloved community.  I think Dr. King believed that we must carry each other; and that we get to do so it is an honor as much as it is a duty. 

Only Love

I find the current Trump-empowered political nightmare frustrating beyond measure and I’m long past responding to Trump’s daily stupidity by thinking that this time he’s truly crossed the line.  He has crossed the line; he does so on a daily basis.  But I have no idea where that boundary is for Mitch McConnell and the Republican party.  And until we get there, we must survive the daily horror that is Donald Trump.

Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of Barack Obama’s first inauguration and as I looked at pictures from that day and remembered my own memory of that splendid moment for our nation, I felt a wave of despair.  It feels so far away.  And here I am in 2019 groping in the darkness for a step in the right direction.

Today, Martin Luther King Jr. can once more lead the way for us.  I am frustrated; I am angry; I am mad.  But those emotions will not help our nation to move forward.  As Reverend King reminds us, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” 

Only Light.

Only Love.

Holding firm to Light and Love and the powerful hope that the arc will once again bend toward justice.

Dr. King's Leadership

Like many Americans (dare I hope a majority of us?), Donald Trump's “shithole countries” comment was yet another reminder that our president is a nasty, racist, brute .  I work in a diverse school, with many children whose parents are first generation Americans.  They come to our corner of New Jersey from all over the world: Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Haiti, and more.  Since Donald Trump rose to the national stage, it’s been a daily struggle to ensure that his hateful rhetoric not tinge the world of my students at our school.  

In January, we always take the time to mark Martin Luther King’s life and accomplishments.  Last Friday, it seemed especially important to say something about Dr. King that would also serve as a counterpoint to Mr. Trump’s thoughtless leadership.  This is my announcement:

Like so many of his fellow Americans…like nearly all of us…Martin Luther King’s ancestors were immigrants to this nation.  Reverend King knew that the power and greatness of the United States lay in our diversity.  He believed that tolerance must be our destiny, the only way forward for both our country and the world.  He once said, “We must live together as brothers, or we are going to perish together as fools.”

These are wise words always, but especially now, as we prepare to celebrate Dr. King’s life, his legacy, and his dream that we fulfill the promise that, “all men are created equal.” 

On Good Trouble

To celebrate the life, leadership, and accomplishments of Reverend Martin Luther King in the same week that we will inaugurate a man singularly unqualified to lead our nation and who did not win the popular vote is one sort of irony.  That Mr. Trump has chosen this week to strike up a conflict with Representative John Lewis, a member of Congress and a Civil Rights leader who worked with Reverend King and has the scars to prove it, completes this circle of irony.

Representative Lewis, now 77 years old, remains active in defense of equality, liberty, and justice.  It is the struggle that has shaped his life.  When he speaks of his work in the civil rights movement, he contextualizes it by calling it “good trouble.”  In celebration of the accomplishments of Martin Luther King and his movement, in support of Representative John Lewis, and in resistance to Mr. Trump, let’s remember not to duck from “good trouble” when it comes our way.  Now is the time to do the right thing.

Martin Luther King Day 2016

The other day, I was looking at the the central calendar in my home, checking on the wrestling schedule.  Looking at February, I remembered the time when we had Lincoln and Washington’s birthdays as separate holidays.  In 1983, Martin Luther King Junior’s birthday replaced the separate presidential birthdays on the list of federal holidays and we swapped two 3-day weekends in February for one to celebrate MLK in January and another to mark Lincoln and Washington in February.  I remember the controversy and complaining that followed.  You can learn some of those details here. 

Looking back, the progression of states agreeing to eventually honor the federal holiday seems rather churlish.  There was Arizona, where the state’s governors when back and forth about honoring the holiday.  Or take Arkansas, which honored the holiday by permitting state employees to take either a January three-day week and Martin Luther King day or Robert E. Lee’s birthday instead.  That’s the sort of decision that would be bitterly funny if it weren’t for our nation’s horrifying history of slavery and racial animosity.

In 2009, the year Barack Obama took office as our nation’s first African American president, a friend and I took our sons to a church service for Martin Luther King Day.  The next day, I kept JT home from school to watch Barack Obama take the oath of office.  That momentous day seemed so important —— a real step forward in the struggle for racial equality in a nation that has sometimes gone kicking and screaming toward the promise of liberty and equality laid out in our founding documents.

Fast forward to 2016, and it seems to me that the promise I felt in 2009 has stalled.  Yes, we have an African-American president in the White House and yes, he has taken the time to speak articulately about race.  But enduring inequality is all around us in 2016.  The racism evident in some critics of President Obama is disappointing in a nation that should be better than this.  It’s a victory of sorts that we are more aware than ever before of the racial and economic inequalities that persist in our nation.  For this, I expect Martin Luther King would be glad.  But in so many other ways, we’ve yet to live up to the dream.   There is hard work ahead and we must all do our part.  Today is a good day to acknowledge that reality.