Here we are in October again, just a few short weeks from Election Day.
I wake up to the increasing darkness of October’s mornings with a start. Each month, I decide what ideas, thoughts or challenges I’ll offer for people to consider with head, heart and spirit unifying for a call to action. Clearly there is no shortage of topics and issues. The great challenge is to select one that is both timely and transcendent.
With that criteria in mind, I can see there is nothing more important to say right now than to implore each and every one of you to show up, to engage, to stay in the game of this strange democracy by rallying every bit of energy you can to vote…and to encourage every one you know to vote, too.
I call upon our self-proclaimed Progressives, still comfortable being “liberal,” who stalwartly make the clarion call for all things being equal: rights for women, gays, im/migrants and for all things being civil: End the Wars, Be the Peace, Bring the Troops Home.
I call upon us fierce Independents who demand fiscal responsibility, accountable government and a pause on the party politicking that reveals our politicians’ shortage of integrity while getting the rest of us no where at all.
I especially call upon us Revolutionaries that see through the gaping cracks in the very foundations of this system. We feel reluctant to continue to build our hopes for real change—to rest our dreams for survival, security and self-determination—upon a structure that has been flawed since inception. We see our unwanted, cast aside, cast out brothers and sisters peering through from the other side of borders, reservations, jail cells, and deeply-drawn lines of poverty. Yes, we must remain determined to reclaim all our people and reconstitute a system reluctant to release old habits of thriving upon the least-resourced of us all. But to do that, we must stay in the game.
I even call upon the conscious-minded, conservative-valued folks who know deeply that sometimes we must vote on principal for honest, open leadership even if that does not serve one’s short-term political desires.
Combined, we are all Americans: We lament the loss of life, detest destroying families, question borders, want freedom for Gaza, troops out of Afghanistan, safety for our children, help for Main Street not Wall Street, green jobs, clean energy, an honest living, a balanced budget, and social security, equity and sustainability for all.
To achieve any of this, we must rally. We must go forward, not backward.
We must stay in the game.
In the last two years, we did not get all we wanted. We got some flawed policy and, yes, maybe even a flawed president. But we got an honorable man. A decent human being. A caring father. A concerned citizen. A thoughtful listener. A critical thinker. A compassionate leader that must navigate the concerns of the most diverse electorate in the world.
In short, we got US. Not just you or me. A black or white. A Christian or Muslim. A working class or elite. We have in our President all of that and thus none of it. We got a true American in the complex fabric that is and is still becoming the America of our dreams. So the seeking of simple outcomes to our complex problems makes us naive. Turning our backs or sitting on the disgruntled sidelines makes us irresponsible.
The complexity of our desires are matched only by the boundlessness of our Vision for an America that can embrace us all. The depths of our disappointment can only be measured against the grand heights of our Hope. The revelation of flaws is a testament to our Faith.
But we have Vision and we have Hope and we have Faith.
More than anything we didn’t get in these scant two years, Vision, Hope and Faith restored. Possibility, imagination and creativity are poised to replace limitation, fear and contraction. And these, more than any policy, bill or president, will help us re-imagine an America for all Americans.
But we must stay in the game.
—your in truth,aKw
P.S., In case we have lost perspective, here’s a reminder of The 244 Accomplishments of President Obama.
and if, as a frustrated change agent, you ask yourself why you bother, Ian Rhett of Civic Actions reminds you to Stay in the Game here.
If you haven’t figured out that indeed you are and must be an American Revolutionary no matter how much the system wants to count you out, start to “assert (your) solutions as the living embodiment of (your) nationality along with Adrienne Maree Brown.
special shout out to Ian Rhett, adrienne maree brown, Jodie Tonita, Gibran Rivera and the whole 2010 Web of Change crew (Canadians included!) that keep me compelled to stay in the game. –aKw
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copyright ©MMXI. angel Kyodo williams
changeangel: all things change. (sm)
angel Kyodo williams is a maverick teacher, author, social visionary and founder of Transformative Change.
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