Sara Haile-Mariam

“You’d think that Coburn’s got some ’splainin’ to do, but as Washington etiquette has it, we spent the week learning every last footnote about Sotomayor while acres of press coverage shed scant light on the shoddy records of those judging her. The public got the point anyway about this dying order and its tired racial and culture wars. With Sotomayor’s fate never in doubt, it changed the channel.”

Great Op-Ed by Frank Rich. Read the rest here.

“Friend –

This weekend, our family will join millions of others in celebrating America. We will enjoy the glow of fireworks, the taste of barbeque, and the company of good friends. As we all celebrate this weekend, let’s also remember the remarkable story that led to this day.

Two hundred and thirty-three years ago, our nation was born when a courageous group of patriots pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the proposition that all of us were created equal.

Our country began as a unique experiment in liberty — a bold, evolving quest to achieve a more perfect union. And in every generation, another courageous group of patriots has taken us one step closer to fully realizing the dream our founders enshrined on that great day.

Today, all Americans have a hard-fought birthright to a freedom which enables each of us, no matter our views or background, to help set our nation’s course. America’s greatness has always depended on her citizens embracing that freedom — and fulfilling the duty that comes with it.

As free people, we must each take the challenges and opportunities that face this nation as our own. As long as some Americans still must struggle, none of us can be fully content. And as America comes ever closer to achieving the perfect Union our founders dreamed, that triumph — that pride — belongs to all of us.

So today is a day to reflect on our independence, and the sacrifice of our troops standing in harm’s way to preserve and protect it. It is a day to celebrate all that America is. And today is a time to aspire toward all we can still become.

With very best wishes,

President Barack Obama

July 4th, 2009

P.S. — Our nation’s birthday is also an ideal time to consider serving in your local community. You can find many great ideas for service opportunities near you at http://www.serve.gov.”

Happy Independence Day.

Latest piece on Huffpost

“The assumption that our abilities are determined by our make up, and our futures limited by conventional wisdom, has been denied traction by people like Michael Jackson. We are indebted to those who have confronted these limitations and destroyed them, who acknowledged societal expectations and exceeded them.”

Read the rest here.

Also posted on VampedNY.com

Just responded to the Daily Beast piece by Benjamin Sarlin in my latest Global Grind Piece.

“Jackson was the King of Pop, and while his life was comprised of trials and turmoil, his legacy is in his music, and it is there where we saw an awareness that went beyond his celebrity and instead focused on people, on the condition of humanity. While we grieve and reflect on his life, we must remember that we continue. With each day that passes, we might insist that the best way to pay tribute to our fallen icon is by living out his declaration that it us who must heal the world.”

Read the rest here.

Watching this video from the BBC, the sentiment “nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change” comes to mind.

Indeed, hurrah.
(h/t Andrew Sullivan)

My latest piece on Huffpost.

Translation: "Trust us! We had counted the votes a few days before the election."

Jamal Simmons has a piece on Politico on an important historic figure who preceded Dr. King, Philip Randolph.

“Certainly, there is not one individual or singular action that led to Obama’s election. Instead, it was the cumulative effect of generations of Americans, black and white, to erase the barriers to the American dream for every citizen. We rightly recognize Martin Luther King Jr. and his contemporaries for the work they did in the 1950s and 60s, but we should not let the light from those stars blind us to the contributions of those like A. Philip Randolph who came before them.”

I agree with his analysis. We often refer to history in rather sweeping brush strokes and as a result glaze over the important contributions that helped pave the way for the often mentioned iconic and transformative moments. Another often overlooked development in the history of the Civil Rights movement is the evolution of nonviolent dissent. Yes, Dr. King was certainly the most vocal and consistent individual who advocated for nonviolent civil disobedience, but the first protests were staged as early as 1940 by the organization CORE (Congress on Racial Equality).

This in no way makes his actions less pertinent, they just put them into context. We would be wise to see social justice as something that is continually evolving while remembering that sometimes the effects of our actions won’t be evident for decades, centuries even, as evidenced by this piece. This is especially true now, as we seek to rectify another grievance; the lack of marriage equality. We can no longer stand for laws that perpetuate the myth that some are less equal than others. Our history shows us that this simple truth isn’t always immediately realized but it also gives us reason to hope, moments of justice that justify resolve in the face of adversity.

Today President Obama made it clear that he has no intention of allowing us as a people to simply exist in isolation from each other, evidenced by a bill signed today that once again echoes an age old request, one that enlists us all to ask what we might do for our country.

President Obama signed The Edward M Kennedy Serve America Act into law today. This Bill expands the opportunities to serve already afforded by AmeriCorps while going further to make new investments in the nonprofit sector so as to identify innovative ways to engage the American people in going about the work that is needed, to change our country for the better. The Press Release announcing the bill is posted in full after the jump.

During his speech announcing the bill, President Obama shared a story often recited by Senator Kennedy.

An old man walking along the beach at dawn sees a young man picking up the star fish and throwing them out to sea. “Why are you doing that?” The old man inquired. The young man explained that the starfish had been stranded on the beech by a receding tide. And would soon die in the daytime sun. “But the beach goes on for miles,” the old man said. “And there’s so many! How can your effort make any difference?” The young man looked at the starfish in his hand and without hesitating threw it to safety in the sea. He looked up at the old man, smiled and said, “It will make a difference to that one.”

You don’t need to do a lot, to do something.
Continue reading

Thomas Friedman has a great Op-Ed out today on how the President could use his powers of inspiration to address the financial crisis.

This line from Dov Sidman’s book “How” provides insight on how the President might use rhetoric to help navigate us out of the crisis.

“Laws tell you what you can do. Values inspire in you what you should do. It’s a leader’s job to inspire in us those values.”

I couldn’t agree more with Friedman’s assessment, there’s an absence of values in our financial sector that culminate to create an agenda based on getting rich quick, gambling big regardless of how those bets might impact the collective, and the inability to accept responsibility.

Now to be clear, a blame game is not what we need. There are a variety of factors that led to this mess, and trying to dissect the crisis to identify the main culprits shouldn’t be a priority right now. What we do need to be doing is understanding the crisis so as to prevent a sequel.

Now where does the President fit into all of this? President Obama has been using his soap box as of late to lavish his praises on Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Inspiring confidence in the architect of the solution is certainly important, however it fails to address the concerns associated with his proposal. An increase of transparency is necessary and the full roll out of the banking plan this week will hopefully include more details. Still, transparency alone will not make this a teachable moment. What needs to be addressed is how we go about changing the general approach of how business is done in Washington and on Wall Street. We already know that greed and irresponsibility lead to current crisis, now what will get us out?

That hasn’t been articulated as clearly- I’d like to see the President outline why investors and bankers should remain cognoscente of how their actions impact society as a whole- it seems like an obvious answer but perhaps this is a moment that requires stating and repeating the obvious until it sticks. The President has indicated that additional regulations will be put in place to prevent irresponsible wheeling and dealing from reoccurring, that’s great, but unless the attitude that inspired those transactions is confronted than surely the overly ambitious would find a way to get around those regulations.

In addition to new laws we need an ethical framework that helps us navigate those laws that goes back to a national sentiment that Barack Obama reminded us of when he first entered the national scene “E Pluribus Unum”

Out of many. One.

“What has happened between 2001 and 2009 to so radically change the cultural climate? Here, at last, is one piece of good news in our global economic meltdown: Americans have less and less patience for the intrusive and divisive moral scolds who thrived in the bubbles of the Clinton and Bush years. Culture wars are a luxury the country — the G.O.P. included — can no longer afford.”

Great article by Frank Rich on the diminishing role of “culture wars” as well as the diminished status of those who used to wage them. I think that this new development is one that the GOP should take heed of- especially since they’ve already signaled that they plan on building a new platform that essentially focuses on opposing gay marriage and abortion.

Rich concludes with this optimistic prediction:

History is cyclical, and it would be foolhardy to assume that the culture wars will never return. But after the humiliations of the Scopes trial and the repeal of Prohibition, it did take a good four decades for the religious right to begin its comeback in the 1970s. In our tough times, when any happy news can be counted as a miracle, a 40-year exodus for these ayatollahs can pass for an answer to America’s prayers.

As wonderful as this assertion sounds I don’t buy it- especially with gay marriage on deck as an issue that the President will eventually have to deal with. When the time comes to really begin that national dialog, our regional and religious differences will inevitably reignite. The question remains how prevalent a role will they have in determining national policy? Will it be a matter of a few loud voices sparring loud enough to encourage mass dissent or approval? Or, will the President or someone speak reason to passion and really create a climate where we might “disagree without being disagreeable”. Only time will tell but I have no doubt that we’re headed into a period of progress, inevitably, this will result in an increased awareness of our cultural, as well as generational, differences.