From my time in the East as a young man going to school and then growing up and starting a family, I learned to anticipate thecoming of spring. Its vitality revives and awakens us, and each day grows longer than the day before, providing time to reflect and to contemplate. In this season of discovery, we find new meaning, new purpose, new resolve to do the best we can, to be the best we can for ourselves and for each other.
The horizon of new beginning and fresh opportunity is especially poignant now as we leave behind the gauntlet of the protracted Presidential Election. It was, for many, a season of discontent, distrust, and disappointment, a season chilled by feelings of disenfranchisement, filled with mind-numbing clatter of counts and recounts, sliced with discounted, miscounted and never-to-be-counted ballots.
We must care
for these wounds to our body politic. Otherwise, our scar tissue will become
dull and numb to our nation's needs and goals. We must not let that happen.
We must properly mend the suffering so that we do not become uncaring - that
is not who we are, that is not who we want to be.
I am, as you know, a product of the inner city - what social historians call
a "product of the sixties." It was a formative time, an era of horrible
images flickered by television into our house, terrible pictures of police
dogs loosed on children, of fire hoses turned on neighbors, of churches fire-bombed
for the shelter and sanctuary they provided those brave freedom fighters who
stood against inequality, injustice, and inhumanity.
It was during that turbulent time, 36 years ago this spring, that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. marched from Selma to Montgomery for the right of African Americans - for the right of all Americans - to vote, to decide who will make our laws, who will enforce our laws, and - ultimately - who will interpret our laws.
In that exercise of citizenship, in that blessed privilege that others covet and which we all too often take for granted, Dr. King saw the good that the vote can do, and the power it can wield.
His words resonate from 1957, at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, D.C. "Give us the ballot," he intoned, "and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law; we will by the power of our vote write the law on the statute books of the South and bring an end to the dastardly acts of the hooded perpetrators of violence.
"Give us the ballot," he said that day, "and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.
"Give us the ballot, and we will fill our legislative halls with men of goodwill and send to the sacred halls of Congress men who will not sign a 'Southern Manifesto' because of their devotion to the manifesto of justice.
"Give
us the ballot," Dr. King said, "and we will place judges on the
benches of the south who will do justly and love mercy, and we will place
at the head of the southern states governors who have felt not only the tang
of the human, but the glow of the Divine"
You see, when we vote, we do more than exercise our franchise. When we vote,
we are more than good citizens. When we vote, we do more than choose a President
or a mayor, a city council or a school board.
When we vote, we stand up, we step forward, and we proclaim, "This is what we believe; this is who we are; this is what we want."
When we vote, we push aside those things that divide us and coalesce behind the great issues that unite us.
When we vote, we decide the causes and priorities we shall advance as a community and as a society.
I know that some who cast their first vote in this past election came away asking, "What's the point?" And, even some of those who'd voted many times before came away wondering why all the fuss, why this election had to be decided by lawyers and judges behind closed doors - and not in the sweet open air of our free society.
But, in our democracy,
my friends, voting does not guarantee results. Democracy is imperfect. We
need to be mindful of that. We need to be mindful of the errors committed
in our exercise of democracy - and we need to remember the good things, too.
Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us that democracy is a work in progress,
a great experiment, a process under refinement and revision. Sometimes we
stumble, and sometimes others stumble, and sometimes we all fall short of
our expectations. The greatest risk to our democracy, however, is not our
mistakes or mischievousness. The greatest risk to our form of government is
the lack of participation in it, when those who have the right to vote elect
to sit out the election.
I worry when I hear some one who is old enough to vote wonder why they should. I'm bothered when I hear some one with the right to vote say they don't have enough information. I grow anxious when I hear someone who is eligible to vote say they are too tired, or what difference will my vote make?
After Rosa Parks was jailed for not giving up her seat on a bus, Dr. King reminded us that her simple gesture in the sweltering dusk of the day, her courage in the face of blistering hate, serves as an example to us all.
"We are determined to apply our citizenship to the fullness of its meaning," Dr. King told the First Montgomery Improvement Association in that city where she'd been arrested a few days before. "We are here also because of our love for democracy, because of our deep-seated belief that democracy transformed from thin paper to thick action is the greatest form of government on earth."
I still hear his clarion call. Our democracy cannot prevail if we despair and retreat to find shelter from the first signs of disappointment or difficulty. Democracy is not easy, but it is the best form of government I know. Our strength, integrity and values as people, and our triumphs, resilience and legacy as citizens, are only fully realized when tested.
