http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/05/8101/Grace Boggs has been an activist for more than 60 years and is the author of the autobiography Living for Change. She will celebrate her 93rd birthday in June.
Living for Change: Obama and MLK
by Grace Lee Boggs
The new energies being unleashed by Barack Obama hold great promise. In his person and prose Obama embodies the achievements of the movements of the 20th century and the hope that we can become the change we want to see in the 21st century.
To build the movement for change will not be easy. The challenges we face demand profound changes not only in our institutions but in ourselves. To become part of the solution, we must recognize that we are a large part of the problem.
That means we can’t leave it all to Obama. Instead of being followers of a charismatic leader, we must be the leaders we’ve been looking for. This is the best way to make Obama less vulnerable to corporate funders and lobbyists. It is also the best way to protect him from the assassins who gunned down so many charismatic leaders in the 1960s.
We don’t have to start from scratch. As we commemorate the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination this year, we can look to the vision that he was creating at the height of his awareness before he was taken from us. In the last three years of his life Dr. King recognized that “the war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit. We are on the wrong side of a world revolution because we refuse to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.”
“We have come to value things more than people. Our technological development has outrun our spiritual development. We have lost our sense of community, of interconnection and participation.”
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Obama can become a great President only if we become a great people. We must grow together.
Grace Boggs has been an activist for more than 60 years and is the author of the autobiography Living for Change. She will celebrate her 93rd birthday in June. This article first appeared in the Michigan Citizen, Jan. 20-26, 2008, and was reproduced by YES! Magazine with the kind permission of the author. Also see her commentary piece, The Fierce Urgency of Now, part of Stop Global Warming Cold, the Spring 2008 issue of YES!
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