Solidarity, A dividend forty years in the making, working to kill one thing

grantcart

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Fri Jun-06-08 05:19 PM
Original message

Solidarity, A dividend forty years in the making, working to kill one thing

Edited on Fri Jun-06-08 05:43 PM by grantcart

In this thread fadedrose expressed how emotional she felt and how happy she was for what the African Americans at DU must be feeling at this historical moment. It was a brief OP but it was packed in emotion.

Its hard to read this single sentence and not realize that the post was expressing a deep existential truth. You know there must be a painful story that goes with this single sentence.

"I gave up religion a long time ago, and so I ask that those of you who still believe pray for his safety, and pray hard."

You can read her whole statement here and feel the raw emotion in her few sentences:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6283307

In the thread somebody reacted to the superficiality of whites congratulating blacks because of Obama's nomination, which it could have been but in this case it wasn't.

I knew what the OP was experiencing.

Its the other part of the story.

The headlines should go be about Obama.

The analysis should be about the Democratic Party.

The Human Interest sidebar should be about African Americans young and old who see something different in this country because of how this country sees Senator Obama.

But there should be a small footnote on page 78 way way in the back about how it effects those who have dedicated themselves to solidarity and the joy that they feel and so I wrote the following reply and several people requested that it be posted separately.

Here it is with small changes:

I did get it so let me explain it to you real clearly

The post is about solidarity

Its about people who have seen other people treated badly and for a long time they have been expressing solidarity. In big ways and in small ways reaching out. But in all of those decades since April 1968 realizing that while many things have gotten better that there was a missing piece.

And some of those people who expressed solidarity they sacrificed something of themselves. This is the other side you don't know about. Some of those people have great grandfathers who came back from a war with a leg missing. Some of them have have fathers who got into shouting matches with somebody at a party because of a racist joke. Some of them got into fights because they were called n***** lovers.

Some of them lost part of their families. You can read there are people on this thread that grew up in racist families and had to walk away. Nobody complained and there weren't any movies about it and the reason was that we studied all the way back to Mr. Dredd Scott and realized the evil of a system that one day would take a person and rob him of being a person and make him into a thing, a piece of property, change a person into a thing all because of a piece of paper.

And all of those whites who expressed solidarity and lost parts of their family or just bore the pain of knowing that others have been threatened and still are facing petty humiliation, all of those shared one secret hope, they knew a piece was missing.

That hope -- do you know what that secret hope is that no one will talk about?

That before we die that we kill this one thing. That of all the fucked up things about this world we will all feel like our lives weren't a complete waste if we can simply take this one evil away. And so yes that is part of the story of Senator Obama. It is a sign that we have come to that point where all of those decades of solidarity is going to mean something and that all of these young people who look up and want this man to be President they don't have the virus that has haunted this country for 300 years.

We did it.

One by one we taught our children and they taught their friends and that sickness which had been alive has been contained and is just about dead.

Now that is not a reason why he should be the candidate or the president but it is proof that something that was very bad is no longer active - it is in retreat and it is hiding. It still exists in small pockets and we know those places but they are growing smaller and eight years from now they will be microscopic.

So together all the people who expressed solidarity for 40 or 50 or 60 years can say well we may have fucked a lot of stuff up, but we got this one thing right. We did it - together - in solidarity.