Maya Angelou said this during Bill Clinton’s inauguration:
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes, into
Your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.
It’s appropriate today as well. We as a nation have had something really amazing happen, but as Obama himself said last night, this is not a goal. It’s a starting point. It proves the sayings right, but it doesn’t change anything yet. There’s hard work to be done. The bigotry and hatred of Proposition 8 in my home state has to be overturned. It cannot stand, if we are to pretend we live in a just world. The churches that actively campaigned for that initiative must be held accountable, and their tax-exempt status has to be examined. If you wish to be politically active, you cannot be tax-exempt. That is the deal. We MUST campaign harder in the areas that went 70%+ for Yes on 8. And we MUST get the message out to areas long taken for granted.
Barack Obama, the 44th President, is an astounding thing to say. But it’s not the end of the road, but the beginning of a long, broken, pot-hole marred road. Hopefully at the end of it we find the “more perfect union”…and beyond that a new road.
