Happy new year y’all.

For far too long, the social change sector has been in stop-horrible-things-from-happening mode.  This has been the mandate of our collective context and, wow,  it has been exhausting.

While all horrible happenings will not stop overnight (or ever), the shift in our nation’s leadership does allow us to begin advocating for something greater than fundamental human decency and common sense.   What a relief!

Time to step back, look to the horizon, and start pushing an agenda of truly transformational change.  It’s not up to Obama to do this.  He won’t.  He can’t.   He doesn’t even want to.

So let’s celebrate this moment, this transition,  this opening.

And, then, let’s remember what we, too, are here to do.

Each year, on this day, I have a ritual of remembering that I’d like to share with y’all.

Before the feasting and celebrating begins, I chose to acknowledge the indigenous peoples of this land — to remember and honor the brutal history that so many Americans chose to forget, and to bring witness and understanding to the very present and constant struggle for sovereignty. I spend some time studying and I spend some time offering prayer.

While there is some dispute about the origins of the “First Thanksgiving,” Americans commonly understand that sometime back in 1621 the Wampanoag Indians offered food to the poor, starving colonists. “This harvest meal has become a symbol of cooperation and interaction between English colonists and Native Americans,” as History.com would have it (a familiar tale).

The subsequent genocide of the Wampanoag and every other Native American tribe across our lands always gets left out of this happy little tale. This willingness to forget is something I’ve never understood about my culture.

In the United States, the ongoing struggle of the Native American people is not a part of our common cultural narrative, even among progressives. Can we put a stop to this trend? This is not about beating our chests in guilt-striken despair, but simply having the courage to look our cultural heritage square in the face.

Our celebrations of abundance have come at a horrible price. We need to integrate this reality into the fabric of our lives — our shared memories, our national policies, our calls to action, our prayers.

Wikipedia is no defacto authority on anything, but it’s got some great info and background on Native Americans in the United States. And, the “current status” portion of this article is quite illuminating.

Also, check out an older classic: Thanksgiving: A Native American View.

A quick and very worthy read.

As a feminist, I find Sarah Palin’s nomination to the Republican presidential ticket manipulative and offensive.

It’s yet another example of women taking charge by becoming good ol’ boys, playing with guns, talking tough, and looking pretty all the while. Her policies hurt women, hurt the environment, and send her own children off to fight stupid wars. Let us not be fooled. This choice is not about women’s progress or women’s rights. Sarah Palin drives a dominating, patriarchal agenda, which makes some men in her own party look like bra-burning liberals.

We can do so much better than this.

I’m seeing one canned line after the next, with calculated pauses and perfectly framed messages.

It feels flat and manipulative and, worst of all, absolutely necessary.

Our political process has made authenticity impossible. In our pollster driven media culture, there’s no room for anything real. There’s no room for humanity, or complexity, or nuance, or dialogue, or possibilities as opposed to promises.

So this is what it comes down to. One big grandstanding attempt to manipulate the American vote.

It’s top down democracy, and we need another way.

Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed–
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek–
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean–
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today–O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home–
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay–
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again–
The land that never has been yet–
And yet must be–the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME–
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose–
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain–
All, all the stretch of these great green states–
And make America again!

From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes,
published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright ©
1994 the Estate of Langston Hughes.

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BSE_saVX_2A]