We Are The Ones

Monday, at the DNC Black Caucus Young Leaders Summit, actress Kerry Washington introduced a panel that included young politicians, entertainers, and pastors who talked about what inspired them to become leaders in their community.

One young man invests in socially responsible industries. Will.i.am, a rapper, was there as an activist who helped prime the American youth to vote with his YouTube video Yes I Can.

Also included was a pastor who started his church in a strip club.

Yep, you read right.

But more surprising than he was Rep. Bakari Sellers, 23, who closed the discussion with a speech. I would write about how dynamic and enthusiastic he was to serve his community, but his words say it better than I do…

Speech by South Carolina Rep. Bakari Sellers, as prepared for delivery on August 25, 2008, at the Democratic National  Convention:

Finally, I have to thank my family, my mother and my father, without whom I’d be nothing at all.
You see, my father was born to a South Carolina and an America very different from the one we know today.
He was born to an America of separation and degradation; an America that said a black man was worth little more than a mule, and a woman was worth even less; an America where the streets bore the scars of segregation and sometimes the trees bore strange fruit.

I can’t imagine how that must have been for him, an eager and intelligent young man told that no matter how hard he worked, no matter how well he learned, or how much he achieved, he could only ever be one thing — a black man. I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been. But no matter how many times he heard that he was wasting his time or that he was just a dreamer, he never believed it.

He never believed that this country is so tied up in what has been that it can’t see what could be.

That’s a special kind of faith because it requires you not just believe in yourself, but believe in the rest of us as well, to believe that we as a people, as a nation, will not let inequality stand, that we will not let injustice prevail, that we will strive to be better than we are, to do better than we have, to have faith in one another and love our neighbors even if they don’t love us.

That’s a special kind of faith.

But men of faith are often challenged with disappointment and despair, and my father was no exception. I’ve heard all the stories about that cool February, 40 years ago, when a young group of students gathered together, much as we have gathered here, for a singular cause and a common good.

I’ve heard how they raised their voices in unison hoping to draw attention to one of the last vestiges of discrimination in little Orangeburg, South Carolina– a small, whites-only bowling alley–Jim Crow’s final hiding place.

So they had their demonstration and, as night fell and cool turned to cold, they built bonfires and sang protest songs to drive away the chill and the darkness. And they were filled with faith without fear because they felt safe there in their numbers, in their communion, because they couldn’t imagine what would happen next.

They couldn’t imagine that the state police who’d positioned themselves along the embankments in front of their beloved campus and down Highway 601 would close ranks like they did.

They didn’t foresee that those shot guns loaded with deadly double-ought buckshot would be turned on them with deadly intent. They couldn’t have guessed that the next eight seconds would push their faith to fracture and change their lives forever.

Only eight seconds to turn the fire’s crackle to the snap and zip of gunfire; the sparkling embers dotting the night air turned to murderous lead ripping into backs and the bottoms of feet as they ran for their lives; the night of hope and change turned to desperation and despair. The faith of freedom songs turned to screams.

Only eight seconds and lives were forever altered and dreams forever deferred–eight seconds– and when the dust and smoke cleared, three young men, Samuel Hammond, Henry Smith and Delano Middleton, were dead. Twenty-seven others were injured, and one man was left to feel the full weight of blame.

My father was only 23 years old, the same age I am now, when he and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee helped organize that protest. And though he’d been organizing marches and sit-ins since he was 15 years old, he couldn’t have guessed that a night that saw so much bloodshed would end with him, still wounded from the massacre, paraded by

the authorities on the steps of the city jail. And today, 40 years later, he remains the only person imprisoned as a result of the night’s violence– convicted of inciting a riot that never happened.

On that night, injustice left mothers without their sons, left my sister born without her father, and left the pages of my state’s history stained red with blood.

Forty years past now. Forty years past since that night in Orangeburg. Forty years since that morning in Memphis. Forty years since that shockwave went out from the Ambasador Hotel.

We have lost so much. But men of faith are often challenged with disappointment and despair.

I can’t imagine how it must have been for him — to see a moment of such promise shattered in eight seconds and know that he was born to an America that allowed it to happen, that washed away the blood and overwrote the history, that has allowed 40 years to pass while the guilty go unpunished.

I can’t imagine how it must have been for him.

And sometimes it’s hard to look at him and not see the horror of that night written in his expression. It’s hard to not see the sadness and the tragedy written in the lines of his face.

…and then he smiles.

And he smiles beca

use despite all the violence and the bloodshed, he never turned to resentment. Even though he could have lashed out with righteous anger against his enemies, his state, and his country, he chose instead to keep believing in what Lincoln called the ‘better angels of our nature.’

He could have given up, but he kept the faith

Forty years have past since Kennedy and King, and he still believes in what we can be as a people, who we are as a nation, and the boundless potential that wells deep inside each and every one of us.

I am here today because of that belief.

I am here today because this is who we can be.

The South Carolina state motto reads “Dum spiro spero” — “While I breathe, I hope.”

I can think of few things more fitting today as we begin this convention to confirm Senator Barack Obama as our nominee for president of the United States of America — a man who four years ago inroduced us to the audacity of hope, who has shown us all the power of hope, and who reminds us time and time again as we heard here today that “in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.”

He keeps the faith.

“Dum spiro spero” — “While I breathe, I hope.”

What can take a man raised without a father–whose mother struggled sometimes to put food on the table– what can take that man and instill within him the desire to put others before himself, to make a difference rather than a fortune, to be a husband, and a father, and a leader, and soon president of the United States?

Hope.

What can take a young man born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, help him overcome a childhood stutter, an untimely family tragedy, and a near fatal brain aneurysm to become a senator, a statesman, and one of the clearest voices for change our country has ever produced?

Hope.

What can take a boy from rural Denmark, South Carolina and let him hold a future his father could only dream of?

Hope!

“Dum spiro spero” — “While i breathe, I hope.”

Hope will lead us to a brighter future. But make no mistake. The path before us is a difficult one. There are those who will say we are too young, too inexperienced, or too idealistic. They’ll tell us it’s too hard.
They’ll tell us you can’t make people care. They’ll tell us that some day, when we’re older, we’ll understand.

But we know better. America knows better.

Frederick Douglass said, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

That “those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning.”

Well, we’ve had the struggle.

We are the 22-year-old computer programmer in San Francisco who got a great job right out of college only to see it evaporate, outsourced to India where labor is plentiful, cheap, and doesn’t ask for health insurance.

We are the student teacher in Marlboro County trying to keep a classroom’s attention while they shiver in their desks because the furnace is broken again and the district is too poor to fix it.

We are the family farmer in Nebraska who knows that he can grow the corn and soybeans that breaks this country from its oil addiction if he only had a little bit of help.

We are the accountant in New Orleans who’s pounding nails now instead of crunching numbers because someone needs to rebuild his city and it might as well be him.

We are the ones.

Right now, somewhere in Charlotte, North Carolina, there is a son who dropped out of school because he couldn’t afford his tuition, and in Greensboro, there is a father who doesn’t know how he’ll pay the bills if the twins get sick again.

Right now there is a religion student in St. Louis who’s afraid to get on a plane with his copy of the Koran, and there’s a Baptist minister in Jacksonville who is tired of the right wing giving his God a bad name.

Right now there’s a young woman in Las Cruces, New Mexico who’s not going to tell the police that she was raped because she’s afraid of deportation.

Right now, there is a young mother in Colorado Springs who just found out that she has to keep raising her two-year-old alone because her husband’s enlistment has been extended again and he has to stay in Iraq until we bring him home.

Don’t tell me it’s too hard.

We have the struggle. Now let us have the progress. We have the challenge. Now let us have the change. We have the thunder and lightning. Now let us have the rain.

Forty years have past and still I hear Sen. Kennedy’s words echoing within my heart: “What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country.”

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and with hope and faith in one another, and we will build this new world together.

Thank you and God bless you all.