Wisdom of our Mothers

Just noticed this  – according to the Major Cities Chief’s Association, violent crime is down 6% this year nationwide – and 41% in Columbus, Ohio (Axios); Just sayin’.

The Party

I have a confession.  I didn’t make it through the second night of the Democratic Convention.   Somewhere between Doug Emhoff and President Obama, I dozed off.  So this essay is “late”; I had to watch both Michelle Obama and the President this morning, first thing.  And, like the Democrats on the floor of the United Center in Chicago Tuesday night, I am fired up.  

The lineup of speakers this week is amazing.  From Raphael Warnock to Michelle Obama, Democrats are demonstrating a vision of America that seemed lost to the polarization and acrimony of our current politics.  To borrow from Wednesday’s keynote speaker, former President Bill Clinton, the Democrats are offering a thing called “hope”, in contrast to the Republican vision of a nation of “carnage”.  

It’s positive versus negative, forward versus backward; solutions versus grievances.  And, to steal a line from MSNBC host Ari Melber, “There’s political parties, and then there’s just parties.” Democrats are partying in Chicago this week:  celebrating a Biden Presidency, celebrating Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, and celebrating a new hope for the future.  

Even calling the role of states turned into a celebration, complete with a deejay,  with state’s vying to “one-up” each other as they danced and nominated Kamala Harris for President.  Who’d have thought fifty-five announcements of vote counts could be fun (from California to the Northern Mariana Islands).  The Democrats made it so.  Even Senator Chuck Schumer was dancing on the stage.

Against the Empire

We have come a long way in a month, from “just” a campaign against the “existential threat to democracy”, Trump-MAGAism.  We were “the desperate”.  For “Star Wars” fans, we were the Rebellion facing the Death Star, the whole future on the line. And it isn’t that the threat went away.  But now Democrats aren’t just warning of a dark future, they are showing the light of a better future instead.  We are now dancing with the Ewoks on Endor; the “spirits” of Obi-Won Kenobi and Joe Biden enjoying the show.

To press the Star Wars analogy a step farther, the “Empire” hasn’t gone away.  But we can now face the struggle, the election, with joy instead desperation, a positive alternative beyond just “not them”.   And we are doing it with “DEI”, diversity, equity and inclusion.  That’s not a  “dirty word”, it’s the definition of what the Democratic Party, and the United States, is becoming.  Doug Emhoff described blending his family, a Jewish man and his African-American/South Asian wife and their children and relations. It is the description of what America is and will be, despite the “hopes” of Donald Trump and his “mass deportation” friends.

Mothers

Another underlying theme of the Chicago convention is simple:  how did we go from Obama to Trump?  How did we go from Roe v Wade to Dodds? How did we fail?  Or, as several of the Democratic speakers alluded to:  did we let our mothers down?   

Both Michelle and Barack Obama referred to Michelle’s mother, Miriam Robinson, who passed away in May.  They talked about her power as a Black woman growing up in the 1940’s and 50’s, and the struggles she had in that era.  She raised her child in South Chicago, a child who went onto Harvard and Princeton and married a “community organizer” who became President.  And the former President talked about his grandmother, a White woman from a small town in Kansas, who shared many of the same values of hard work, and hope for the future.

Their mothers, and Kamala Harris’s mother, an endocrinologist who immigrated to the United States from India to do research, all worked hard to achieve more for their children than they had for themselves.  They believed, they achieved, and they taught their children and grandchildren to do the same.  

Democrats, we didn’t let our mothers down.  The only way for us to do that, would be to not join the struggle to make things better now.  That’s what Michelle and the President told us last night, and that’s what the Party, (and the party), are doing now.  Joyfully; while Donald Trump mumbles to some sheriff’s deputies in the KKK center of Michigan (don’t boo – vote!). We are energized to go out and fight for the future.  It’s the future that our mother’s and grandmother’s sacrificed for; the one that our children deserve.