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By Joe Volk, Executive Secretary
November 6, 2008
"The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."
-- Martin Luther King Jr.
 (c)istockphoto.com/eb33 After the 2008 U.S. elections, whether you are a Republican, a Democrat, or of another party, we can probably agree that the election of an African American to the highest U.S. elected office is a sign that the moral arc of the universe is bending toward justice. We have a long way to go, but we can see evidence of progress.
In a sense the moral arc leading to the U.S. presidential election of 2008 began 200 years ago, when the British Parliament eliminated the legal trade in slaves through parliamentary action. The U.S. Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves 146 years ago. The U.S. Voting Rights Act was enacted into law 43 years ago. The first African American woman to serve in Congress (1968), Shirley Chisholm, announced her Democratic candidacy for president in 1972, just 33 years ago. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Alan Keyes followed her. Today, Barack Obama is the president-elect of the United States. He’ll be inaugurated two hundred and two years after the British ended the slave trade.
Historic Changes Have Not Come Easy
- British MP William Wilberforce didn’t volunteer to lead and win the anti-slavery law, he responded to a grassroots movement to translate protest into policy.
- Eloquent as he was, President Abraham Lincoln wasn’t an eager opponent of slavery, and the Civil War was not fought to free the slaves. That took a grassroots movement to translate protest into policy.
- As we "gray hairs" who watched the signing of the Voting Rights Act recall, President Lyndon Johnson, though he deserves credit, did not lead the way. That took a civil rights movement of people who gave everything they had, including sometimes their lives, so that our country would do the right thing.
- Barack Obama, as he himself acknowledged Tuesday night, didn’t win this election on his own. It took a movement to take him to the White House and to make history.
The Next Step of a Movement
If the movement drops Barack Obama off at the White House portico and goes home to other things, then Obama will be history, but he won’t make history anymore. Political forces, practical circumstances, and the inertia of institutions will mire him in the muck of the status quo. As Obama said Tuesday night, the movement that brought him to the White House needs to reach out to the rest of the country and invite them into the project to change this nation. Mobilized, thoughtful, concerned citizens who organize themselves into movements can give him the traction needed to pursue the changes we need in the U.S. government.
Where Next for the Movement?
After rejecting the world community and trying to go it alone for eight years, maybe the U.S. body politic has had an insight: Security for one does not exist. The world is a community of interdependent people and interrelated actions and reactions of religion, culture, military and foreign policies, finance, credit, trade, and environment. This historic election casts a new light on two outcast ideas, engagement and understanding.
The United States needs to re-engage with the world (see FCNL Friend in Washington Helena Cobban’s book Re-engage: America and the World after Bush) to address the real problems and to take the real opportunities of the 21st century.
What Are Those Problems and Opportunities?
- Terrorism is a serious problem, but war is not the answer. The so-called global war on terror is making the problem worse, undermining our constitution, skewing federal spending priorities, and transforming our civilian president into a permanent commander-in-chief. President Obama and Congress should end the misguided and ineffective war on terror.
- Global climate change is a serious problem, but full spectrum domination of the world will not answer that problem. Virtually all people of the world face an existential threat from global warming. The United States should lead the world to new practices, new technologies, and new infrastructures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions deep and fast.
- Fossil fuels have reached peak production and generate global warming. Fossil fuels are the problem. Military adventures to ensure access to fossil fuels and more drilling will not solve the problem. Our government should lead the way to sustainable energy sources.
- Nuclear weapons proliferation presents the world with serious security threats. The U.S. government should demonstrate a new spirit of international cooperation and determination by ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 2009 and strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
- Weapons of mass destruction in slow motion is how former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan described victim-activated weapons like landmines. President Obama should seek Senate ratification of the Global Mine Ban Treaty and the Oslo Treaty to Ban Cluster Bombs as a first signal that the U.S. government will protect civilians first. The world is awash in weapons, and civilian casualties far outnumber those of combatants. The United States should work with other governments to staunch the flow of weapons into regions of conflict.
- Militarization of U.S. foreign policy is a problem. President Obama and Congress should take steps to demilitarize U.S. foreign policy by erecting the three pillars of Peaceful Prevention of Deadly Conflict: development, diplomacy, and international cooperation.
- Civil liberties, checks and balances, and compassion for people have been trampled on, from domestic spying to immigration raids and from presidential signing statements to Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. Our government should lead in another direction, toward respect for human dignity and for the three branches of government, away from fear of others and toward compassion for them.
Let us try what respect and compassion may do to mend a broken world.
Reviewed:
11/07/2008
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