A dark and shameful day in Tennessee as two black lawmakers were summarily expelled from the state house for their protest against gun violence in the wake of the massacre of six human beings (three of whom were young children) at a Nashville day school last week. As Dylan declared in song: ‘for you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears, take the rag away from your face for now is the time for your tears’.
The desperate (and unconstitutional) attempt to stifle the free speech rights of these two young Afro-American legislators only serves to illustrate that Jim Crow politics are still alive and well and that Critical Race Theory is a very real and necessary antidote to the prevailing ignorance so ubiquitous and loudly announced throughout the land. The immediate and vociferous reaction to this event (largely from our youthful brothers and sisters) is indeed encouraging. It might not seem like it in this moment but implicit in these turbulent times is the echo of MLK’s words regarding the arc of the moral universe bending ever so slowly and painfully toward justice. Bobby Dylan was right by observing that ‘the times they are (indeed) a changing’ while Sam Cooke emphatically reminds us of the truth that ‘a change is goin to come’! My money is on Martin, Bobby, and Sam to prevail over the dinosaurs currently occupying the state house in Tennessee and elsewhere in our rapidly evolving country.
Let the actions of these young, brave patriots signal a clarion call to the American political establishment that a new wave of progressive activism is well under way and that its voice will no longer be silenced marginalized, minimized, or otherwise ignored my the mainstream. As some of us have been saying for years, this progressive movement will assert itself in the immediate future to meet the challenge of global climate change, the institution of clean energy sources, racial reconciliation, serious gun violence reduction measures , women’s bodily autonomy, LBGTQ rights, the elimination of violent means to solve international and domestic disputes, universal health care as human right, and the recognition that we are all bound together by a common humanity under the light of the same sun. The movement has arrived and the time is now to finally answer humankind’s need to first envision a better way forward and then to get busy to do the work necessary to manifest in the world that which heretofore has only been an unrealized dream.
