The National Leadership Alliance, Memo To America

No reasonable person denies that George Bush and the Republicans have ruined this country. Given that reality, what’s at stake in this presidential election is far more than the chance to elect the first Black president and while that aspect seems paramount for most Black voters, the fact is that at this point in time, Obama and Biden are Americas only hope of rebuilding a crumbling nation, and establishing a new and necessary global trust and creditability.

Is this to be a golden opportunity for this country. Or will Americans let racism give the Republicans another term to continue to drive the further decline of the country.

It is time to stop pretending that racism is a thing of the past. We are not yet at that point, but perhaps we can still get there. There is no question that the republicans have guided America into the worst condition in this country’s 232 year history. The only thing standing in the way of recovery is what John McCain hopes is a lingering American racism, that has some whites pretending that McCain and Palin are legitimate choices. McCain, who graduated 894 in a class of 899, and Pallin who spent 9 semesters in various schools and colleges, to earn a BA in journalism, compared to Obama and Biden who actually graduated from Columbia University and Harvard, magna cum laude, the University of Delaware, and Syracuse University college of law.

There have been times when courageous people both Black and white, came together to guide America through the bad times. For us, those times were when Black Americans throughout this land were legally denied the right to vote. It was when the national guard was used by the state to block 9 Black school children trying to attend high school in Little Rock Arkansas. It was young Americans being beaten and murdered for sitting at an American lunch counter, or registering Black Americans to vote.

Even when America was ugly, there where whites who would not give up on America in exchange for white privilege. They joined the so called Black radicals and worked to make this country a place where dignity, justice and equality would actually exist from sea to shining sea. These are the people who would not surrender to Bull Connors in Birmingham, Alabama, or the Klan in Mississippi, or Sheriff Jim Clark in Selma Alabama, or Lester Maddox, or George Wallace. Americans who would not surrender to the southern Dixiecrats, or the northern hypocrites.

Dr King reminds us, that in every period of human history there are people who refuse to abandon the ultimate democratic dream. Some of the names you know, Medgar Evers, Chaney, Goodman & Schwerner, Viola Liuzzo, Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Most others like Sammy Young in Tuskegee Alabama, you may not be aware of. But they were there, refusing to let this country be consumed by fear and ignorance.

This is not yet a post racial America. However, the country is better than it was, and can still achieve what has been called the great American dream, instead of what journalist Jacob Weisberg fears is a Nation in historical decline.

America is either on the threshold, or the brink. The message is clear to white Americans as well as others. Don’t give up on America now, don’t let racism, in this case the inability to vote for a Black man, give over the country into the hands of the people and the ideology that have given this country a historical debt, multiple war fronts that are bankrupting the country, the weakest dollar ever, mortgage crisis forcing Americans to lose their homes. Major bank failures, and ruptured relationships with historical allies. This is not the time to give in to racism, however subtly it is being expressed. With Obama and Biden, America can move forward into a future of enlightenment, optimism and possibilities, or continue the inevitable Republican decline.

As Deepak Chopra says in explaining the Palin Effect, Sarah Palin reinforces the deeper message of the reactionary right, Chopra points out that while she derides the idealism of Barack Obama, Palin exhorts people to obey their worst impulses. Countering our aspirations, virtue and vision, by raising shadow issues based on fear, rejection, hostility to change and narrow mindedness.

Just listen to the rumblings of the crowds that warm to her message.

We are well aware that America is facing one of the most significant crisis in the history of this nation, in facing an earlier crisis, John F. Kennedy pointed out that in the Chinese language the word crisis is spelled with two characters, one represents danger, the other opportunity. In each crisis there is indeed an opportunity to launch a bright new future. The crisis simply demands that we make the right choices

An editorial by Jonathan Freedland in the British newspaper “The Guardian” said “If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world. Freedland goes on to write, “That if Americans reject Obama, they will be sending the clearest possible message to the rest of us and, make no mistake we will hear it”

In the final analysis, by calling for Americans to reach for our higher selves, and moving to establish higher ideals in politics, Obama and Biden are America and perhaps the worlds best hope for the future!