Maine Owl

I stand here today at the crosscurrents of that history - knowing that my piece of the American Dream is a blessing hard won by those who came before me.

Certainly I liked the speech Michelle Obama delivered at the Democratic National Convention Monday night. She's a huge credit to the Obama operation.

The speech was very personal. It focused on family and personal relations and her late father's struggle against a debilitating disease. The hard times were overcome through gritty individual perseverance of folks who "weren't asking for a handout or a shortcut," and "smiling and laughing" all the while.

Look, I'm not really going to criticize her story. I liked the speech and she was brilliant. But I do want to discuss the manner in which she dips into the upcoming forty-fifth anniversary (this Thursday) of the March on Washington and the Martin Luther King "I Have a Dream" speech. She cites not one word of King. Maybe Senator Obama will do so in his nomination acceptance speech on Thursday, I don't know.

Even though Michelle does say that getting to "what our world should look like" has required "people who stood up and marched and risked everything they had," and that "we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be," she avoids dwelling on the act of people organizing and uniting for the cause of justice. She does not cite any sources of injustice either. Just what is it that makes the world not look as it should?

King had an awful lot to say about that on August 28, 1963:

MLK: In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check ? a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

Forty-five years later that promissory note is still marked in default for de facto segregated, vastly under-funded communities all over America while foreign wars rage on and corporate ripoffs flourish. I'll be watching the Democrats to see if there is even the slightest sense left in 'em to address any of this. I have my doubts. It seems like to be on-message, Democrats must eschew mention of economic starvation of poor communities and the now hyper-aggravated divide of society's resources into the pockets of the rich.