The world is changing. This country is changing. I'm not a Middle-East scholar or a labor union scholar, but I can feel a change in the air. I'm sure most people can (if they are able to pry themselves away from the Charlie Sheen coverage). I don't know what it means. I don't have the answers. I don't even have any unique personal insights. I think it is fascinating and wonderful that oppressed people are finding courage to stand up to their oppressors. Democracy won't come easily and won't come without significant bloodshed in places like Libya.
I don't know what our role is, as a country. For so many years we have let the dictators of the Middle East do as they please - keeping women illiterate, watching their countrymen live in poverty while they live in palaces - all so we can have access to their oil. It goes without saying that our dependency on this oil won't end overnight. Oil company executives are probably not too keen on earning less profits, no matter who is killed or oppressed along the way. Corporate interests have our own government in a choke-hold. I don't have faith that any major policy changes will take place as long as corporations have the upper hand.
Where will the change come from in the United States? Do the people have any power? Just yesterday, the Wisconsin State Senate, on a procedural technicality, passed the budget bill that strips unions of collective bargaining rights. As we all know, this tactic seems to be part of a longer-term right-wing plan to strip unions of their members, and thus of money, to lessen their political impact. Both political parties claim to look out for the "people." For "the working family." There seems to be no indication that the right actually believes this, and many on the left are cowards. The people are left to fend for themselves.
I believe in public education. I believe in the right of people to organize. I believe in the right of workers to be free from danger in the workplace. I believe in the right of women to make choices about their bodies. I believe that consenting adults should be free to love each other and make a life together. I believe in better roads, better bridges, better libraries, better health care. I believe it is possible to make these things happen in America without "bankrupting our future." I believe it is time to stop fighting unnecessary wars overseas and start doing nation-building in our own country.
None of this is groundbreaking. None of this is even worth reading. I've just been thinking about it a lot and can't decide if I'm extremely optimistic or hopeless. I don't doubt that things will get worse before they get better, but I also don't doubt that we're on the cusp of something extraordinary. We live in an amazing country. Let's challenge ourselves to live up to it.
