Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden

Frederick Douglass
by: Robert Hayden

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,   
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,   
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,   
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more   
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:   
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro   
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world   
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,   
this man, superb in love and logic, this man   
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,   
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives   
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

How America Forgot It Had Choices

The election is over, and, yet again, we’ve made a choice to accept that we only have one of two choices—as the media and the rest of corporate America wants us to believe.  Rather than breaking the mold; rather than acting like mature, educated, and intelligent people, we chose to act like confused, hormonal teenagers.

We’ve compromised our values—the things we hold most dear, in order to make a “lesser of two evils” choice.  (For those of you who actually voted for a third party this election—Thank You!  You took the road less traveled, and while you may not see it, …that has made all the difference.  For those of you who didn’t, though….)