Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead

Here's Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen backed by beautiful gospel singers at the Obama Inaugural celebration, doing This Land Is Your Land. Watch Pete's eyes gleam when he does the private property verse. A moment worth watching again and again. Looking at that gorgeous crowd, I'm feeling something like, what, can it be ... hope! Definitely hope.

As for Obama's speech speech? Perfect pitch. The sea of tear streaked faces said it all.

No blues skies everything-is-fine, no-sacrifice-necessary bullshit that we've heard for years on end. The assessment of the American moment was as real as real gets and came just moments into the speech:

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many.

And then, the soaring announcement of a new day:

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

He affirms America's strengths and calls upon us to put aside narrow self-interest in the pursuit of a vision of hope, action, and change:

We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Obama calls us to "a new era of responsibility," and invokes the values that we all share when we are true to our higher selves.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

And then, beautifully, he quotes George Washington to again say that we are in great crisis and danger, and that our hope and virtue are our greatest assets.

"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

This is leadership and this is greatness. This is a man who speaks truth about our moment in history and articulates a vision to match. Obama calls us to personal and collective greatness, to set aside our narrow self-interests for the collective good, to accept sacrifice, and to rise to the many challenges before our nation. Obama inspires us to become our best selves, and to find meaning in struggle and sacrifice for the common good.

History has turned the page.

Meanwhile, The Onion's gleeful fantasies of a series of gruesome Presidential accidents is at an end: George W. Bush has died peacefully in his sleep.

This Is What Democracy Looks Like

It isn't often that one gets to be in the front row of the revolution, but tonight, from my perspective at the far left of the first pew of Trinity United Methodist Church, it felt as though history was in the making. An overflow crowd turned out in Ballard in response to Rev. Rich Lang's call to action against the growing unconstitutionality of our government and the mounting evidence that America is one precipitating event away from martial law and a grave curtailment of political liberties.

The meeting was nicely managed. There was a group sing of Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land, a reading of the Declaration of Independence, a warm-up speech from Linda Boyd of Washington for Impeachment who argued that impeachment "is the legal, peaceful way to regain our constitution," and then, Rich Lang delivered what might be the fifteen minute speech of his life (download here).

"The most important thing we have is each other," he began. "Remember that."

After a brief disclaimer "for the benefit of Caeser" that tonight was not a function of the church, but an opening of their space to the community, he began. Here is Seattle, we are in a bubble. We do not appreciate the urgency or the danger of the moment. The nation is possessed by a demon spirit that is doing great harm. We ourselves are in a trance. "We now know the answer to the question, 'How could good citizens allow the Nazis to come to power.'"

"The urgency of multiple crises is upon us," said Lang. "But tonight, the focus is on one crisis: breaking the trance and finding our voice. Not just the voice of Seattle. The voice of a nation."

Then, to the roaring approval of the capacity crowd, Rev. Lang offered his plan. On Tuesday, September 11, 2007, we all call in sick to work to perform nonviolent Acts of Democracy. We make 9/11 a day of the people. And then, we have a party.

"The empire steals and controls our voice, so we will take our voice to them. To the graveyard of our public media. We will hold direct actions at each of the major corporate media locations in our city. In groups of tens, hundreds, and thousands, all without permits of any kind."

"The authorities want to bind us with chains in the graveyards of silence," he said, "but we are a free people in a free land. So act like it!"

As I left to get home to my kids, the crowd of several hundred was breaking up into groups of six to consider creative acts of revolution. And so it begins. There will be a follow-up meeting at TUMC on August 6, at 7 p.m.