Yes We Can

During the course of this grueling campaign, I’ve thought many times about what this phrase, “yes we can,” actually means. Somewhere along the way, I began to realize this phrase meant more than I thought.

Obviously, it referred to a Presidential campaign that came out of nowhere and basically had little chance. The campaign started by going up against a candidate who had the establishment, the money, and the power on her side. Assuming it could leap this insurmountable hurdle and win the Democratic primary, the campaign would have to overcome race, religion, and the strongest movitator in history, one which has infused our collective pysche. Fear. Yes we can.

But this slogan referred to much more than that.

It also referred to the planet and America’s place in it. America is bogged down in a war that was based on lies, a war that costs our nation an astonishing amount of money, energy, and human lives. Most of the world believes we went to Iraq for vengeance and oil. We are one of the few nations on earth who refused to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol, a realistic proposal that might actually begin to curb the devestating effects of global warming. As the only superpower on earth, we’ve sat idly by and watched genocide occur in Sudan after promising never again. Between global poverty, AIDS, ethnic cleansing, human rights violations, and environmental devestation, it is up to us, as the beacon of hope, to lead the way. We simply have not been doing so. Yes we can.

It also referred to every person, ethnicity, gender, and race in this nation that has been persecuted, marginalized, and discriminated against. Entire classes of people who’ve given up hope and come to believe, as did their parents and their parent’s parents before them, that it’s just not worth it and it’s just not possible. Yes, we’ve come along way from slavery, Jim Crow, disenfranchisement for women and people of color, lynchings, and cross burning. But the very sad reality is that women are still objectified far more than they are revered and black men adorn the cover of the sports section, the entertainment section, and the most-wanted section with far greater frequency than the front of the classroom, the front of the boardroom, or the front page of the newspaper. I try to look at the world through the eyes of a woman who is working three jobs and raising her children alone. Through the eyes of a man who has been rejected from one hundred jobs straight. Through the eyes of my black son who is just starting to shape his view of the world and his place in that world. Yes we can.

But to me, this slogan stands for a single ideal that far surpurasses anything written above. The ideal of humanity. Not as a species, but as a quality, a condition, a goal toward which we should forever aspire. Goodness, compassion, love, and justice are principles of which all humans have shown themselves capable. Black and white, rich and poor, liberal and conservative. Christian, Jewish, Muslim, agnostic, or athiest. We show it in the love we shower upon our children, the compassion we rain upon our sick, and the resources we pour into our most vulnerable. We illustrate it in our relationships with friends, family and even complete strangers. But we continue to use violence as our primary means for conflict resolution, despite our profound knowledge that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. We continue to sit by and watch as people across the planet and across the street suffer. We are frozen into inaction by the reality that one billion people go to bed hungry every night, that forty five million working Americans remain without healthcare, and that huge swaths of people have lost all hope for something better. We prioritize profits over our planet. And we continue to be motivated by fear instead of love. Can we change? Can we try something new? Can we cherish our planet and affirm the worth and dignity of every human?

Yes we can.

I woke up this morning and looked at my children. My eyes filled with tears and my heart almost exploded with hope. As a nation, we opened our eyes and looked. Looked at the state of the world, the condition of our cities, and the direction our nation and our world are headed. We looked at ourselves in the mirror. We overcame our fear. And we elected a black man President of the United States of America.

Is it possible? Can we really do this?

Yes we can.