MLK

Many moons ago when I was a fairly new attorney I represented an African-American principal. I honestly do not recall the reason. If memory serves me correctly it was a dispute about work performance, something really petty. What I do recall was reviewing the principal's personnel record. He was a long-term employee. He had more than three decades of service in the school system. Or should I write "systems."

I was shocked when I reviewed his file. When hired he worked for the "negro" schools. The first four or five years of this man's career were spent in a state-sanctioned segregated school system. It floored me. I grew up in Ohio, not exactly a land of racial harmony, but throughout my primary and secondary education the schools I attended were twenty to thirty percent African-American or more. There was de facto segregation by neighborhood, but I grew up in the north - there were no colored- or white-only drinking fountains, bathrooms, waiting rooms, or such. The "South" was an alien world to me. That was the bad place where white people were mean and cruel to black folks. Not we Ohioans. Jim Crow was not a Buckeye ...

By the time I met that principal I'd lived in Virginia. I'd traveled in Kentucky. But as for "the South," well, I'd never really been there. Miami is not exactly the heart of Dixie.

That file made an impression on me. I'd not confronted such overt racial distinctions before, certainly not in that context. There in black and white, pun intended, was the man's application to work in the black system - the white schools would never have hired him. Before that day, I'd certainly never sat down and asked an African-American person who was raised in the South before desegregation just what his life was like. It was surreal. That world of civil rights demonstrations, protests, lawsuits, the joke that was "separate but equal" - that was not the distant past left to the sands of time. I learned instead that it was this man's life.

I'm a bit older now. I've seen more of my nation. I've lost that smugness of being a Northerner. My home city has had race riots that have gutted its core - again. My beloved Chicago is an example of how we Midwesterners can craft a segregated society as miserable and bigoted as anything the South ever created, without need for a single law or a single "whites only" beach. And I've come to appreciate what an incredible leap we have made as a nation within living memory, as well as how far we have to go.

I attribute a significant amount of the distance we've covered on the journey from a past of slavery and its repercussions to a more just society to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He led through moral suasion, through appeals to peace and reason, he led through example. He appealed to the best in us, not the base.

When people realize the power that they have within themselves to effect change for the better, to improve their lot in this life, to become agents of change and to no longer suffer as others' subjects, the world is a better place for it. True leadership does not dictate - it educates and unleashes and channels that latent energy.

In that vein, I believe wholeheartedly in the labor movement. To me, at its best, it is the most effective engine of social change. Beyond better wages, safer work sites, shorter hours - more time for living and less spent working - the labor movement has fought for the franchise, for education, and, frankly, for freedom. Dr. King saw, appreciated, understood, and articulated the overlap between the civil rights movement and the labor movement. Indeed, they are two sides of the same coin, existing symbiotically - or not at all, as any survivor of fascism or totalitarianism can tell you.

The man was murdered while he was in Memphis supporting a garbage workers' strike. The lowest of the low organized and demanded to be treated like human beings, with dignity. They carried signs that read simply, "I am a man." Not a cog, not a machine, but a human being. Dr. King came to support them, and in that way he came to his end. I have come to appreciate Dr. King for his work on behalf of workers, for making that connection between workers' rights and civil rights, and for indeed nudging us along to a world where we are not to be judged by the color of our skin but the content of our character.

I was not alive myself when Dr. King preached the gospel and spread the good news about a fairer, freer world that we could bring into being if we just worked at it. His life came to a premature and cruel end before I was born. For me today is a day to think about what he stood for, to reflect where we've been and we're we need to go as citizens of this nation, and to mourn. There is not a doubt in my mind the world would have been a better place had we had Dr. King to accompany us on the long journey to justice for at least a few more steps.

And why I signed in in the first place - my idea du jour

I have an idea for a personal weight-loss regime. It goes something like this. I get a diaper. I spot my toddler. I get his attention. I then announce, loudly, "time for a diaper change!"

Game on.

Having zero desire to relinquish the poo, he runs like an escaped parolee hopped up on crank toting a stolen television set sprinting through the trailer park with half the police force of Hicksville and the entire "Cops" camera crew in tow, while I engage in a frantic steeplechase over the couch, around the chairs, and under the dining room table.

My old age and treachery will eventually prevail over his youth and skill. I figure I'll nab him by the side of the fridge, possibly at the front door, and if that fickle goddess Fate smiles upon me, I'll do so with at worst a bruise or three. Him? He'll get giggles and a clean diaper out of the deal. It could be worse.

At the rate the little guy goes, this is good for at least 30 to 45 minutes of good cardiovascular workout time a day.

In addition, if he gets really good at it, this may be viewed as the foundation for his future in football, securing his old man and mother a comfortable retirement and, if we're lucky, sky box tickets for Super Bowl LXXV. I'd settle for the weight loss and the joyful giggling from Mr. Man as he evades Daddy Chunkster, but I'd certainly not object to the sky box tickets for what it's worth.

You can't make this stuff up

When I linked in to post a new entry, this greeted me at the blogger.com site:

"We are excited to announce that Blogger is now available in three more languages: Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian!"

Wowza.

I suppose it best to hit the trifecta at one time. Imagine the grief had one of those gone up before the others ... "You got Hebrew but no Persian - you got something against Iranians?" or "No Hebrew - but you got ARABIC? What are you - anti-semitic or something?"

You can't please all the people all the time, but give blogger.com some props for damage control ...

The military in a democracy

There is an article in today's NY Times about the mercenaries used by my government in Iraq. That triggers a few questions. If in a democracy we cannot get enough people to volunteer to serve in the military to perform the duties that the military is called upon to perform in a foreign land, then should we continue to be involved in that conflict? If we have to resort to mercenaries to fight our wars, doesn't that raise serious issues about support for that war when waged by a "democratic" state? And how is it that when those mercenaries murder civilians with abandon, they are not subject to trial - that no law applies? This last point was the gist of the article. Zero accountability for one's actions is morally suspect at the best of times. To avoid any accounting, any trial, from any sovereign for the killing of a human being is truly surreal to me. Then again, like Alice through the looking glass, I and my nation entered the realm of the surreal in late 2000 and haven't looked back since ...

I should have been that I am ...

" ... I should have been that I am,
had the maidenliest star in the firmament
twinkled on my bastardizing."

And so I begin a blog.