Change begins with us
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Editor,
Grace Lee Boggs, 90 years old, sharp as a tack, a Detroit resident for 60 years speaks again.
On August 18 she wrote for Common Dreams.org an article entitled: “In Detroit, We Have Just Begun to Fight.” She says: “This is the first time in my experience that so many different organizations with different ideologies and personalities have recognized that the time has come when we must join together to resist and defeat the growing counter-revolution.” This, in itself, is a very interesting and insightful comment. Just look around at the conversations with people of all stripes, all agreeing that our national political system, our nations economic, judicial, economic, educational and health-care structures are in great need of overhaul.
Just what is this “counter-revolution” Boggs talks about? She says: “It is rooted in race. It is very unprincipled, very dangerous and taking many forms.” Further, she points out: “It began at the end of World War II when white people moved to the suburbs to escape blacks in cities like Detroit where whites were becoming the minority.” I know first hand of this as I had the same experiences in my years in the Chicago area.
She further points out: “[Whites] taking with them their schools, their businesses and their taxes, they impoverished the cities.” There is much more about this but space here does not allow me to relate it all. But we begin to see a quite destructive trend affecting much of our nation.
One very cogent comment from Boggs is this: “With growing unemployment, the crisis in the Mideast, and the decline in this country’s global dominance, we have come to the end of the American Dream.”
In my view until we, individually as Americans, begin to change our minds and begin thinking and working creatively toward our future, we will simply continue electing our favorite political party candidates who are beholden to this or that big money interest and who will not work to change our systems but carry on with the present grid-locked legislative process built upon greed, fear, anger and attack.
It is up to us. “We The People” must affect the changes needed. It will only happen from the ground up.
Bob McClellan
Polson
