The Democratic National Convention

Today is my 30th birthday.

I entered this crazy world at 5:28 pm, August 28, 1978, the fifteenth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

And at 8pm this evening, thirty years later, a black man named Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president.

In just my own short life, I’ve seen so many changes. The end of the Cold War, the fall of the Wall in Berlin, September 11th, Katrina, and now this. It sometimes feels like I watched progress for the first twenty years of my life, regression for the last ten.

I sense a turnaround in that.

Hope wars with the bruises in my heart, sullen parts of me that wish hope wasn’t an option, parts that are tired of trying, and of failing, to turn this country around. I know I am not alone in that. But I—but WE—have to make a decision. Perhaps a world-changing decision.

To choose hope, as this man asks us to do.

To choose to believe we have a future. To get up off the mat we’ve been knocked to, and rescue that future. To pull back from the brink we’ve been staring into, deeper and deeper, for the past eight years.

This can be done. It must be done. And it will be done.

Today, at the start of a new decade for me, our country faces two roads: one going up, and one going into darkness. I’ve stood at this crossroads long enough.

Let’s get moving.

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