The Impeachment Hearing Room

Guest Post from a Field Hand: "I Cried My Last Tears Yesterday" (A Special Posting)

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A Very Special Thank You To Danielle Kleiman | Invited danilarry@comcast.net For This Heads Up! (Ed.)

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Please Open And Explore This Site. You Will Not Be Disappointed

Dear Al,

The words in the subject line are from a gospel song by Mary Mary:

I feel that way. I write to you because I think you know how I feel, where I am coming from, and the struggle that we have all been on for so long.

If it matters, I am an African American single mother-This election means more to me than I can find the words to describe. I love this country despite all of our history.

And yesterday, I cried my last tears, after I watch the venomous, vile, and vitriolic display at the McCain-Palin rally unfold over the last few days. I was raised in a Southern Baptist church, and I was taught as a young child when things look bleak and you are backed up against a wall you just let go and let God. We as AAs have been subjected to the system and have the philosophy ingrained that we have to accept the things that we cannot change.

Well here and now damn it--I have cried my last tears yesterday. I am going to fight!

I love the principles that our country was founded on--and I hate what some people are resorting to. And we will fulfill the promise of a More Perfect Union.

This is the election that will either save or end my life as I know it--nonetheless I will be different. I am different.

Just as I find comfort in the sentiments of an old negro spiritual, I find comfort in the words on your blog. You express--in clear succinct terms what I am feeling, what I am going through, and how I can make it to the other side. I can't cry any more.

This moment has ignited a new found sense of civic duty, civic pride, and civic virtue that I have never experienced before. I owe it all to the residual effects of being an organizer.

Al, keep on telling the people how important this is.

Keep telling them to push one step further.

Keep telling them my struggle is our struggle .

Tell em' not to cry.

Cause I cried my last tears, yesterday.

Commentary from Al: Sometimes we get an email that is worth sharing with the entire world. The one above arrived today from a Field Hand. She can identify herself here if she likes, but I wanted to pass it along to the rest of you right away.

Commenters have been asking for days what I think of the "Ayers attack": Will it work? What's the deal?

It's not working.

Don't even sweat it.

That whole approach to "guilt by association" in politics is a vestige from the McCarthy era of the 1950s, the idea that ideological rigidity requires Americans to spy on their neighbors, turn in their brothers, rat on their parents and "denounce and reject" their own children in order to be first-class citizens. One big problem with that approach is that citizenship knows no class. There is no such thing as a second-class (or a first-class) citizen.

The lasting image this week, for me, was that of what appeared to be a troubled twosome attending "couples therapy" on Fox News... except the "husband" was John McCain, the "wife" was Sarah Palin and the "therapist" was Sean Hannity.

Did anybody else see that interview? It was precious!

It was as if the couple, coming to terms with the fact that they haven't met the goals they anticipated for their union, that their household is a tragically unhappy one, were seeking validation from the shrink: "The problems in our marriage are due to ‘that one.' Ever since that Obama moved into the neighborhood, we have suffered marital strife and it's his fault! Our own kids and grandkids look down on us and laugh at us. The minorities and gays in the neighborhood walk around as if it's their neighborhood too! The ones with smaller houses than ours - and that's most of them - act as if they're our equals! He's why our marriage is failing!"

And Dr. Hannity nodded his head in agreement, as if to say: "You're right. Can you believe that nobody but us gives a hoot about his evil association with that terrorist Ayers except for me and, now, the two of you? What's become of this neighborhood? Why don't enough people see it as we do?"

The McCain-Palin ticket's descent into nastiness is turning off multiple voters for every one member of their base that it fires up.

It has also had another unintended consequence: It's created a backlash that has unified virtually everybody in the Obama camp (and also added to its ranks), all vowing to work harder and show those crazy neighborhood bullies no more mercy; to stop the traditional liberal whining and "concern trolling" and insistences that "oh, we are such victims" and to stand up once and for all and put those that thought they were better than us, more American than us, in their place: to bring them right back down here, on the same level with everybody else, and raise ourselves up in the process.

This is the part of the movie where a long abused, unconfident and intimidated majority finally stands up to the bullies and gives them a hard and swift kick in the you-know-what.

That letter, from a Field Hand, along with the video she encloses, captures the moment

perfectly.

Some Thoughts On Our Human Condition 2008.

As Election 2008 races headlong into hatred, division and violence-inviting hysteria, as world tensions are aggravated by bigotry, racial and religious intolerance and man allows a person’s creed color or flag to become excuse to kill and maim, to destroy in the most base means his fellow beings and endanger the very health of this planet that we all inhabit as brothers and sisters; it might be well to take a deep breath and remember this:  

“Like the ball of twine above all humanity welled up from point “B” and through all manner of change in time that twine has become wrapped in a myriad of sometimes confusing layers and the self-inflicted chaos of our human existence; we are, no matter your belief system, religious or not, the current children, brothers and sisters of that first strand of human consciousness at point “N”.

Those who would deny that fact, attempt to unravel that common core of humanity to define the one “true fiber” do so with greed avarice evil and with the ultimate denial that we are all brothers and sisters. 

They do so with the full knowledge that their efforts at division serve no one but themselves.  They do so, with a peculiar criminality that accepts genocide, patricide, fratricide, global environmental degradation, species extinction and they gamble with the real possibility of the extinction of all life and the transformation of this rich planet into a lifeless charcoal briquette floating in the icy silence of space.

Those who hold those views are not part of the larger human family would live in peace and in doing so would find a way to improve the lives of everyone of this sphere, and not as they would have it, harvesting the wealth of this planet on the backs of those they would enslave, and should they make the last great mistake; so be it.  It will be the end and it will not matter.