I want to share a piece I wrote some 2 years ago. I’m posting this in the midst of the furor about the upcoming battles between the GOP-controlled Congress and Obama (especially post-State of the Union). I feel my thoughts then are meaningful now; we are still figuring out race and Obama’s place in American history, still trying to show that #BlackLivesMatter and understand what the encroaching end of Obama’s tenure means. Back then, I was coming to terms with the allergic reaction the right was having to Obama and what it meant for me and America. Truly, I’m still coming to terms with it.

“Somehow, in our fear and desolation, we got away from where we started. We turned away from the road we tread and went a different way. Now we don’t know if we can get back, don’t know if we even want to. It was the journey and the promises made. They called us and made us dream that we could be more, made us hope that life didn’t have to continue as it was.

“Yes we can!” we cried, loud and in one voice.

As time drew on, suddenly, the bandwagon emptied and people went back to living and stopped dreaming. We stopped believing that one man could solve the problems and started thinking instead that in one man was the root of all the problems. In both our starting thought and our ending one were we wrong.

Neither is true.”

Zubin Hill, 2013

I guess the idea is just that, much as I may laud Obama for having the guts to get done what needs to be done, it’s important to understand that democracy is a system and a process. Things have to go through the filtration system and often that takes time. Regardless, it is unfair to say Obama has done nothing or that (even them) Congress has done nothing.

History will judge both. I think we need to recognize how far we have come…and that there is yet another mountain to climb. You can live and dream.

Don’t give up either because life has thrown some curveballs.