Change has come!

It was hard not to get caught up in the emotion of Barack Obama yesterday and especially towards the end of his speech with the quiet litany of, "Yes, we can"s being repeated back to him by the audience.The resonance with Dr Martin Luther King was clearly there. Dr King's dream has, amazingly, come to be -

"when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Looking at the audience at Obama's victory speech - it was that mix that Dr King dreamt about.
It did all feel like a surreal deam actually - could it really happen? A country that less than 50 years ago was segregated and viciously racist - could that turn around so much that a black American could be called 'Mr President'?? Well apparently yes - it could. When I turned on the TV this morning I was half expecting a different result. This little post is my chance to say - Wow! And thanks for providing some much needed inspiration in 2008.

Lots of random thoughts today: Bob Dylan's songs about 'Hurricane' Carter and Medgar Evans; Dr King's - "I have seen the promised land"; Rosa Parks photo; the Rodney King beating/video; the movie 'Mississippi Burning'; The Rev Jesse Jackson with spontaneous tears of joy; Rod Steiger in 'In the heat of the night'; Apocalypse Now's Beverly Hills bridge scene (Willard "who's in charge here?", black soldier "aintchu?")- not sure why but it's there with Hendrix' 'There's a red house over yonder' inside my brain for some reason; us (Jacky/Jade/me) watching the victory speech yesterday in a kind of awed state...

One of the best images of the victory speech was at the end when his running mate Joe Biden and his family joined with Barack and Michelle Obama and their daughters -Dr King again -

"I have a dream that one day, ... little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."

Only fitting that I should add Dr King, Rosa, and the Obamas to the inspiration page.

Love and peace and hope - W