Barack Obama - Courage for a Change
February 25th 2008
By Alan Sandals
Fifteen years ago, a young Chicago lawyer, Barack Obama, joined my legal team fighting to preserve medical benefits for retired employees of Unisys. Today, I explain why I'm part of his team and why you should be, too.
For the first time since the Great Depression and World War II, Americans are united in awareness that we share a common fate. We worry about the future for ourselves and our children, and know that the challenges we face don't care whether we are Democrats, Republicans or independents, white, black or Latino, or women or men.
We stand together on the brink, threatened by intolerable educational and economic inequalities and the destruction of good jobs and financial security during our working lives and retirement. All of us are struggling with the effects of steeply rising energy and health care costs and global competitors that relentlessly drive down the value of our labor, our capital and our currency.
None of us is insulated from these forces. Even the comfortable have to feel uneasy and insecure. If we are honest with ourselves, we know that the time for feel-good, pat political answers is over. There is no quick or painless way out of our predicament. The "market" won't magically provide solutions. Things are not going to get better on their own.
As our first step, we need nothing less than the renewal of America's heart and soul to serve our common good. Even with this renewal, the work that lies ahead of us is going to be difficult. But hard work has never been a problem for Americans. Instead, our problem has been poor leadership.
This year, especially, we need courage. Courage is a trait we're used to in Pennsylvania. During a routine drive on the Schuylkill Expressway on the way to a big box store, a highway sign jolts us "Valley Forge." Oh yes, we remind ourselves, the place where 17 year-old farm boys froze to death to create America. In southern Delaware and Chester Counties, we see thick woods and begin to imagine bitter winter nights when escaped slaves ran north to freedom, aided by people of faith who battled slavery with every ounce of their strength.
We are lucky beneficiaries of the courage of generations of ordinary men and women who came before us. Now, it is our turn to be tested. We are the ones who are being called to action, and we are the ones who must answer. No one else can do the work for us.
Barack Obama knows something about personal courage. For a moment, imagine living your childhood and young adult years as he did - the constant spelling-out and explanation of your name, your appearance, and your unconventional family background. Now picture how other people react to you - grade school classmates, law students and lawyers burdened by subtle prejudice, grizzled ward leaders in Chicago, and hostile legislators from downstate Illinois.
Yes, he had to grow up fast and learn early how to bear up, how to endure and overcome the daily affronts and doubts, and how to tell true allies from false friends. The twelve-month ordeal of his campaign is still more proof that no one should question the depth of Barack Obama's real world experience and good judgment, his toughness, or the essential lessons taught by the path of his extraordinary life.
In his own time, another short-tenured legislator from Illinois, also rising from disadvantaged circumstances, was mocked by skeptics and opponents of change as an amateur who could hold a rapt audience but who was not up to the responsibility of preserving the Union. Nearly 150 years later, the American people in their amazing and ever-increasing diversity, from Atlanta to Anchorage to Appleton, show that they remain excellent judges of character and strength.
Barack Obama knows, and we know, that what we need is truthfulness and courage, for a change. Courage that we call out from ourselves and courage that we must find in our leaders. Politics can be a brutal and grinding profession. When, in defiance of a lifetime of obstacles and against all odds, a true leader offers himself or herself to us, we should not let our opportunity slip away.
Barack Obama challenges us to transform our public lives and become the people we have always wanted to be. He has already passed his test. Now it is our turn to prove what kind of people we are and whether we have courage for a change.
Alan Sandals, a Philadelphia pension rights lawyer, was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania in 2006.
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