Today I have a dream

Today I have a dream. Yesterday I did not know I needed one, but today, and more specifically tonight I realize a dream is what we all desire, nay require to understand the great journey we are poised to undertake.  I watched the President Elect tonight in Chicago’s Grant Park give a speech that made me believe the future is more promising than the past.  I watched a speech that made me realize I was not optimistic about the future without even knowing it. I watched a speech that made me proud to be an American. And I watched a speech that made me remember great speeches of the past that inspired me to undertake politics as a passion.

Barack Obama’s speech recalled the feelings I experienced the first time I read Washington’s 1789 pledge to protect America’s “liberties and freedoms” under “a government instituted by themselves”, and Abraham Lincoln’s plea during the Civil War to heal “with malice toward none, with charity toward all”, and of course John F. Kennedy’s exhortation to “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

Today I realize dreams are not just for those who know they need them.  Dreams are for all of us.  White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, and other all need to believe that America not only represents their current desires and hopes, but the dreams and aspirations of the world.  We are today’s great nation, and tonight was a shinning light that showed me, and I hope others just how spectacular calling yourself an American really can be.

Through all of our faults, through all of our tragedies, through all of our disagreements we are one nation, and we are one people who for any one moment in time can truly demonstrate and represent the greatest of ideals about Democracy and humanity.