“Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a president and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Residents of Cook County traveled to Duluth, to St. Paul and some even to Washington to take part in the Women’s March. Those who couldn’t travel organized a march here and about 120 took part. They were rallying for many causes, but overriding everything, they were taking part in making their voices, their concerns, their worries, hopes, and dreams heard. Good for them. That’s what this country is supposed to be about. Peaceful democracy in action is sometimes messy, like a 2-yearold’s finger painting—democracy can be a little bit all over the place, but done with passion it can turn out to be something treasured.
Meanwhile, locally more and more people have been attending Cook County commissioners meetings, asking questions and learning about topics relevant to them and their neighbors. Good for them. If you don’t participate, don’t complain. A friendly group attended the Grand Marais City Council meeting on Wednesday, January 25 and challenged city councilors with some tough questions and the city councilors answered them the best that they could. No one was condescending. No one rolled his or her eyes if a question was asked or a question couldn’t be answered.
Robert M. Hutchins said, “The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.” That’s not happening right now in Cook County, nor is it happening across the country. There has been awakening in the last year over the course of the presidential election that participation in the process is paramount. No matter which side your vote fell to, or your political contributions were sent, or your letter went, taking part mattered.
Meanwhile, we have, as a reawakening country, seemingly divided along racial lines. As our first black president steps away from the Oval Office, it seems strange that this should be happening. On the heels of Martin Luther King Day, it might be wise to consider some of his words from a speech he gave in 1962 at the Park-Sheraton Hotel in New York City. Dr. King gave his 26-minute address at a dinner celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
“The unresolved race question is a pathological infection in our social and political anatomy, which has sickened us throughout our history and is still today a largely untreated disease. How has our social health been injured by this condition? The legacy is the impairment of the lives of nearly 20 million of our citizens. Based solely on their color, they have been condemned to a sub-existence, never sharing the fruits of progress equally.”
While wrapping up his speech King called on Americans to “enlist in a crusade finally to make the race question an ugly relic of the past.” That’s on all of us to correct.
So as we take part in this messy thing called democracy, let’s celebrate the freedoms we do have. Fight to keep them, and expand a firm grip on freedoms we now only loosely grasp. Let us never forget that democracy is us.
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