BIG NEWS -- I HAD A BABY ON MY BIRTHDAY!! Not me exactly, but I got the best birthday gift ever this year, as my bestie Ann Norris Pattan, who I threw my first Fort Greene Christmas party in order to introduce her to her future husband Jason, was polite enough to give birth to their son Alex on my birthday as payback. How poetic! Im thrilled for Ann, Jason and Alex, who are all doing well, and am looking forward to sharing birthdays in the future with little Alex (and Amy Scott)! Its fitting Alex was born on this date, because Ann and I met on the 2008 Obama campaign, and Jason and I have a 20 year friendship revolving around American civil rights history. And if I take my mental flight of August 28, as King would put it, its an important date in American history. On August 28, 1955, Emmet Till gave up his 14-year-old life as a lynching victim, kicking off the modern civil rights movement. Two years later on August 28, Senator Strom Thurmond ended the longest Senate filibuster ever, opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Six years later on August 28, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his I Have A Dream speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, calling a nation to live up to its moral promise. Five years later on August 28, anti-war protestors clashed with police in Chicago outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention over LBJs war policies. (And in the 70s, Amy stepped onto this mortal coil and so did I.) And four decades later, on August 28, 2008--while Jason and Ann and I were out campaigning for Chicagos most famous son--Barack Obama became the first African American to accept the Democratic nomination for President of the United States of America. And now, in 2014, little Alex has joined us on the planet and in this nation, poised to continue pushing that long bending arc towards justice Dr. King spoke of. Heres to Ann and Jason and the family they are making. And heres to Alex, Doylestown, and the promise of the centuries--from Moses to Jesus to Alex--of the hope we can have in a baby to change the world.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 17:24:29 +0000
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