HOPE – a year later

we all had the "hope" of a new president, a black president, a young president, a different brand of president, to come in and "save the nation", fix our economy, fix our health care, fix our racism and classism and make america a great country again. many of us were secretly hoping for a savyor to come in and save us.

the fault in our thinking thus far has been just that...

we want someone to come in and take care of it for us.

someone to come in and fix it for us.

someone to save us.

...and we don't have to lift a finger. isn't that the american way?

american politics and government has turned into a system that "we the people" sit back and complain that we're not getting what we want, but allow it to continue. most of us don't have enough knowledge about, money or access to the political system to effectively make change, so we shy away. we've been taught that we are weak without them.

the "hope" that obama promised was not that he was going to come in and fix everything. obama's message has been clear from the beginning, that we must do this together. the hope promised is that we can and will have a personal responsibility to your own happiness. the person to come in and take care of us, fix it and "save us"... is well, "us". and, part of "us" is you and me.

we can do it individually (me) or we can do it collectively (us), but the people who run our government should be the people of our country. the representatives, senators and other elected officials have moved away from representing the people into a cycle of keeping their job... how do i get re-elected? who's going support my campaign (financially) for re-election? what must i do to appease that minority of constituents who will fund my re-election campaign, keep me in office and keep me in a paying job? they are not accountable to the masses. they are accountable to the money (and apparently not accountable for money).

our legislative branch has been allowed to grow & taken on a role of legislating laws to dictate the thought of a minority onto the majority. the wealthy and accessed members of our society (a minority of the whole) have driven our political machine for the past 60 – 70 years into the state of disarray that it is now. they are driven by staying in "power" and staying in a job, with kick-backs and benefits. this may or may not be the case at the local level, and it certainly does not apply to every elected official, but our health care, financial/banking, media and big corporation industries would not be where they are today if it was not at least a majority.

obama, new to the scene, has been a ray of hope that things could change. and they still can... but obama is one person. his administration is only a handful of people who may be in-line with this paradigm shift.

you are one person.

i am one person.

it only takes one spark to start a flame.

together we make two.

each of us not alone.

that makes an us, a we, the people.