A Witness to History: Our nation is on the brink of history. For so many years I yearned for a better nation. For years I wondered where the era from which I was politically born, had gone. I wondered what happened to those values which promised the eternal flame of justice, truth, humanitarian ideals and no more war. I worried and even cried that our nation could be so divided and thought it eternally doomed so that I would never see what my parents loved about the FDR of their time. I worried that I would never again be inspired with hope and never again see the inherent humanity of our nation which I knew I saw once in America. I began to think we were eternally relegated to never-ending fear, never ending anger, never ending division, and never ending conflict.

It has been a long hard road traveled and we are not quite there yet, but, finally, if my suspicion is correct, those of us who care about the welfare of the many, the humanitarian rights of the powerless and the inherent decency of this nation, will be on the precipice of greatness once again. We are at the doorstep of hope just when I thought all hope was lost. Over the past, seemingly eternal, eight years, our country fell precipitously from its heights. Its principles were shattered, its Constitutional genius wasted, and an isolated America dug itself deeper in the hole of injustice every minute it could not shake off this tyranny.

A possibility, though, of renewal and reverse-course is at hand. The genius of America still exists and this is the moment I have lived for all of my life. The book of centuries of the cruelest and saddest moments in American history is turning a page into a new era. It is a new New Deal, a new New Frontier and a new Great Society. We are, indeed, a new nation of Americans united and standing up for and in love with our great American experiment.

Our nation, plagued by a stubborn racism which digs its heels into our DNA and contaminates our body politic by forces which pander to hatred and by ideologues who take advantage of its festering sore for their own enrichment, is rising from its simmering embers once again.

I believe Barack Obama will be our nation’s first black president and the 44th president of these United States. It is about time. I hope he stays safe and I hope his policies are wise for, I believe, he is not the great BLACK hope, he is not the great WHITE hope but he is the hope of ALL of us. We are, I believe, on the brink of history, the world is watching and I am ever so thankful I am witness to it.