Let America be America Again

[ Editor’s Note: Dear readers, This a hoot, and a must listen, so save the link if you are busy, to consume later. This concept of non-Republican white folks now being relegated to the infernal disenfranchisement of people of color via this new lower-class of citizenship (i.e., not one of them) being bestowed upon us.

If this does not get people off their asses to clean the Trump Supemacists out, then maybe we are a people that deserves to be put under the political sword. The Trumpers are waiting in line to begin the work.

I did not catch this earlier, how a key part of Trump’s appeal to the hillbillies and whiney white folks was to offer them the opportunity to be the new Masters over the rest of us who will be relegated to a class of citizenship chosen for us.

I sense this may be a key weak spot to counter attack, framing them as the new American settlers, and where people like us are the Indians now that need to be nice and relocate to the reservations they will have for us (i.e., a limited set of political rights subject to their choosing).

This is not a time for half measures, and one of my biggest fears is Manchin and the Arizonan do not seem to get what the stakes are, with their fears of harming the ‘Senate traditions’.

Our Democracy is under attack, and their main concern is protecting Senate traditions on the filibuster? Give me a break. We are in the middle of Trumper coup number two. We can deal with ‘traditions’ when the battle is over.

We have some unpleasant work to do, and if we don’t do it, our punishment will be way more unpleasant. Thus ends my cheery missive for today… Jim W. Dean ]

*

Watch Senator Cory Booker in a Senate floor speech, where he calls upon “all to rise up as a force of light and love.” As the senator did, I also had thought that Jim Crow was history.

At the 22 minute mark, the Senator quotes a verse from a Langston Hughes (1902-1967) poem, Let America Be America Again.

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

Senator Kaine reflects on the epiphany that he had on 6 January 2021. For the first time in his life, someone else was trying to deny his voice and his vote, and he knew as never before how it feels to be disenfranchsed. He was not pleased.

“When others scheme to take your vote, when they try to exclude you, when they try to say you don’t count, this is how it feels. It hadn’t happened to me before.”

Thought provoking.

Editing: Erica P. Wissinger

Jim W. Dean

Jim W. Dean is VT Editor Emeritus.  He was an active editor on VT from 2010-2022.  He was involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews.  He now writes and posts periodically for VT.

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