Notes from Norm January 16th 2012: What Are You Doing For Others

In Martin Luther King, Jr., America had its national conscience.  A voice for the poor, the oppressed, the repressed, the disadvantaged, the discriminated and the hopeless. 

Throughout my lifetime, as a younger man, and now, as the father of two children who are about the same age as I was during the time that King walked the Earth, I still find his wisdom as enduring today, as I did then.

America is a better, stronger place today than it was then.  The idea that one could actively harbor such discriminatory attitudes and beliefs and become a Governor, and, possibly President, was not a novelty in King’s time. 

It was the reality. 

Gone are the days when the federal government would even contemplate how to purposefully move slowly, instead of quickly, to combat the outright injustices that were visited upon America’s minorities.

The segregation, the deliberate taking away of opportunity and the outright hostility that resulted in lynchings, bombings and killing of African American citizens will remain the great shame of that era.

As will the murder and beating of many young white men and women who took to the streets to give their voice to the need for equality for all people.

Every year when America celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr’s life and accomplishments, there is the great struggle to find the right words he uttered – or wrote – or actions he engaged in to advance the cause of equality for all people.

As Mayor of Saint Paul, and as a member of the United State Senate, I had the honor to speak at numerous events and celebrations of King’s life.  Needless to say, nothing I could ever say was as profound and life changing as the words that came from King’s lips.

I have often used the phrase, “from your lips, to God’s ears”, and I think that may have been the direct line of communication used by King during his time among us.

Whether it was his speech on the National Mall, or his letters from his cell in Birmingham, King may have been talking to America, but he clearly knew that God was watching and listening.

The bombings, the killings, the attacks from the dogs in the streets, and the police and elected officials who chose to ignore King’s words, are not the America that our children will ever know.  To be sure, there remain those amongst us who still find reason to hate and deliberately inflict pain and sorrow on others whose skin color they hate, and whose beliefs they scorn.

The election of Barack Obama represented a watershed in American life – not just in politics.

Despite my objections to many of his policies and his beliefs, I look upon my nation with a great deal of pride that in such a short period of time from the days when our governments deprived minorities of the right to even register to vote – our nation elected an African American to be the most powerful leader in the world.

Barack Obama is not Martin Luther King, Jr.  But, without King, there would be no Obama.  At the very least, there would not be a President Obama in the space of time that took place in 2008.

When King died, he was 39 years old.  Yet, in less than four decades he had done what most will never accomplish if given multiple lifetimes. 

The America his children know today is not the America he knew as a child.  It’s a better place – not a perfect place – but a better, more diverse and more tolerant place.

I’ve said before that what makes America the greatest nation the world has ever known is that we recognize that we can be even better tomorrow than we were the day before.  That’s the exceptionalism that nurtures our progress as a free country.

On this day, it seems to me that the best honor we can do to this man’s legacy and memory is to try our best to live our life in a way that embraces his belief that the more we do for one another, the more we do for ourselves.

And, for me, it is fitting, in that spirit, to end this Notes from Norm with these words from King – who captures for me, far better than anything I could say or write, how important it is that we embrace our obligations to one another.

“Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?”