Posted: Wednesday, 21 January 2009 11:38AM
Keeping Hope Alive
Steve Corbett Reporting
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Sitting alone in the upper deck of the Atlanta convention center that night in 1988, I listened as closely as I had ever listened to a political speech.
Jesse Jackson owned the podium as he spoke again and again about keeping hope alive.
The buzz was electric.
Barack Obama didn’t invent hope for change we can believe in.
And for awhile, I really thought Jackson was the one.
Jackson would move us toward the light of justice. Jackson would take us into the new age. Jackson was the newly anointed one.
And Jackson was black - a real, live, walking, talking African-American leader who would walk in the footsteps of his friend and mentor, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Strange to say, I already had hope.
Although I was 37 and hitting middle age, I had heard enough lies to know a charlatan when I saw one. But I believed Jackson. I knew he knew life from an underside. I was willing to take a chance.
I was ready to sign up to keep hope alive.
So I did just that.
I wrote newspaper column after newspaper column about fighting for the dream, extolling the virtue of honesty, and challenging the status quo. I argued with opponents and rarely gave quarter. My mission was one of freedom and the pen was, indeed, mightier than the sword.
But not everybody saw life the way I did. Many people disagreed with my principles. Many people despised my ideas. Some people, including some of my own editors, tried to shut me down.
But I kept hope alive.
And my hope survived even though Jackson long ago disappointed me as I watched his star dim and all but burn out.
One day in 2005 when I was covering Michael Jackson’s child molestation trial while living in California, news spread through the media camp that Jesse Jackson was holding a press conference in support of the music icon.
I listened closely to Jesse, as closely as I had listened that night when he had enthralled the crowd with his words at the Democratic National Convention. And I wondered how this civil rights leader had wound up defending a celebrity while so many people who lacked money and privilege were struggling.
A few days later, word spread that Jesse Jackson was holding another press conference outside the courthouse doors.
This time I didn’t bother to walk across the parking lot to listen.
I had heard enough.
But I still kept hope alive.
I hoped that the jury would find Michael Jackson guilty of every one of the 14 felonies against him. I am still convinced that he was guilty although he walked away a free man, acquitted on all counts.
Yesterday, as Obama made his speech, I listened closely as well. Eating slices of pizza at Antonio’s in West Pittston, I stared at the television set and wondered where we go from here. When I got back to my office at WILK, I read each word of the speech and tried my best to feel its meaning.
I found Obama’s words less thrilling than Jesse’s speech about hope. I still had hope, of course, but realism tempered my excitement.
Although Obama mocked cynics, cynicism has its place in America.
Americans have all too much reason to distrust the integrity of others who once held themselves up as leaders. We have too many reasons to distrust the motives of those paid to uphold the public trust – even in the White House.
Obama must prove the cynics wrong.
Keeping hope alive is no easy task for anyone.
Dreams die hard in America.
To remain “solid like Barack,” as the inaugural ball song goes, to keep on keeping on, we must have some solid examples of the transparency Obama advocated in his inaugural speech.
I hope he’s telling us the truth. I hope he keeps his word. I hope he succeeds.
In the meantime, I’m keeping hope alive.
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Corbett
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