Wednesday is the fiftieth anniversary of the “March on Washington”, (actually, The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, but we tend to abbreviate over time), and therefore the fiftieth anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech, (the actual transcript of which, we now know, did not contain that particular phrase).  The two to three hundred thousand in attendance, (estimates vary depending on the politics of the estimators), bore witness to one of those rare, non-violent moments in history that truly changed us for the better.  In almost every traceable statistic, from basic human rights to education to employment opportunity, it is better being black in 2013 than in 1963.  But the fact that bigotry and intolerance are still alive and thriving and those improved statistics are really just ‘improved’ two-and-a-half generations down the road…well, we need to do way better than that.

The unbridled emotion and the dream of a more peaceful coexistence as we elected a half-black president, have been hi-jacked by the disdain and disrespect he has had to face from an openly biased Congress, and the hope of more equality has been dashed by spotlighting the inequitably insurmountable hurdles that even a president, especially if he is black, must face.  We are, in many ways, less homogeneous than we were fifty years ago, aligning ourselves more and more by our ethnicities rather than our common goals.  We most definitely need to do better than that.

In my dream, Michael Rene lands on Earth in a flying saucer and warns us to get our shit together or Gort will lay some alien robot whoop ass on us all.  He has changed the safety phrase, so “Klaatu barada nikto” will no longer work.  Gort and I have bonded, (he has one of the few vinyl copies of Geno Washington’s That’s Why Hollywood Loves Me, and it’s his favorite), so me and my peeps are good to go…the rest of the world, (like I said, probably just a dream), 24 hours!