“Democracy prevailed.” – These words spoken on Inauguration Day by our new president, Joe Biden, offered us hope. Indeed, January 20th was a great day for those of us who are hoping for change. President Biden, Vice President Harris and three former presidents filled their eloquent messages with the power of hope.

They also left us with a warning and a plea. They reminded us that change is hard; our challenges ahead are enormous and complex. We were asked to do a few things: to embrace unity as a shared goal and purpose, to be decent, to respect and listen to one another and admit we are and have been an imperfect union and we can do better.

Today, a little less than a week after Inauguration Day, I find myself wondering how long can we commit each day to work for justice and accept the discomfort and uncertainty that goes with deeper, long-term change. This is “cathedral time” work – work that will require guiding principles and persistence that will need to continue for generations.

What looked like real change when Martin Luther King Jr. was alive has been diluted by 40 years of resistance to change and power sharing in America.  Keaton Shenk, a reader from Virginia, shared excerpts from an article by John Paul Lederach, Senior Fellow at Humanity United and Professor Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, in a recent On Being Project newsletter.

Lederach suggests we pay attention to three guiding pillars that are believed to have sustained King and others in the fight for racial justice. The three pillars are 1) Don’t wait for slow incremental change; advocate and act for justice now. King warned against the “tranquilizing drug of gradualism” and advocated for the “fierce urgency of now.” 2) Persist – this is hard work and involves “hewing out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.” Lederach reminds us that sustained hope requires patience and persistence precisely because, as King observed, “the arc of the moral universe is long, even as it bends toward justice;” and 3) Unwavering commitment to nonviolence and our ultimate interdependence. Lederach observes that in King’s day, as now, grave, outrageous inequality persisted. Yet ultimately, Dr King summed up our need for each other in his I Have A Dream speech with the handful of words: “We cannot walk alone.” 

As we ponder what are our individual and collective actions to move the arc of justice forward, these pillars offer guidance based on experience from a different but similar era.

Grizel Ubarry, a friend and professional colleague of Puerto Rican descent who lives in Northern Jersey, is an economic and community development consultant, activist and sits on several foundation boards. She shared her reflections – frustrations and hopes – about the pace and commitment to working for change. I share these reflections to remind our white readers who are frustrated to consider the frustration of people of color in America.

Listening to interviews with our inspired youthful poet laureate Amanda Gordon and California’s new and first Latino Senator, Alex Padilla, reminded me that people of color are held to a different standard than white people and always pay a higher price for change. It is tempting for me, as a white man, to want some time off or to agree with others who think this isn’t our work to do. But I remind myself of Grizel Ubarry’s plea that all of us, particularly white people who have benefitted from a system stacked in our favor, ask ourselves daily: what is our work to do today to advance unity, mutual respect and equality?  

What sustains you or gets in the way of your taking actions small or big that advance our stated ideals of liberty and justice for all? What might you do today to advance our desire for a “more perfect union?”

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