Barack Obama on When To Speak Up & Stick With It
You know, don’t tell me you’re a Democrat, but you’re kind of disappointed right now, so you’re not doing anything. No, now is exactly the time that you get in there and do something,” he said. “Don’t say that you care deeply about free speech and then you’re quiet. No, you stand up for free speech when it’s hard. When somebody says something that you don’t like, but you still say, ‘You know what, that person has the right to speak.’ … What’s needed now is courage.
Barack Obama via CNN
He’s not wrong. Over the summer, I had three threads come together around the idea of taking a nice bundle of opinions and making them real in a way.
One, I just finished a biography of Frances Perkins. She responsible for everything from Social Security to Worker’s Compensation to Employment Protections to Child Labor Laws to the 40 Hour Workweek to the existence of building codes in America. Kind of a big deal. She started on these projects in 1900 out of college (before she was allowed to vote)…and just never stopped even during the 10 years of Republican administrations when new labor laws seemed hopeless. She had firm opinions but focused on making them real – even if it meant very small wins at a municipal level.
Two, I got to visit several National Parks. And, again, there’s this pattern of public lands and National Parks where, yes, it took an Act of Congress and there were a lot of people involved…but there was always like one person who did it. Not a big group…like one person. For Crater Lake National Park, it was a newspaper guy from Ohio. And that generally holds for every designated public land. Every single one was an idea from some random person who just stuck with it. They had an opinion about land that the American people should protect and preserve for Americans to come…and they did it.
Three, I was re-reading my Grandma’s memoirs. And it turns out that she helped write the first health ordinances for Athens-Clarke County. For context, she was 21 at the time, with no college degree or credentials, but was adamant about being helpful & useful in her job (a clerk / gofer). Here’s what she said –
I did lots of different things in addition to the clinics, keeping records of births and deaths, helping write ordinances for food service, dairies, sanitation and dog control. Dr. Hodgson, the veterinarian, and I wrote the first food service ordinance for Clarke County. He would sit down beside me at the typewriter and dictate which made it easier for him to see what was being written. I liked to hang around in the lab while the lab technician was doing tests on blood, urine or whatever she had going. That was the first time I had ever seen a distillery. It was used to make sterile water. I learned a lot about cleanliness, diseases and medicines there.
Again, she was an incredible person in every way. And tied for the Best Grandma in History…but I would have never taken her for someone who’d get involved in writing health ordinances. She had strong opinions on vaccines (that they were God’s gift through science and anyone who didn’t take them was foolish)…but it turns out she also took those opinions and made them real in a way.
