TheStephensRecord.com

The Tri-Letter Bridge

There's been a lot of talk in New York lately over the renaming of the Tri-Borough Bridge, which links Manhattan with Queens and the Bronx.  The four million dollars set aside to change the signs has garnered a lot of complaints by area New Yorkers upset over the cuts in city transit and other services.  

The bridge will now be called the RFK bridge.  Ironic, since RFK fought hard against poverty  and for civil rights during his brief reign in Washington, under the leadership of his brother and later when running for President before being gunned down.  The idea of the bridge was by another Robert, Robert Moses, who single handedly changed the way New York looked, and built the gates by which millions would leave the city, creating one of the greatest divides in wealth between urgan and suburban communities.  You can't help but see this as you leave Harlem and enter into the Bronx, only to arrive half an hour later--most of that still traveling through the  high rise public houses in the Bronx--into the plush living of Westchester County and Western CT.

It would be nice to hear the  discussion turn from complaints to more of what RFK was talking about in the months leading up to his death, as he built on the message of MLK, who died ust a few months prior.

The Great change

The sound of change still lingers amidst the towering skyscrapers along Michigan Ave. and Adams Street.  And as the wind blows words around like confetti, lifting them up with every gust coming in off the Great Lake, tired and weary travelers stir from only a few hours sleep and breathe in the air of change.  And as President Elect Barack Obama wakes with his family, and ponders the task set before him, one thing stands clear on this day after Election Day 2008--that is: America reclaimed it's vision of Opportunity.    

The words were clear in his speech before hundreds of thousands of supporters standing on the soft weathered grass of Grant Park, and before a nation who watched on the television.  And for the late night cab drivers who drove around with their radios on, many of whom tired and weary travelers to a new land called America, the dreams of my own great grand parents came to life, exploding in high definition color.

Both candidates ran on a platform of change.  And there was no question that the end of the past eight years would bring about change.  It was written in the stars that shine bright over Lake Michigan.  And with the change in our hearts, like the change in our pockets, we purchased--as a nation--the debt that opportunity had been waged under for the past eight years; debt of individual greed over community values, debt of frozen liberties and fractured health equity, the debt of despair amongst New American families torn apart by a government who would rather see their dreams of hope and opportunity destroyed, rather then find real solutions to help immigrants come to America in search of opportunity.

The great CHange has begun.  And although it will take time to reach up and take the fruit from its branches, the labor of the harvest has shown its face by the millions.  And in saying, "Yes we can," we have returned America from a nation of "Me The People," to a nation of "we the People."