We Cannot Walk Alone

March 16, 2020
By Mickey Friedman

When I was much younger I mistook inspiration for some mysterious surge of enthusiasm. Because I didn’t understand, I took it for granted.

Yes, I felt moved enough to transcend my significant shyness to stand at fifteen before our local Woolworth’s on Fordham Road with a sign protesting segregation. I understood more about it when I heard Martin Luther King and could more fully appreciate enthusiasm evolving into commitment. Never one for churches or synagogues, it was always impossible for me to listen to Martin without appreciating his faith, feeling it. Believing.

I realize now it was about hope. And hope was always transformative. Because there were so many reasons to despair. Hadn’t I as a boy been given a dog tag to wear with my name, address, blood type stamped for easy access. Crouching too many times beneath my school desk at P.S. 86, my back to the very large windows? Thinking at least that the dog tag would enable my parents identify this particular pile of ashes as mine, their eldest son. A consolation of sorts.

In every possible way, there was something so very black and white about segregation. For me, as I grappled with the confusion of growing up under the threat of nuclear obliteration – probably shouldn’t have read John Hersey’s Hiroshima – the struggle for integration brought resounding clarity.

The bravery of the Greensboro students was transcendent. Sitting with such dignity in the whites-only section of the local lunch counter.

I learned a lot more about inspiration when I marched past crowds of black folk out and clapping and singing as we marched past the neighborhoods to the capitol building in Montgomery, Alabama. For theirs was a prodigious commitment – I haven’t really felt comfortable singing We Shall Overcome since. It so often seems unearned. Because the singing in the South was born of inescapable struggle, of primal choice. Of years and years of being ‘buked and scorned and fighting back in every possible way. I was amongst those who had being beaten and jailed and jailed again. And I began to allow that inspiration to envelop me.

I’ve been remembering. reliving this because I found myself so annoyed and angry and so deeply disappointed watching this last Democratic debate from Las Vegas. So disheartened watching them bicker and joust and argue over what seems so minor in the face of the profound attack on our democracy. I’ve spent decades embracing the notion of Medicare For All but watching Sanders, Warren, Biden and Buttigieg try to tear each other apart over details of their programs when President Trump and his Republican accomplices are working so hard to take away health care coverage for so many of us. When so many struggle to pay for their prescriptions. So counterproductive. Not to mention so arrogant when Trumpcare threatens the lives of so many.

Thinking about inspiration because not a single one inspired me. Not a single one of them called me to a higher purpose. Filled me with hope.

Bernie talks of a movement. How about a movement to include Pete and Amy and Cory and Kamala and Bennet and Yang and Castro? Enough sniping over stupidities. A forgotten name. When I listened in 1963 to Martin and he spoke of his dream, he made sure it was our dream. A dream we could all embrace. And yet he never made it easy for us. He was clear about the crippling injustice. Unwilling to accept the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Insisting on the fierce urgency of now.

And when I talk of inspiration this is what I recall: “We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.”

As I watched the Democrats squander another opportunity to make the case for a better America, for a renewed movement to restore mutual respect, for a return to a fair America, I yearned for inspiration. For hope. For someone to remind us that we are so much better than those who cage children, who mock the disabled, who humiliate Gold Star parents because they practice a different faith. Someone who can remind suburban white women that sexism isn’t really that different than racism; someone who can remind us that we are all immigrants. That we cannot walk alone.