Reginald Meeks: A Career Spent Working for Peace
"Although a recent member of the Together We Will, my instinct and experience has proven that individuals, groups and even communities are more influential when they collaborate and work together. For proof, one only needs only to look around and see how religion, politics and social institutions often bend over backward to separate, build barriers and work to keep us apart from each other.
"Muhammad Ali made many prophetic statements. One I’ve always taken to heart is: 'The man who is the same at 50 years of age as he was at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.' My personal and my professional life continues to deepen and expand in ways that sometimes surprise me. I am now able to appreciate even more the tireless work those before us undertook to secure, to protect and to expand even the most basic of rights enjoyed in this nation — the right to vote!
"Sadly, after all the years of fighting to secure our right to vote, this current generation is facing unprecedented assaults from the right, ultra and alt-right conservative legislators on the state level, congressional members who feel they must cater to far-right extremists out of fear of a primary election challenge, and let’s not forget activist federal district and Supreme Court Justices put in place to carry out specific conservative political agendas, all represent challenges of unprecedented proportions.
"It’s important for people to realize an oft-forgotten truth. The Founding Fathers were not considering most of us when they wrote the Bill of Rights and the Constitution itself. Their focus was on protecting the land owning, literate white males of wealth, and in justifying their rebellion against the English Crown. Only through generations of struggle and sacrifice and using our own words to inspire the common man — and woman — did we amend the core tenants of the nation to include women, Native Americans, ethnic minorities, immigrants, people of varying religious faiths, the differently abled, etc., and secure for them those protections intended only for a few!
"This current political era is an especially poignant one, I believe that's because it has placed a mirror before us. That mirror is allowing us to reflect our national soul to the world. I suppose each administration does this through its policies and priorities, but this is an especially trying and troubling era.
"Because it is, these coming years make it absolutely necessary that each of us remain active, alert, engaged and unrelenting to ensure our values and principles are not lost in the confusion and amid the turmoil of political expedience. As Michelle Obama once stated, 'When they go low, we go high,' and in doing so, we claim the moral high ground over political dogma that is rooted in divisiveness, and dependence on money and power being wielded by the few over the many.
"So, what is my role and responsibility? What is ours? I will, and we must, remain rooted in the belief that we as a People and as a Nation are stronger when we remain steadfast and together. That doesn’t demand we be in lockstep on every issue, but that we support core principles:
- right to vote
- right to judicial redress
- freedom of speech
- freedom from governmental overreach - right to safe, healthy communities
"Those priorities we agree on; these are the priorities we must ensure the government protects.
- right to vote
- right to judicial redress
- freedom of speech
- freedom from governmental overreach - right to safe, healthy communities
"Those priorities we agree on; these are the priorities we must ensure the government protects.
"Additionally we must all work together to ensure our collective safety and security for the future. As a favorite songwriter of mine wrote, 'Peace is not the absence of war. It is the absence of rumor of war, of threats of war, preparation for war. We have to work for peace.'
"Thank each of you for caring enough to spend this time with me and to pay attention!"
