When the eminent and legendary Joseph Lowery, chairman emeritus of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, uttered the words "In the morning" yesterday, there was a palpable and immediate electrifying response from the attendees at yesterday's inspiring ceremonies celebrating the life and works of Coretta Scott King, the First Lady of the international Civil Rights movement. Indeed, the reaction was almost soporific amongst both the bereaved and the viewers, bespeaking a shared spiritual inner knowledge and realization that Lowery, by pointedly utilizing that well-honed meaningful preacher phrase, was going to speak truth to power and lay down explicit metrics of accountability for President Bush and the other office-holders present.
In the morning, will the words and deeds meet the needs?? Sure, the words praising Coretta sounded fine, but in the morning, whatcha gonna do??
In the morning, will you honour the Prince of Peace so graciously praised at the funeral and be peacemakers??
In the morning, will you take the example of the relentless FBI hounding of Dr. and Mrs. King to heart and terminate extraconstitutional electronic survelliance programs at variance from Congressional mandates??
In the morning, will you learn from Mrs. King's decades-long steadfast opposition to homophobia and cease the political baiting of gays and lesbians striving for equal human rights??
In the morning, will you learn from Dr. and Mrs. King's ceaseless fight against oppression by stopping the use of eztraordinary rendition and torture around the world??
In the morning, will you learn from Coretta's innate honesty and apologize for lying this country into a disastrous never-ending war based upon non-existent WMD's??
In the morning, will you ever begin to rebuild the City of New Orleans and dedicate your political life to improving the lives of those displaced by Hurricane Katrina??
In the morning, will you ever exert American influence so as to bring the horrific and ongoing situation in Darfur into a better place??
In the morning, will you enact universal health insurance??
In the morning, will you raise the minimum wage??
In the morning, will you allocate your budget priorities so that the needs of the poor and infirm are better addressed by government policy??
In the morning, will you encourage and strengthen educational priorities by fully funding primary and secondary education and college loans??
Dr. and Mrs. King's principal mission while on Earth was to combat war, racism and poverty. In the morning, what will we all do to further their lofty goals?