Dr. Martin Luther King Day

This January 19th, let's not forget that it was only about 25 years ago that Ronald Reagan and lots of others resisted making Dr. King's birthday a federal holiday. Of course, that was around the same time that the Reagan administration dragged its feet on responding to the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic and told us that we were unpatriotic socialists if we didn't believe in a trickle-down American dream. Those were the days when ketchup was considered a vegetable at school lunch tables and Grenada was considered to be the next firewall in preventing communist expansion in South America.

Times are tough for most of us right now, but we can at least hope that President Obama and his team can easily skip over all of the divisive fearmongering and take bold action to protect depositors, homeowners, the unemployed, the underemployed, those lacking decent health care and others who are among our most vulnerable.

If the last six months has taught us anything, I hope it finally taught us that none of us is immune to hardship and no matter your political stripe or demographic group, we all need each other to put our parochial interests aside and work toward a common good. That was Dr. King's message. Don't be jealous that he had it right decades before the majority of us. Be grateful.

Those of us who spent time marching to protect reproductive freedom, against nuclear proliferation, for the right of labor to organize without fear of reprisal, against complacency on HIV/AIDS, against apartheid and for the full inclusion of lesbians and gays in our constitutional framework, January 20, 2009 should be a celebration. We are no longer on the fringe of anything. We're poised to become mainstream.