We Stand United

With the ending of these past eight years, today I will look back to the beginning-to remember a day when hope and possibility in America reached an apotheosis. While those hopes and possibilities were ultimately unfulfilled and unrealized, they are now, in the great dark winter to come, the fuel to resist the cold nights, to stand united in the fires of injustice, intolerance, and ignorance demanding that the great American experiment not end today, but be made to finally uphold those exceptional values and ideals inscribed in its fabric, for EVERYONE. 

​“…we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.” – Barack Obama, “Speech on Race” in Philadelphia, March 18, 2008

In January 2009 I stood freezing on the National Mall in Washington D.C. with two million others witnessing Barack Obama become President of the United States. Standing there with faces black, brown, and beige there was a palpable sense of excitement and anticipation that the truly unlimited opportunity the original “promise of America” represented, seemed finally reachable to not only someone like me, but seemly anyone and everyone with ability, a dream, temerity, perseverance, and luck. That day felt like a beginning, where the phrase “one nation” took on renewed resonance and meaning. And while the realities of governance since then have tempered the fires of hope, they have not extinguished them. No matter her ultimate direction America is forever changed, not only for the now but for the “unborn millions to come” in the long now. 

- Joseph C. Phillips Jr., from the program notes to "Unlimited" from Changing Same

Listen to "Unlimited"