Reclaiming The Dream (My First March)

The day was August 28, 2010. If you know your history, you know that August 28 is a special day. This year was the forty-seventh anniversary. Forty-seven years since August 28, 1963, which was the day of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Forty-seven years since Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his "I have a dream," speech.

It was a Saturday and I woke up early, very early. They were calling for big lines at the metro stations. The '63 march was being talked about for weeks and weeks. A new march was scheduled. I was going to go and march with my friend Debbie and all the thousands of others. This 2010 march was called the Reclaim The Dream March. It would be my first march.

Another event was planned for the same day. It was a rally of conservatives, happening not on the mall, but actually on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, a bold very move by the conservatives. Of course no one group of people owns the history of America. It's there for all of us. And although I did not agree with the talk and viewpoints of these conservatives, they were entitled to gather and say what they wanted. The conservative speakers who were going to broadcast their voices on this day were not in the White House. I was comforted by this. Times have changed.

But I was worried. The word conservative, taken in a political context, often rings very strangely in my ears. I'm willing to bet that in the 1963 march--as well as in the civil rights movement--that conservative participants were in the minority. Now, on this day, two very different groupings of people were heading down in huge numbers to Washington, D.C. I was worried about trouble. And they even prepped us about this before the march.

Like so many others, I was simply there to honor the memory of Dr. King as well as to honor and consider the great journey toward equality and freedom, which is one of the most important journeys of the human species. Good work has been done, but there is still much more to accomplish.

It turned out to be a good day and a great march. Pretty much all of the conservative rally goers that I saw simply stood there and watched us walk by. I'm not ready to take you through all the details of this day. Perhaps in my 100 Days book I'll delve a little deeper. Right now, I want to thank Debbie and Luna for accompanying me on this hopeful day. It was a day of tearful eyes, crying for pains of the past, and crying for the great beauty of something better. Equality and civil rights are very important. Just like the idea of good health. Equality is connected to freedom, and without freedom and some kind of descent health, what does a person have? Health care is a big business, and people suffer because of this. Discrimination still happens everyday.

And so we must remember love and Dr. King and the freedom that he worked for. We must remember that we have legs to stand up with. And remember this too: we have fantastic minds that allow for solving problems in peaceful ways. I hear Dr. King speak and I am moved to work harder and act kinder. He was a writer and a speaker and a friend to freedom.

But there are a few specifics that need to be mentioned. Debbie and Luna and I marched, but where did we start? We started at Dunbar High School. Dunbar High School, on Jersey Ave., Northwest, was America's first public high school for black students. We marched from there, down through the streets of Washington, under the hot sun, past the museums, past the National Mall, and over to the future site of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. (That's right. A new memorial is coming to D.C. One year from now and it should be open.) And there were more speakers at this site, including Martin Luther King III, the son of Dr. King.

And from there, we walked back to the mall. They had a really good exhibit set up on the grass near the center of the mall. I'll post a photo below. And on the speakers they were playing a continuous collection of Dr. King's speeches. Hearing those words in the air in D.C., it was a beautiful tribute to a bygone beauty, Dr. King.

The exhibit where we heard his recorded speeches:

I took these photos too. Scrolling down, they are in order, from Dunbar High School to the future site of the Dr. King Memorial:

A Good Summer Day in The Nation's Capitol

I've been caught up in this big 100 Days of Writing Project, and because of that I've been working extra hard for a while now. The act of writing is usually done, for me, in a place that's inside. Sometimes I can get some writing done outside, but usually I am inside. I've been inside a lot this summer.

So when the call came on my cell phone, late one night, I knew what I had to do. I talked with my friend on the phone and we planned a D.C. bike mission. He had a sleek black vintage road bike that we had revived not long ago. And I had plenty of bikes in the basement. For a city mission, I went with the old maroon Mongoose. It's a mountain bike that I bought from my brother. It's an old bike but it's descent. He got it at college. It works. And I'm not too worried when I lock it up. The thing about a mountain bike is that it has wider tires, and this is actually a nice thing when city streets get unruly with potholes or debris.

It had been a good while since sweat garage. I'd been so deep into my writing that I just hadn't taken the time to go hard and sweat it out. Now it was time.

The night before the mission, I had been up late, writing of course. I let myself sleep in till around eight o'clock. Then I threw some panniers on the bike, packed them with food and water and rain gear, and headed out the front door. I had a couple hours of good sweaty biking before I was even at the metro station. Actually, I met my friend on the street. He was driving in his car. I kept looking for him. He drove down Route 1 and saw me standing at the corner as I flagged him down. I still knew of a good secret free parking spot. I led the way there. Then we both took off on our bikes. "Want some whiskey?" he asked. I took a swig. "Needs ice," i said. We went to McDonald's for ice and water too.

The metro ride to the city was a delight with cold drinks to sip on and this crazy AC unit that was just pouring condensation onto a nearby seat. It was another good sweat garage day and this poor AC machine needed help. No one sat in that seat. Water puddled on the vinyl seat cover and even dripped on the carpeted floor.

It was a weekday, not too many people at the National Zoo. It rained hard and we got soaked, but it was so hot it didn't matter. It felt good. Summer rain coming down, with me looking up and smiling as water hit my face and fell in my mouth. The hardest thing was keeping the camera dry. I had a system of plastic bags, with a folded up paper towel in the innermost one, which acted as a desiccant.

The zoo was cool. A girl was going to meet us there, but she never did, and we were both okay with that. From the zoo, it's a long fine downhill road toward the National Mall. We rode this downhill, no rain, and stopped near 7th street NE. This was a popular street I knew and liked. And we could get food or drinks or coffee if we wanted. Then over to the National Galley of Art for another visit to this art exhibit that was one of my most favorite exhibits ever, an exhibit titled "Beat Memories," the photographs of Allen Ginsberg. (I would end up going to this exhibit about four times.) I looked and smiled. There they were, looking so beautiful in black and white: Allen, Jack, Neal, Gregory. There was even a photograph of Bob Dylan. And Allen had great handwritten captions for every one.

After good exercise and whiskey and art, everything else was just cake: outside the art gallery we hid under a tree for another big downpour, then over to the mall, bike west, keep flowing straight to the Lincoln Memorial, one of my favorite places in D.C. I always feel good on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. And I keep coming back. Part of it is because of the great freedom moment that happened there on August 28, 1963, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke the words "I have a dream" in his mighty speech. This great event is marked right there: a few words carved into the marble on the landing near the upper set of monument stairs. It's a special place.

The Lincoln Memorial was the last main stop on our D.C. mission. We stayed there for about an hour, sitting on the steps, talking, looking East, watching the sky change with sunset light and of course having to take some photos. We experienced a beautiful sunset that night.