Manifest Hope Arts Festival

The Manifest Hope Arts Fest was just that … the call of a progressive reawakening in Alabama.  But I don’t think I’ll tell you about it, I’ll let this letter we received from an attendee speak for us:

What … the Manifest Hope Art team pulled off was nothing short of
fabulous and I have been on a high ever since! The intangible elements
of yesterday are what I would like to discuss in this email.

No matter what happens on Tuesday’s election (and I think we will win!)
this campaign has been a life-changing experience for me and I believe
for the majority of US citizens and world citizens. The past month I
have been in several countries and everywhere I go our election and
Obama has captured the world’s excited attention. People around the
world are waiting like expectant grandparents, anxious to see what is
delivered next Tuesday. And what they wouldn’t give for an opportunity
to vote in this election! Never before has a vote meant so much to so
many.

In a more obvious, grander way, yesterday’s Manifest Hope event was what
we all experience in our day-to-day lives, and demonstrates the
fundamental change in our society that has happened and is continuing to
happen along racial, economic, religious and cultural lines. It is a
coming together of diversity that has my heart filled with happiness to
the bursting point. Who would know that in our lifetimes we would see
love conquer hate and acceptance replace close mindedness? And here in
Alabama, in my lifetime, we have come together, remembering the “four
angels” dead in Birmingham 45 years ago, but also building new memories
like our Manifest Hope Festival yesterday. This is the truth we all
know, that we all experience every day, the truth of people being kind
to one another and accepting one another and beyond that, enjoying and
rejoicing in one another. It is not so much like the rainbow that
happens occasionally; it is more like the spectrum of colors refracted
in our every day light, and our every day experiences. I’m not saying
there is no longer darkness. I am saying that for the first time in my
50 years I know beyond a doubt that our prophets Jeremiah and Martin saw
this day, today, a day when justice is rolling down like waters. And we
are being flooded with those waters of justice right now, just when we
need them the most. Y’all, we are the orphaned children of these
prophets and we HAVE kept walking and we DID keep hoping, knowing that
days like we experienced yesterday, and will experience in future days
are real, are possible, and within our grasp. The waters of justice will
not go flow back into the darkness because we are in the light and of
the light and carry those waters within us.

If you came to the event and would like to share your own reflections, pictures or anything else, please feel free to email them to ashpolitics@gmail.com or leave them here, in the comments.  If you do email them, please let us know if we can share them on the website.