Agenda - 02-12-2008-e - Laserfiche WebLink

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Given the difficulty of what King was doing, West said King was not consistently an optimist how could he be? Instead, however, King was characterized as always a "prisoner of hope." No matter the predicament or the prospects, he was hopeful. He could no more escape hope that he could escape the Birmingham jail where he penned his famous letter. In his 1963 speech in Washington, one of his classic lines referred to "hewing a stone of hope from a mountain of despair." In Marion Wright Edelman's book, The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours, she quotes President Havel of Czechoslovakia who, while literally imprisoned, described ever - present hope in these terms, terms I relate to the hope of those who seek to advance a social justice agenda: Either we have hope within us or we don't: it is a dimension of the soul.... Hope in this deep and powerful sense is ... an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed ... It is also this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually to try things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do here and now. I do not mean to suggest that the Board of Commissioners should engage in quixotic endeavor or join Sisyphus in his rock pushing. But King personified this hope —a practical hope that must be . kept alive, must inspire us to do more than we are, and to never, never give up. A social justice goal must say and do as much. February 16, 2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ORANGE COUNTYS'OCIAL JUSTICE:GOAL REPORT Page 27 of 59. ..........