Kamala Harris was awarded the prestigious NAACP Chairman’s Award for 2025 in Los Angeles a few weeks ago for her years in public service.
The awards celebrate the outstanding achievements and performances of people of color in the arts and those who promote social justice through their creative work.
After receiving the award, she said the following:
“While we have no illusions about what we are up against in this chapter in our American story, this chapter will be written not simply by whoever occupies the oval office nor by the wealthiest among us. The American story will be written by you. Written by us. By we the people.”
She continued:
“Some see the flames on our horizons, the rising waters in our cities, the shadows gathering over our democracy and ask ‘What do we do now?’ But we know exactly what to do, because we have done it before. And we will do it again. We use our power. We organize, mobilize. We educate. We advocate. Our power has never come from having an easy path. Our strength flows from our faith – faith in God, faith in each other, and our refusal to surrender to cynicism and destruction. Not because it is easy, but because it is necessary. Not because victory is guaranteed, but because the fight is worth it.”
At the end of my last blog I said I would discuss what we do about the coup Donald Trump is leading against our democracy and way of life.
Kamala Harris gave the answer. We use our power and black Americans can show us the way forward. They know what to do because they’ve been here before.
White Americans have not. We’ve lived with white privilege so long we take it for granted, but people of color don’t because they’ve never experienced privilege. They’ve never experienced the color of their skin not being the first thing white America notices about them.
Every freedom and right the Constitution grants all Americans they have had to fight for again and again and again. They have paid the price with their very lives.
This past Sunday was the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama when white policemen brutalized black Americans marching for the right to vote.
We need to listen to black Americans like Kamala Harris, Representatives Jasmine Crockett, Al Green, Maxwell Frost, Hakeem Jeffries, other black political leaders, black ministers like William Barber who know how to fight this fight.
They’ve had to fight to gain rights and freedoms. As white Americans our fight is to keep the rights we already have.
Black Americans know what it means to confront the powerful, to battle discouragement, to hear people say things no one in their right mind would believe, watch otherwise decent people speak and act in indecent ways.
The battle we are in is a non-violent civil war that will determine what kind of country we will have in the future, one that has three equal branches of government, one that is aligned with all other democracies of the world, or one that has an imperial presidency that is aligned with the dictators of the world.
It really is that serious.
And I believe black Americans are key to our victory because, as Kamala Harris said, they know what to do. We must follow them.
It was significant that almost every person who left Trump’s speech of lies about the state of the union were African American. They knew what had to be done and they had the courage to do it as they always have.
Let me say it again. Black Americans can show us the way because they’ve been here before. The civil rights movement was not about “black” rights. It was about American rights that were the tie that bound all Americans to one another regardless of color.
That was the compelling vision that defined the goal of their fight for civil rights – to open doors in order for everybody to have the same rights and freedoms.
What they did is the example we must follow – use our power, organize, mobilize, educate, advocate.
We cannot hesitate and we cannot wait. As Dr. King put it years ago, “…tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.”
White Americans need to understand that not since the Civil War have we faced “the fierce urgency of now” as we try to save our country. That is how serious this moment is.
It is also why faith in God is so critical as Kamala Harris said. There is always a spiritual dimension to the fight for justice, kindness, rightness.
“Our strength flows from our faith,” she told that NAACP audience, “faith in God, faith in each other, and our refusal to surrender to cynicism and destruction. Not because it is easy, but because it is necessary. Not because victory is guaranteed, but because the fight is worth it.”
Indeed, it is. Never in our history have the American people had to fight their own president and the entire Republican Party to save our democracy, but together they have put us precisely in this position. Nothing but their total and absolute defeat will do.
How ironic it is that the very people who were denied their rights and freedoms by those of us who are white are now the same people who can show us the way to save our own.
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