This morning, I was delayed from all of my Saturday chores because I sat down and read the entire article on Cash Michaels’ film Obama in NC (“Local filmmaker Cash Michaels on Obama, Wake schools and race,” Aug. 25). I am so proud of my Independent Weekly for putting this story forth, of Bob Geary for writing it and of Cash Michaels for giving Geary something to write about.
The article comes at a time when we all, as North Carolinians, need to remember what we fought for. Goodness knows, living in the wake and debris of the reckless spending of the Bush presidency years, we are all distracted, and it’s hard to even remember sitting in a room with others who didn’t believe that it could be done and crying and screaming when Obama won N.C.; or remember the visceral feeling of spirits rising out of the frozen ground at the inauguration and looking up to see a black teen blocking my view because she climbed a tree to see, when so many years ago she could have been hung from that tree; hard to remember the spirit being lifted to a place of belonging and pride when we don’t know how to get those bills paid in this wake of overspending, in this moment of backlash and blame that’s being placed on the fella who came into the house after the mess was made.
But this article sent those visceral chills of truth-telling up my spine; it made me stop and remember, in the midst of figuring out how to turn 99 cents into a dollar, what exactly I am fighting for.
Zelda Lockhart
Durham
