Obama: "The Best Is Yet To Come"

[sheshe2]

Former Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak wrote this on his Facebook page this weekend:

I was really overwhelmed as I was telling him that because it was such a moment of pride, a beginning of a long path to him getting to the White House and, now it was over. He put his arm on my shoulder and looked at me intensely, saying, "We aren't done yet."

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He told me about the work he will be doing on youth and families, on getting more people engaged in voting, on protecting liberties. Then he said the words that meant the most to me: "The best is yet to come."

I believe Barack Obama was the greatest President of my lifetime, but as I heard him talk, I remembered he is about more than political office. At so many times---his amazing speech about race in the first campaign, his powerful words after Sandy Hook, his second inaugural when laid out the imperative of attacking climate change---he has moved us beyond politics to elevate our values. This is his great opportunity now; just as America faces a crisis of values, a great debate about who we really are at our core, he will be speaking not as just a politician, but as a moral leader. In many ways we need that even more today than great politicians.


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We said goodbye and I walked out of the White House, past that reviewing stand, but didn't feel the same sense of dread. Donald Trump will be my President and I won't try to delegitimize him even though many, including Trump, tried to do that to Obama for eight years. But we can fight for what we believe, and fight back, hard, when we see something wrong. And, remembering that look in the President's eye when he told me, "We aren't done yet", and remembering all we have seen during his remarkable Presidency, I know he will be with us every step.

Later that night Megan and I went to a farewell party at the White House. I talked to Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan who has gone back to Chicago to work on youth violence prevention, to former Attorney General Eric Holder who is organizing opposition to unfair redistricting around the country, former White House political director and Ambassador Patrick Gaspard who is working on citizen engagement with George Soros, Gabby Giffords is fighting the gun violence that robbed her and so many others of so much, activist actors like Alfre Woodard who has been through waves of social movements saying she's now ready for the next phase. Obama has been a President but Obama is also a movement that isn't done on Jan 20.


Read More: http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2017/01/obama-best-is-yet-to-come.html

I read this right after the election and at that time was in shock and to disheartened to absorb the words. So, after 30 days of this new president I reread former Mayor Rybak's words..." Obama has been a President but Obama is also a movement that isn't done on Jan 20." It dawned on me that this is truth. We have seen it as we collectively are rising up to march, to protest and to RESIST. Millions of people one voice and we will persist as Elizabeth Warren did just the other day. The words of Obama are clear:

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

We are the movement, we are the change that we seek and he will be there with us every step of the way.