I remember seeing a picture of Fidel Castro in a parade with lots of other Cubans. It was during the emergency years, the “special period” when Cuba’s relationship with the Soviet Union had collapsed and there was little gas or oil or fertilizer; people were struggling to find enough to eat. It was perhaps Cuba’s nadir, as a small Caribbean island nation considered a dangerous threat by its nearest neighbor, the United States — which, during this period, tightened its embargo. Fidel, tall, haggard, his clothes hanging more loosely than usual from his gaunt frame, walked soberly along, surrounded by thousands of likewise downhearted, fearful people: He, like them, waving a tiny red, white and blue Cuban flag. This photograph made me weep; not only because I love Fidel and the Cuban people, but also because I was envious.
However poor the Cubans might be, I realized, they cared about each other and they had a leader who loved them. A leader who loved them. Imagine. A leader not afraid to be out in the streets with them, a leader not ashamed to show himself as troubled and humbled as they were. A leader who would not leave them to wonder and worry alone, but would stand with them, walk with them, celebrate with them — whatever the parade might be.
This is what I want for our country, more than anything. I want a leader who can love us. This is not what we usually say, or think of, when we are trying to choose a leader. People like to talk about “experience” and war and the economy, and making Americans look good again. I care about all these things. But when the lights are out and I’m left with just the stars in a super-dark sky, and I feel the new intense chill that seems to be the under-breath of even the hottest day, when I know that global warming may send our planet into a deep freeze even before my remaining years run out, then I think about what it is that truly matters to me. Not just as a human, but as an American.
I want a leader who can love us. And, truthfully, by our collective behavior, we have made it hard to demand this. We are as we are, imperfect to the max, racist and sexist and greedy above all; still, I feel we deserve leaders who love us. We will not survive more of what we have had: leaders who love nothing, not even themselves. We know they don’t love themselves because if they did they would feel compassion for us, so often lost, floundering, reeling from one bad thought, one horrid act to another. Killing, under order, folks we don’t know; abusing children of whose existence we hadn’t heard.
I would say that, in my lifetime, it was only the Kennedys, in national leadership, who seemed even to know what compassion meant; certainly John, and then Bobby, were unafraid to grow an informed and open heart. (After he left the White House, President Carter blossomed into a sheltering tree of peace, quite admirably.) I was a student at a segregated college in Georgia when John Kennedy was assassinated. His was a moral voice, a voice of someone who had suffered; someone who, when looking at us in the south, so vulnerable, so poor, so outnumbered by the violent racists surrounding us, could join his suffering with ours. The rocking chair in which he sat reminded us that he was somehow like us: Feeling pain on a daily basis and living a full-tilt life in spite of it. And Bobby Kennedy, whom a mentor of mine, Marian Wright (later Edelman), brought to Mississippi years later. He had not believed there were starving children in the United States. Wright took him to visit the delta. Kneeling before these hungry children in the Mississippi dirt and heat, he wept. We were so happy to have those tears. Never before had we witnessed compassion in anyone sent out to lead us.
The present administration and too many others before it have shown the most clear and unapologetic hatred for the American people. A contempt for our minds, our bodies and souls that is so breathtaking most Americans have numbed themselves not to feel it. How can they do this or that awful unthinkable thing, we ask ourselves and each other, knowing no one in power will ever bother to answer us. I’m sure we, the American people, are the butt of jokes by those in power. Our suffering not making a dent in their pursuit of goals that almost always bring more tragedy and degradation to our already fragile, disintegrating republic. Our taxes are collected without fail, with no input from us; sometimes, because we lack jobs, paid with money we have to borrow. Our children are sent places they never dreamed of visiting, to harm and make enemies of people who, prior to their arrival, had thought well of them. Kind, smart, freedom-loving Americans.
Where does this leave us average Americans, who feel the chill of global warming, the devastation of war, the terror of the food crisis, the horror of advancing diseases? Hopefully with a sense of awakening: That we have had few opportunities to be led by those who have the capacity to care for us, to love us, and that we, in our lack of love for ourselves, have, too often, not chosen them. Perhaps with the certainty that this self-defeating habit of accepting our leaders’ contempt need not continue. Maybe with the realization that we, the people, are truly the leaders, and that we are the ones we have been waiting for.
