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GIVE TRUMP A CHANCE BUT ONLY WITH OUR PRODDING
By Uriah J. Fields
Give President Trump a Chance to do right.
Prodding him with activism will make him do right.
Donald J.Trump may have become President by chance.
But it is the people's duty to make him do right.
Every since Donald J. Trump was elected President of the United States, "Give President Trump a Chance" has been the song we have heard again and again with resounding echoes.
This we have heard despite Trump's distasteful rhetoric during and since the presidential campaign. Contrary to his rhetoric, some people say, "Just give him a chance he might do what is good for the American people." They may add Trump's favorite refrain, "Make America great again." When I hear that latter statement, I shudder in my boots, so to speak, as I ponder whether this "Make America great again" is about the time when racist Strom Thurmond, a senator from South Carolina, filibustered 24 continuous hours, longer than any other Senator had ever filibustered, in an attempt to defeat passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. Or, is this about the time when I returned to my native State of Alabama after serving in the Korean War and found it difficult to vote.
Although Hilary Clinton received nearly three million more popular votes than Donald Trump, he won most votes in the electoral college and was elected president. Obviously, that is an unfair system for electing a President. But Trump is President for the next four years. The undemocratic electoral college system does not allow for each person's vote to count equally in electing the President. There cannot be any justification for allowing a voter in California to count for less than a voter in Utah. This practice reminds me of the three-fifth of a person status assigned to African Americans in the U. S. Constitution before the Constitution was amended. And after it was amended in some Southern states African Americans were counted as less than three-fifth of a person or not a person at all.
Give Trump a chance but prod him, using a prod that matches his rhetoric and actions. I believe with appropriate prodding Trump will do more good for African Americans than President Obama did or Hilary Clinton would be able to do had she been elected President. This is true because of his adversarial disposition he can be prodded more effectively than Obama or Clinton.
The prodding process involves: Representatives in Congress, especially, Democrats opposing Trump the same as Republicans opposed Obama, except when Trump's proposals are good for all Americans. However, this prodding cannot be effective if it is left entirely to elected representatives. People in the communities across America must organize and protest, using all available news outlets, including, radio, TV, the social media, religious organizations (that much too often have lagged behind other organizations in fighting for justice for all), and person to person conversations to communicate their messages of opposition to UnAmerican policies that will be offered by Trump and declare their own agenda for America. The people still have the power, if only they use it individually, but more importantly, collectively. Let me cite two important historic events that reveal the power of people to advance justice.
The first event is the Montgomery Bus Boycott that continued for more than a year. This action, on the part of the people, caused the Supreme Court of the United States to render a decision that declared segregation on Montgomery buses was unconstitutional, hence desegregated buses in Montgomery. (I, Uriah J. Fields, was one of the leaders of that protest movement, as was Martin Luther King, Jr. King was president and I was secretary of the Montgomery Improvement Association that conducted the bus boycott. Of course, there were other leaders, including E. D. Nixon, treasurer of the organization, Ralph Abernathy, the brain of the movement and A. W. Wilson, pastor of the church where the first mass meeting was held on December 5, 1955.)
The second event is passage of the 1965 voting Rights act that was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. It was the outcome of protest marches, including the Selma to Montgomery March, referred to as "Bloody Sunday," when Congressman John Lewis (then in his twenties) and others were brutally beaten by white racists, the killing of four African American children in the church in Birmingham, Alabama, that was bombed by white racists and the deaths of a number of people, black and white, who protested to extend the right to vote in the South to African Americans.
These two events indicate that although many people, at the time, agreed with Alabama Governor George Wallace's declaration, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," they did not have sufficient power to prevent people who believed in justice for all from achieving desegregation on buses in Montgomery and gaining the right to vote for African Americans in the South.
Today, "we the people" can take similar actions as taken by people in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties that will make Trump do the right thing just as the Montgomery Bus Boycott protest made the Supreme Court do the right thing and the protests for voting in the South made the Congress and President Johnson do the right thing. President Trump can become a good president, not by chance alone, but by being prodded by the American people. "What was meant for evil can be for good."
While in the final analysis there is no final analysis, this writer encourages "we the people" to "Say YES to "Give Trump a Chance but not carte blanche and certainly not without prodding him. Giving Trump a chance with Americans prodding him to do the right thing can be good for all Americans. (A word of caution: prodding is more than vetting.)
WE CAN WIN! WE HAVE A WINNING HAND, IF ONLY WE USE IT! AND WE WILL USE IT!
Copyright 2017 by Uriah J. Fields
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