Page 10 - Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality

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Act of 1965 has been neutered, apparently because it was working too well .13 The rights of unions to organize and collectively bargain are under attack, most notably in Wisconsin14 . Affirmative action, a woman’s right to choose, etcetera, etcetera . The arc of the universe does bend, but it is not a smooth curve .
The challenge before us is straightforward . Will we allow our children to be the first generation to have less opportunity, less equality, than their parents had? One thing we know for certain is that if the American Dream advances, it will not happen on its own . It will be because we advance it . It is admittedly a big challenge . But considering how far we have come, we should not doubt our ability to right the course once again .
If the essential idea of America is the American Dream, then American government has no more important task than making that Dream real . If the Declaration of Independence does not describe advancing reality, if all men (and of course, women) are not created equal, and endowed with certain unalienable Rights, including Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, then our mutual national enterprise has failed . The Declaration further notes that governments are instituted to secure these rights . We can disagree about the best means to that end: what policies will improve social mobility, and allow people of all backgrounds to fully participate in the economic, social and political life of our nation? But we can no longer question the primal importance of finding the correct answer .
As a great poet once wrote:
America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be! 15
But only if we make it so . •
13 See, e.g., Deborah N. Archer, Still Fighting After All These Years: Minority Voting Rights 50 Years After The March On Washington, 17 Berkeley J. afr.-am. l & pol’y 69 (2015), available at http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/bjalp/vol17/ iss2/7.
14 SeeRobertSamuels,Walker’sAnti-unionLawhasLaborReelinginWisconsin,washingTon posT,Feb.22,2015,http://www. washingtonpost.com/politics/in-wisconsin-walkers-anti-union-law-has-crippled-labor-movement/2015/02/22/1eb3ef82- b6f1-11e4-aa05-1ce812b3fdd2_story.html.
15 Langston Hughes, Let America Be America Again, available at http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/let-america- be-america-again.
Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality