Fighting for dreams

By JoAnne Young

“Hope lives in the shadow of this state’s Capitol,” I wrote in a Journal Star article six years ago. “It resides in the blocks that surround the Capitol square and stretches into Lincoln’s more irregular neighborhoods.” 

I wrote about the people who lived in that shadow, a seventh-grader who attended a parochial school across the street, a school that has since closed. I wrote about a young community activist living in an apartment in that shadow, with no car and no bike, who walked every work day to her job as a paraeducator at a Lincoln school. A family living paycheck to paycheck, who stood in a line each month at a Lincoln church to get food. 

 

In that shadow, those and many others who lived and worked and went to school there had hope. Their hope was for jobs and housing assistance, for prison reform and health care that fit their needs. For the rights and freedom and choices to live their lives without the dictate of politics. 

 

Now I see, when I visit our imposing Capitol, the shadows have moved inside. I apologize to our founders, but I roll my eyes each time I pass under the words: Political society exists for the sake of noble living.

 

I have always loved our Capitol, the carved marble and tile, the words etched in the stone, the principles it was built on, the hope it could offer. I had an office there for 14 years. I’ve sat in the Rotunda many nights after closing … 8 o’clock, 9 or 10 … when it was quiet and dimly lit and smelling of the soap used to buff the floors. There, I could marvel at its creation, its beauty and meaning, and how lucky I was to be there. 

 

Now, I see it more often in darkness. An absence has settled in, of love and openness for all the people who have a right to claim it. Hope has been covered over by political agenda. 

 

In that darkness, though, are fragments of light. Sometimes it falls on the messages we shouldn’t miss. The darkened library light perched beside our law books. Virtues of hope, courage, wisdom, justice, joining hands at the top of the dome, where fourth graders are told to look and learn. The life-giving winged figure casting seeds and flowers across the landscape despite the shadows closing in. 

 

The writing above the bench in the locked Supreme Court, seen through the glass dimly: “Eyes and ears are poor witnesses when the soul is barbarous." 

The Greek philosopher who is quoted there is the same who is credited with the idea that the only thing constant in life is change. We can't go backward or stand still. 

 

This is a condolence message, as it were, for all those who have been wronged by events and decisions in this arrestingly consequential building, those who have been shoved into its shadows. 

 

It is also a get-well-soon wish, that the light we see when the curtains are pulled back can heal it. We are not children, but on their behalf, we have become tethered to this state’s survival. My children were born here. Two of my grandchildren were. They have all left now. I want them to have something good to remember besides a state that turned its back on so many.

 

We can’t stay huddled in the darkness where selected officials believe they represent us. Represent me. In a place where, for me, trust is being peeled away session by session, election by election.  

 

“No matter how fast light travels,” says writer Terry Patchett, “it finds the darkness has always gotten there first and is waiting for it.”

 

Dreaming, says writer Jean Genet, is nursed in darkness. But then those dreams have to find the light, or else they fade. We can’t remember them. In the light we can remember the people who have rallied on our Capitol steps, who have fought for their dreams in hearing rooms. Who have reasoned and sometimes shouted their needs in the Rotunda, begging, “please don’t make us leave.”

 

In the light of this building, people have acted out their fears and watched as others acted out their power. 

 

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness,” wrote poet Mary Oliver. 

 

It took her years to understand that it would turn out to be a gift. 

 

Darkness can be debilitating, such that action seems pointless, someone once explained. Pointless but enormously necessary at the same time. The opportunity for hope exists in turmoil. 

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