Friday, December 6, 2013

And so I went up to pay my respects to his statue, there behind a Long Fence, while the media was gathering itself at 5 AM in front of the Embassy of South Africa.  Flashing lights along the righthand curbside lane of Massachusetts Avenue.  "That's a pretty good fist," I offered, to a guy there on the sidewalk between the chain link fence and the mud.   He was a radio reporter and he asked me so I tried to explain what brought me here, in my off duty time.  He was from the countryside, that was one thing.  He'd gotten an education and studied law.  He had a great moral sense, obviously, and knew the right place to make a stance.  He had a sense of the deepest deep moral issue behind it all.  He was able to withstand all those twenty seven years of imprisonment, and remain nonjudgmental about those who imprisoned him.  He had the same sense of any great democrat, along with our own tradition here in America.

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