It has been a long week, at the end of a lot of long weeks, at the end of what feels like a lifetime of long months of wading through some craptastic excuses for behavior and subversion of justice. Just when you feel like you've hit the bottom of the well of disgust, something drags you further down to a depth you didn't even know existed.

So this morning? Let's talk about anything cheery or proactive.

What community initiatives have been started in your area? What actions have been taken that have caught your eye? Here's one on rape awareness that caught mine -- via a link from LGM -- and I'm not certain it's my style, but I can see the appeal for folks who haven't openly talked about their own survival story. It's not an easy conversation to begin, and the people involved in making the shirts to get the conversation started? Just some folks who thought it was important and set about making it happen.

Rick Perlstein's superb work on Richard Nixon and his place within the history swirling around him during that turbulent period of American history makes for great reading. Rick had a bit of a preview of his latest book, Nixonland, up, and it is worth reading for this nugget alone:

"And then I got into Memphis," he said. "And some began to say the threats—or talk about the threats—that were out, what would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers.

(What threats? Well, for one, a black merchant later testified that he heard a white businessman bark into a phone, "shoot the son of a bitch on the balcony," and mention $5000.)

"Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now.

"Because I've been to the mountaintop," he said, and the two thousand communicants clustered at the front of the cavernous hall began cheering, to the relief of King's associates, because the speech heretofore had not been up to his standards.

"And I don't mind," he said, as people started rising and shouting in waves, which upon their abeyance brought a quiet reflection.

"Like anybody I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will."

And the energy in the room began once more to crescendo, as a great preacher led his flock to transcendence.

"And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain.

"And I've looked over, and I have s-e-e-e-e-e-n, the promised land.

"And I may not get there with you, but I want you to know, tonight, that we as a people will get to the promised land! So I'm happy tonight! I'm not worried about any-thing! I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glor-y of the coming of the Lord."

He stumbled, spent, into Abernathy's embrace. This movement would make a way where there had been no way. They would march; they would win. The party repaired to the Lorraine Motel for the next day's work of planning, negotiating, exhorting, organizing, shuttling back and forth from each others' rooms. Here was a strange American thing: that the most distinguished Memphis hostelry for visiting Negroes—Count Basie; Martin Luther King—was a humble motel, but such were the wages of segregation, and so it was that, every time he wanted to go from one from one room to another, the most hunted man in America had to do so traversing the rain-slicked outdoor motel catwalks.

Across the street in a flophouse next to a fire station, a two-bit drifter and petty criminal named James Earl Ray thrust his .30-06 Remington through a bathroom window. King emerged from his room for dinner, chatted up some of his associates, hangers-on, admirers, made the acquaintance of a member of the band that was to play for them that night. The shot rang out....

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood up when his nation needed him to do so, and gave voice to the cries of those who did not feel that their voices would matter. So that others might be lifted up behind him. (YouTube) He was one man among many, many others who worked together in the common cause of justice and decency and equality. And he showed a nation and the world what commitment to a just cause, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, can do when you keep pushing people to open their minds and their hearts to something better, something bigger than themselves.

What is the next issue that needs tackling? What ought we all be working on, together, lifting up our voices to be heard on the mountaintops. How do we go about getting there? What work needs to be done to get things rolling? What is important to you -- and how to we make it better or get it moving in the right direction? What can you do about it today to get it moving?

Because that leader that you are looking for? It's you. Pull up a chair...

(YouTube above is an excerpt from Dr. King's Drum Major Instinct speech.)