executive director’s message Inspiration from Leaders Past By David J. Lewis, MBA
We must treasure the efforts of those
who fought to secure our rights as citizens.
O
ne of the benefits of living in the Washington, D.C., area is the chance to explore and rediscover the monu- ments and historic buildings that populate this great city—or town, as everyone here likes to call it. One of my favorites is the Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial, which stretches along a beautiful section of the Tidal Basin that is resplendent with cherry blossoms each spring. Visiting the monuments that honor our founding fathers and absorbing the incredible wealth of knowledge in our national museums is a great refresher course in the inspiration that formed our country. These monuments are a poignant reminder that we must be ever- vigilant in protecting our democracy. As we continue to watch the devastation in Ukraine at the hands of Vladimir Putin, it is especially thought-provoking to reflect on the wisdom embodied in the words of those who fought for democracy in the past. A quote by Franklin Delano Roosevelt is especially relevant today. In describing the Nazi forces, he said, “ . . . they seek to estab- lish systems of government based on the regi- mentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers. . . . [They] call this a new order. It is not new, and it is not order. . . . Humanity will never permanently accept a system imposed by conquest and based on slavery.” FDR’s words, spoken in March 1941, as Adolf Hitler’s troops were marching through Europe, are just as relevant today as they were then.
Directly across the Tidal Basin from the FDR monument is the Martin Luther King Jr., memorial, which includes an incredible stone sculpture called the Stone of Hope and a gran- ite statue of the great civil rights leader carved by sculptor Lei Yixin. King’s words in his “Letter from a Birming- ham Jail” are a reminder that we must never
abandon our pursuit of justice for everyone: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice every- where. We are caught in an inescapable net- work of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Also inspiring are the words of Eleanor Roosevelt: “The structure of world peace can- not be the work of one man, or one party, or one nation. It must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world.” Cooperation is critical if we are to stand up to tyranny and aggression around the world. The last stop on this extended tour of West Potomac Park is the George Mason memorial. It was Mason’s original language in the Vir- ginia Declaration of Rights that inspired James Madison as he was crafting the United States Declaration of Independence. Interestingly, when Mason’s ideas for pro- tecting individual rights were unanimously rejected at the 1787 Constitutional Conven- tion, he campaigned against the Constitution’s passage. His words, however, lived on and eventually became the Bill of Rights, secur- ing American individual liberties for over 225 years.
Those founding principles are especially per- tinent as we witness the historic appointment of Hon. Ketanji Brown Jackson to the United States Supreme Court—the first Black female Supreme Court Justice. We must treasure the efforts that went into securing our rights and remember that our democracy requires and deserves constant care and attention. In the words of George Mason in March 1773, “I recommend it to my sons. . . . never to let the motives of private interest or ambition to induce them to betray, nor the terrors of poverty and disgrace or the fear of danger or of death deter them from asserting the liberty of their country, and endeavoring to transmit to their posterity those sacred rights to which themselves were born.”
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