I'm a different person than I was before.  It used to be the only part of my body which was political was my mouth.  I could talk the talk, but walk the walk? Fuhgetaboutit.  As I was driving home yesterday, my legs tired from walking through a neighborhood I had never even driven through before, I started wondering when did this change happen, when did I decide to do more, what compelled me to actually get out and participate in the Walk for Obama?  I hadn't known it when I drove there in the morning, but by the end of the day I had come to the realization that somewhere between the images of Abu Ghraib and Katrina, something inside of me snapped, something said enough is enough, this is not who we are as Americans, this is not who I am as a person.

When I was young and did something wrong to my sister, or my brother, or a neighborhood kid, my parents would take me by the ear, march me up to the person I had wronged and I would have to apologize.  It didn't matter if I protested and said I didn't mean to, it was a mistake, I had to apologize because I had wronged another and you shouldn't do that.  And then I was punished. I never thought the punishment part was fair, hadn't I already apologized?  But my parents would explain, "That's not how it works. There are consequences for our actions."  I don't ever remember a case where my mother told me to march upstairs and apologize to my sister and then come down and have ice cream.  That's not how it works.