Another Crack in the Iceberg

Documentary filmmaker Yoruba Richen traveled to Washington for the inauguration with her mother Aishah Rahman, a playwright and professor at Brown University. From the March on Washington to the inauguration of Barack Obama. Rahman, in her work and politics, has followed the arc of American history. Richen talks to her mother about the significance of this inauguration and the Martin Luther King holiday, the March on Washington, and the power of protest politics. She says the feeling in America today is like that of South Africa after apartheid. People are breathing collectively and there is hope.

Can you feel it? Rahman talks about the breathing and hope in South Africa when apartheid fell. I was in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary in March 1990. When the power goes out in the middle of the night, you can see the candles of hope. Can you see the lights?