Tonight I am in Chicago for the Dream Speeches of the remarkably talented men and women who are about to graduate from i.c.stars* (www.icstars.org)
i.c.stars* is an amazing charity with whom I've had the great good fortune to work for the past five years, since I was a student at Kellogg. Their mission is to work with inner-city young adults, give them training in leadership and technology, then nurture them into truly world-class community leaders.
Simple, no?
Miles from simple. There are infinite societal obstacles to the success of the program and the success of their graduates, yet both shine as bright as the sun on this hot Chicago summer day.
And it's hot.
It's exactly the kind of day Spike Lee portrayed in his epic "Do the Right Thing." But rather than the slow boil of the New York day erupting into a tearing down of community, tonight in Chicago is about building. Taking a foundation carefully laid over weeks of effort, study, team-building and projecting twenty years into the future. What can I achieve? Who can I be? How can I take the momentum from my time at i.c.stars* and reinvent my life? Reinvent myself?
The speeches themselves were remarkably moving. I can't pretend to put myself in the shoes of the amazing people who spoke tonight. I can't imagine that I would have had the fortitude to excel were our backgrounds reversed. I don't know what well of courage I could have drawn upon to deliver my Dream Speech and I certainly can't imagine moving anyone in an audience as I was moved tonight.
Every time I think of the i.c.stars* Dream Speeches, I think of Dr. King's speech. How this speech taken in its historical context represented the apex of his professional work, the embodiment of his own dream deferred, borrowing from my much-beloved Langston Hughes. And what I see tonight here at i.c.stars* - what I see and feel every time I am physically present (I always feel that a part of me is emotionally here, no matter where I am in the world) is massive potential.
I see agents of change.
I see hope.
I see futures.
I see stars.
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