T

He looked at me with genuine interest, though in truth I could have been
anyone. It seemed clear that he bestowed this same degree of warmth upon every
person who crossed his path. My interaction with Mandela was both quiet and
profound—maybe more profound, even, for its quietness. His life’s words had
mostly been spoken now, his speeches and letters, his books and protest chants,
already etched not just into his story but into humanity’s as a whole. I could feel
all of it in the brief moment I had with him—the dignity and spirit that had
coaxed equality from a place where none had existed.

I was still thinking about Mandela five days later as we flew back to the
United States, traveling north and west over Africa and then across the Atlantic
over the course of a long dark night. Sasha and Malia lay sprawled beneath
blankets next to their cousins; my mother dozed in a seat nearby. Farther back in
the plane, staff and Secret Service members were watching movies and catching
up on sleep. The engines hummed. I felt alone and not alone. We were headed
home—home being the strange-familiar city of Washington, D.C., with its white
marble and clashing ideologies, with everything that still needed to be fought and
won. I thought about the young African women I’d met at the leadership forum,
all of them now headed back to their own communities to pick up their work
again, persevering through whatever tumult they faced.

Mandela had gone to jail for his principles. He’d missed seeing his kids grow
up, and then he’d missed seeing many of his grandkids grow up, too. All this
without bitterness. All this still believing that the better nature of his country
would at some point prevail. He’d worked and waited, tolerant and
undiscouraged, to see it happen.

I flew home propelled by that spirit. Life was teaching me that progress and
change happen slowly. Not in two years, four years, or even a lifetime. We were
planting seeds of change, the fruit of which we might never see. We had to be
patient.

hree times over the course of the fall of 2011, Barack proposed bills that
would create thousands of jobs for Americans, in part by giving states money to
hire more teachers and first responders. Three times the Republicans blocked
them, never even allowing a vote.

“The    single  most    important   thing   we  want    to  achieve,”   the Senate  minority