Progressive Ponderings: Citizens' Oath of Office

by Joe Mayer

Monday, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, an item reporting on the "Citizens' Oath of Office" stirred me deeply. On Tuesday, Inauguration Day, I viewed on television the nearly two million descendants of multi races and cultures gather as Obama called on us to shoulder "our" collective responsibility, a theme buried in the Citizens' Oath.

Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the U. of Texas in Austin first administered this "Oath of Office" in 2001 to the people who had come together on the steps of the state Capital to challenge the legitimacy of the incoming Bash administration, and repeated it in 2005.

As we celebrate the end of the eight-year Bush disaster we need to recommit to the work Obama requested of us by pledging Jensen's "Citizens' Oath of Office":

"I do solemnly pledge that I will faithfully execute the office of citizen of the United States, and that I will, to the best of my ability, help create a truly democratic world by (1) going beyond mainstream corporate news media to seek out information about important political, economic, and social issues; (2) engaging fellow citizens, including those who disagree with me, in serious discussion and debate about those issues; (3) committing as much time, energy, and money as possible to help build authentic grassroots political organizations that can pressure politicians to put the interests of the people over profit and power; and (4) connecting these efforts to global political and social movements fighting the U. S. empire abroad, where it does the most intense damage. I will continue to resist corporate control of the world, resist militarism, resist any rollback of civil rights, and resist illegitimate authority in all its forms. And I will commit to collective efforts in my community to help build joyful alternatives to an unsustainable consumer society."

President Obama didn't mention the words "common good," but his message surely described this thought, not only for us citizens of the United States, but also throughout the world. The "common good" will not be achieved without the participation of the "common person."