When I first moved to this area I was paid my legal services salary through a CETA grant. CETA was a job creation program that was abolished several years later. Besides funding me and a host of others, CETA provided funds to hire an artist to do an art installation at City Hall in Norwich, which also housed the Superior Court. The painting consisted of one panel depicting militant poor people of various ethnicities. On a separate panel was this quote from Frederick Douglass:
Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and never will.
It actually hung there in the entrance hall to the temple of Power for at least several months, until Power removed it.
Lately there’s a lot of talk about the difference between the Edwards and Obama approach to achieving “change”, and the debate brought this quote to mind. If anyone could speak with authority on the issue, it was Frederick Douglass. Douglass would no doubt be pleased about Obama’s candidacy (though amazed that he was running as a Democrat), but he’d most likely agree with Edwards approach to achieving change.
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