Progressive Values Stories: Chris Young on Opportunity

Written by: Edwin Rutsch on Apr 1, 2008 11:45 AM EDT

  I attended an Obama house party in Oakland, California and met Chris Young.  Chris is a lawyer who gave up his high paying corporate job to work on the Obama campaign. When I asked him what are progressive values, he talked about the importance of opportunity. He told the story of his African-American father who was in Folsom prison and how some opportunities opened up for him. Those opportunities trickled down to personally affect Chris' life. 

" Ability is nothing without opportunity."  Napoleon Bonaparte
 
 "Start where you are. Distant fields always look greener, but opportunity lies right where you are. Take advantage of every opportunity of service." Jim Rohn

Chris Young:  To me progressive values that stem from and find strength in communities that have historically been disenfranchised, that have historically been ignored and have historically suffered great injustice.  And what we saw in the civil rights era was a progressive movement.  And I think that the values of that era were and in a sense continued to be a place, a land of opportunity regardless of what your color, race, and gender is.

(more)

  You should, and you ought to, and you deserve to be offered a full and fair opportunity to succeed and to thrive in each respective community and throughout America.

Progressive values are not values that are associated closely with special interests, progressive values to me are not value that cater to or are appreciated by a minority.  They are the values that Presidential candidate Barack Obama espouses and believes in.  And those are values that within them there’s a common ground whether you’re rich, poor, black, white, woman, man, gay, lesbian, straight.  We all share a desire to help our common neighbor to help raise our children and our society will be better than the one left by our parents and grandparents.

Progressive values to me are about moving forward, and to move forward together, not for some to move forward and others to be left behind. 

Edwin:  Could you boil it down to a few terms?  You mentioned opportunity.  Do you think of that as a single value?  Is that a value that you have personally?  What value is most important to you.

Answer:  Opportunity.  I value the value of opportunity.  Opportunity is most important to me because through opportunity and to be afforded opportunity, everyday people will be able to realize their potential and have that potential acknowledged and appreciated by the government and your local community. 

Me personally, I have been fortunate to have a number of opportunities.  They have come through a combination of hard work.  I’ve also been fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time. 

Edwin:  Would you like to talk about those times when you felt that opportunity was manifest?

Answer:  My father is African-American.  He was born and raised in Watts, California, and spent a lot of time in prison, never went to a day of high school.  On his last day in Folsom prison, he decided to move to Sacramento, a neighboring city.  And with that decision, he promised himself that he would never return to the lifestyle that had led him to prison for the umpteenth time. 

He lived in a small studio apartment in downtown Sacramento in a Victorian house.  And there my mother, a white woman from a very wealthy business family in Sacramento, my father admired her from afar and thought he could never be with this woman for a number of reasons. 

This was just after it was suddenly legal in the U.S. for white and black people to be married.  Shortly after that was when they met, but still that legacy of separatism had carried still strongly, especially in a rural place at the time called Sacramento.

Speaking of opportunity, my mother and father ended up being together as soul mates.  That led my mother to run up to my father upstairs, and they fell in love and were together for 26 years before my father died.

Having never been to a day of high school, my father wanted to get an education, so he began an education through a program at Sacramento City College. 

He didn’t know how to read or write very well, but my mother gave him the opportunity to learn and succeed in school.  She helped tutor my father, so that he could take the wisdom and intellect that he had and actually convey what he knew.

Well, that opportunity alone allowed my father to move on to Sacramento State Univ. where he received a BA and Masters in psychology.  That is opportunity.  From that opportunity, I was born into a family that couldn’t be more different – one very wealthy white with blond hair and blue eyes, and one black from South Central Los Angeles. 

I learned to appreciate that story, and it served as the motivation for me to continue on and appreciate and recognize opportunity, pursuit, all the while appreciating it, and trying to make the most of it.  So I have since appreciated a great public education, been fortunate to go off and attend Univ. of Berkeley Law School.  I got admitted from San Diego State University, which is elite in and of itself. 

I had the opportunity to work in the Senate in Sacramento as a fellow, and from that other opportunities came my way, and now I’ve decided to break away from the life I’ve been leading for the past year and a half, being a corporate lawyer for a San Francisco law firm, and to appreciate and seize the opportunity to work on Barack Obama’s campaign. 

And so in line with the story about my mother and father and the opportunities that started way back when that have had a trickle-down affect and allowed me to appreciate these opportunities by myself in this house, speaking to you about what I feel is the most important value that I think this country has to value, and a value that I think is squarely consistent with what we think of when you talk about progressive change and progressive values.

More  Resources about Opportunity.

Definition:
a. A favorable or advantageous circumstance or combination of circumstances.
b. A favorable or suitable occasion or time.
2. A chance for progress or advancement.

Synonyms: opportunity, occasion, opening, chance, break
These nouns refer to a favorable or advantageous circumstance or combination of circumstances.

Opportunity is an auspicious state of affairs or a suitable time:
   "If you prepare yourself . . . you will be able to grasp opportunity for broader experience when it appears" Eleanor Roosevelt.

Occasion suggests the proper time for action:
     an auspicious occasion; an occasion for celebration.

An opening is an opportunity affording a good possibility of success:
     waited patiently for her opening, then exposed the report's inconsistency.

Chance often implies an opportunity that arises through luck or accident:
     a chance for us to chat; no chance of losing.

A break is an often sudden piece of luck, especially good luck:
    got his first big break in Hollywood.
 http://www.thefreedictionary.com/opportunity


Equal opportunity is a descriptive term for an approach intended to provide a certain social environment in which people are not excluded from the activities of society, such as education, employment, or health care, on the basis of immutable traits. Equal opportunity practices include measures taken by organizations to ensure fairness in the employment process. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_opportunity

Some Questions To Ponder:

 - What are your questions about opportunity?

 - How has opportunity affected your life?

 - What is it about opportunity that Conservatives don't understand?

 - How does opportunity differ from conservative values?

 - How have conservative values failed?

 - Do you have ideas of how to improve the Progressive Stories Posts?
 

Edwin Rutsch
What Are Progressive Values? Documentary Project
http://ProgressiveSpirit.com
and Study Group
http://www.dfalink.com/group.php?id=2285

Cross Posted To:
 http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/31/202349/333
 http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_edwin_ru_080401_progressive_values_s.htm
 http://www.blogforamerica.com/view/24678

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