(Kennedy Airport, Tuesday evening) I’m flying business class for the first time in my life, thanks to the good people in Spain. The Business Lounge in Terminal 7 is quite a scene. There’s a bar, a marble fountain, a spa, a bank of free computers, a counter with free snacks, a conference room, and on the walls, the “British Airways Collection” of original drawings by the likes of Sol Lewitt and Christo. I guess if you’re rich, you don’t have to pay for things like food and Internet access. Also, we are invited to leave our bags unattended in a side room. I guess rich people don’t steal stuff. I got in here through a separate security checkpoint where the line was short and–maybe it was my imagination, but the Transportation Security Agency people sure seemed deferential. I guess if you’re rich, even the government offers you efficient and friendly service.

Today, CIRCLE (which is my organization) has released a research Request for Proposals (RFP). Thanks to Carnegie Corporation of New York, we have $500,000 to fund research projects on the civic development of high-school-age youth.

Meanwhile, I’m on my way to Spain today, for an education conference. I’m not sure whether I’ll post from there; I may. I’ll be back in the USA on November 7.

Autumn, at least in cultures influenced by Europe, is supposed to be the final season in the annual cycle, an elegaic time in which we savor the last warmth and last color before winter’s death and spring’s rebirth. If fall has any advantage, it is only Shelley’s “deep, autumnal tone / Sweet though in sadness.”

But not for me. I think of fall as the first season, the time of rebirth and renewal, when the annual cycle starts anew with its fresh faces, when careers (academic, judicial, athletic, and political) are launched, and when the sticky mid-Atlantic heat finally dissipates so that we can venture out of air conditioning, quicken our pace, clear our heads.

1. Until Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama, public transportation systems in the South bolstered white supremacy through de jure segregation. Today, Montgomery runs 16 integrated buses, but the larger Alabama city of Birmingham has no public transportation system at all. Those facts exemplify a more general trend. In the 1950s, we had a fairly robust public sector and substantial economic equality, although African Americans were excluded and, in institutions like the Alabama bus systems, flagrantly denigrated by the state itself. Today the government is mostly careful not to discriminate on the basis of race. But it provides totally inadequate public goods for everyone.

2. The following is pretty well known but bears repeating: Rosa Parks was not just a nice lady who was tired one day and suddenly refused to give up her seat. She was also a skilled activist for social justice. The evening that she defied Jim Crow, she was on her way home to mail materials about the local NAACP election. Membership in an Alabama chapter of the NAACP was a radical step that required physical courage. Moreover, Parks had gone to the Highlander Folk School to study nonviolent social change with an interracial group. Highlander was then directed by Miles Horton, a great radical American who, as Nick Longo shows (pdf), was a direct disciple of Jane Addams. Addams, in turn, had learned politics from her father, an associate of Abe Lincoln. Parks’ political lineage could equally well be traced back to W.E.B DuBois and the other founders of the NAACP.

Dr. King said that Rosa Parks provided a good example for the desegregration struggle because she was recognized as “one of the finest citizens of Montgomery–not one of the finest Negro citizens–but one of the finest citizens of Montgomery.” It is important to notice what “citizen” meant in this case. Parks was not just a volunteer, a member of civic associations, and someone who wanted to vote. She was a self-conscious and sophisticated political activist who belonged to a powerful political network with a long history. Thus the story of Rosa Parks is not only about individual acts of courage and principle; it is also about organization, theory, and tradition.

[In an earlier version of this post, I implied that Rosa Parks’ civil disobedience occurred in Birmingham, which is not the case.]