Editor’s note: Desmond Meade, the force behind Florida’s successful Amendment 4 initiative to restore ex-felons’ voting rights, was named the Orlando Sentinel’s Central Floridian of the Year Thursday evening. After accepting the award, Meade, an ex-felon himself, described how the arc of his life moved from despair to joy. Below are excerpts from his remarks.
“We’ve always heard the adage that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And that holds true for our community, for our country, for this world.
“If we do want our communities to be strong and our state to be strong and this country to be strong we must commit to empowering the weakest among us. The homeless, those who are hungry, those who are silenced, our children, our elderly…I do consider that an honor.”
“It wasn’t too long ago I stood in front of railroad tracks, thinking that my life didn’t matter…when I was standing and waiting on that train to come and it didn’t, and I crossed those tracks and I asked myself if I would had died that day how many people would come to my funeral? And the immediate answer was zero. I would have been buried in a pauper’s grave because I didn’t have an ID, and no one would have been notified that I had died.
“But even with the best-case scenario, with my picture on the paper saying that I died, and I thought about how many people would come to my funeral and the answer was only four. And I questioned my significance on this earth, with the relationships and the places that I have been, to only have four people care if I died.
“And that transformation that occurred afterward helped me understand and tap into the greatest joy that I’ve ever felt in my life. It was a joy that I was chasing all my life and didn’t know that I was even chasing it, but that joy was discovering what my purpose was. And to finally realize that all it was just to give back.
“Everything that our spiritual creator has made always took a little and gave a little. And that’s all I ever wanted to do. I didn’t seek for this. I didn’t seek for anything. I just woke up every day just wanting to know what can I do to make this world a better place for everyone. Not for me but for everyone.
“Excuse my tears but I would have never thought that I would be here accepting an award such as this…Thank all my fellow finalists. You are all worthy of receiving this, and so I feel fortunate that my name was called.”
