On the dark deck of our common ship, I visited five stations in South Carolina last week.

Six days found me in five radically different places. Five communities wrestle with the mounting challenges of a Congress which refuses to work, an economy which won't produce and a governor who dismisses her native born critics as union funded operatives from out of state.

Monday put me at the International Longshoreman's Hall meeting with the gray haired leadership of South Carolina's modest "professional left," many of whom are now grandparents. On Tuesday I attended the candidate's forum for Mount Pleasant Town Council. On Wednesday I was with the East Cooper Democrats and the CARTA board. On Thursday I video recorded the Isle of Palms candidates forum for the East Cooper CARTA riders. On Saturday I visited Occupy Columbia and joined a protest march through the capital city.

In the ILA hall, seated in a circle were the surviving deans of the Lowcounty's aging, veteran left. Most show the years and miles. The vegans do look better at 60. Gray hair sat in a circle. Some knees were in braces. There were more than a few canes. Some reluctantly fished warped reading glasses from the pockets where pride hides them. Determination, trust and memory had a prayer meeting in the great, gray hall of the ILA.

We don't argue much any longer. Everybody knows their job. Lists, agendas, resolutions and budgets are second nature. We know where to go for our permits and which public officials can be trusted. We know who will show up a rainy day. As old and slow as we are, it is with these that I would choose to storm the gates of hell in search of the brighter day beyond.

On Tuesday, I had the honor of watching a painful sea change move over the town of Mount Pleasant. This decades hard lessons have sunk in.

We are at the end of the roads.

Every candidate recognized that after the more than $120 million of planned road projects are finished that there will be no space to lay down more asphalt and no money to pay for it. It is believed that another 30,000 people are on their way to town, many elderly. Even more are expected to fill in McClellenville, Awendaw and innumerable outparcels which dot the Francis Marion Forest. All of the candidates are talking about transit. A few even speculated about light rail.

There was a recognition that the life of drive, park and drive some more isn't making us happy or making us a town.

For a community which declared that it never met a bulldozer it didn't like 15 years ago, elected a mayor who declared it to be a bedroom community a decade ago and laughed at drawings of sidewalks filled with people six years ago, it was an astonishing change. While the candidates struggled with the question of what the community should be like 20 years from now, their answers were all much better than a great place to drive.

On Wednesday, the Democrats met in Mount Pleasant. A room which had held five people six months ago welcomed 40.

The Democrats struggle with a world faster and more critical than that which elected President Obama three years ago. This new world is one that campaign and president have helped make. Hope and change is returning to the sidewalks of America, but it is camping out on Wall Street and in Brittlebank Park and 1,100 other cities. More than 35 percent of those people aren't Democrats. Many reject all the established parties. Some people want to be arrested. Some people want to run as independents.

Others want to burn the cities down. After one election that went blue in 2008 and another which went red in 2010, the economy is still flat lined. Neither party seems to be able to crank up the national defibrillator. Democrats have the exhilarating experience of being pushed towards a cliff while being instructed to fly. We'll see if they still have wings.

On Thursday, I was a passive witness at the Isle of Palms candidates forum. Economic strain goes all the way to the sea. "For sale" signs dot Palm Boulevard. Candidates got testy about budgets. The easy income and tax money of resort management has disappeared like sand after beach renourisment. Both the Isle of Palms and Sullivan's are on the verge of losing all their CARTA bus services. Hundreds of households are aging in place, on the verge of needing public transit. A connection wasn't made. Plenty still wait for the good old debt driven boom time's return. Some want to gate the Isle of Palms and slam that gate closed "when it's full." With no dog in the fight, it seemed an island which may be underwater in 100 years needed to work harder on imagining what the future it has left should be like.

On Saturday I joined Occupy Columbia for a march through the capital city. We distributed union printed handbills, shouted chants, sang songs and sent it all out live online.

We did "People's Mike" at the Five Points Fountain. It is such a rush to have your words, amplified by one hundred voices hurled out towards a world beginning to listen. I hope my son in Seattle heard them.

The ship of common destiny shivers on her keel. Wind moves across the rigging.

The canvas of the sails flaps in dark winds. Hands fight for the wheel. Those on the deck hold on.

Those in the cabin houses hope. The faint lanterns peek out red and green forward and white aft. I do not know on what course we shall find ourselves at dawn. I am not certain the ship shall still be afloat. This I know, for those who desire to sail, a course is about to be laid.

William Hamilton (www.wjhamilton.com, twitter @wjhamilton29464) is an attorney who lives in I'On Village.