Finally, Change Even I Can Believe In

I don’t have to hold my nose when I pull that Democratic lever, I don’t have to choose between the lesser of two evils, I don’t have to protest vote Green. The election I’ve always wanted. We defeated the evil Queen, bring on the old dude.

Incredible!

Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun

Barack Obama, Organizer-In-Chief

As I’ve noted before, Barack Obama spent time in the late 1980’s working as a community organizer in Chicago, working with tenant groups in public housing to fight for repairs.

The current Syracuse New Times article has a great column by Ed Griffin-Nolan comparing and contrasting the skills of politicians and organizers. He notes that “the community organizer and the political operative each played complementary roles in the process of social change.”

The article gives a great overview of the role of an organizer, developing leaders to challenge entrenched power. Organizers stay out of the limelight and help everyday people to gain the skills, knowledge and strategic vision to best fight for their own neighborhoods.

The only jarring note in the article? Mr. Griffin-Nolan states that organizers, unlike image conscious politicians, “can reach for that second doughnut without a second thought.” I’ve been an organizer for nearly 15 years and I’ve reached for many a second doughnut in my day. I’ll try to cut back on the grease, I promise!

As If I Needed Any More Convincing . . .

In a piece of news that is probably more important to this blog than any other in America: Bruce Springsteen has formally endorsed Barack Obama for President.

Summing up his feelings with a quote from his song “Long Walk Home” Bruce writes:

“LIke most of you, I’ve been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest. He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I’ve envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that’s interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where ‘…nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone.’ “

The New York Times notes another positive by-product of this endorsement. Now Hillary will have to stop playing “The Rising” during her campaign appearances.

Obama’s Speech On Race

I didn’t have the opportunity to hear the speech by Barack Obama on race, I just read the transcript from the internet–but it was truly an amazing speech and an indication of why Barack Obama should be our next President. Unlike most politicians, he doesn’t fudge on the difficult parts.

For the first time in my life, a politician has talked honestly about the wounds our nation has suffered because of racism, discussed how both sides share culpability for sweeping this discussion under the rug and then pointed a way out of the wilderness.

Whites must acknowledge the pain and suffering that still exists among blacks. Blacks must acknowledge that society can adapt and change for the better. Both sides must accept that their destinies are entwined.

But, of course, he also admitted that this isn’t something that will be accomplished within the span of an election cycle or by a single candidate.

I thought the most telling distancing of the candidate from Rev. Wright and black liberation theology was Obama’s statement that his pastor’s biggest mistake was couching his criticism of both white racism and his admonishment of blacks towards self-improvement in an attitude that denies the ability of our culture to adapt and improve. That is as much a function of younger African-Americans who have seen and experienced the benefits of improved racial relations in distinction to civil rights-era African-Americans like Rev. Wright whose experiences tended to reflect more outright bigotry and hatred, to say nothing of legal segregation and violence.

An eloquent speech–hopefully it will be enough to derail the Republican hate machine (not to mention the Hillary War Room.)

Power Resignation, Sad But Necessary

Samantha Power, a foreign policy advisor to Senator Obama, resigned from the campaign today after her comments in a Scottish newspaper interview. She called Senator Clinton “a monster” and said that she is “stooping to anything” to win the nomination.

My thoughts:
1) Power had to go. It would have been even better if Obama had dismissed her himself rather than allowing her to resign. If your campaign is based on transcending the politics of fear and intimidation, you can’t allow yourself to fall into the mire.

2) Samantha Power was one of the reasons I bought into the Obama campaign so early and an example of why I believe there really is a great deal of difference on foreign policy ideology between Obama and Clinton.

Obama’s foreign policy realizes that in an inter-dependent world events that happen anywhere have consequences for the U.S. His philosophy is also less attached to projection of military power, but to increase the use (and value) of so-called soft power–diplomacy, trade, humanitarian assistance. This is the kind of thinking that would help our country avoid misadventures like Iraq and heal the wounds caused by the Bush Administration’s embrace of torture and unilateral military force.

3) While Power may have been impolitic with the “stoops to anything” comment, many others have been saying and writing the same thing. It was the “monster” comment that was beyond the pale and she knew it the moment she uttered it–immediately telling the reporter that the comment was off the record.

4) The Clintons must be relishing this and not just for the tactical campaign advantage. The Clintons get a measure of revenge for her Pulitzer Prize winning book “A Problem From Hell–America and the Age of Genocide.” Power eviscerated Bill’s cowardly policy of inaction during the Rwandan genocide. Funny how Hillary never mentions Rwanda as part of her experience in the Clinton White House that has left her ready to lead on Day One.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer

The Los Angeles Times recently published an article about an event in Barack Obama’s career as a community organizer in Chicago in the 1980’s.

The story focuses on a camaign that Obama organized with residents of the Altgeld Homes public housing project. Obama organized a trip downtown with residents to confront public housing officials about asbestos in apartments. In addition, there was a fractious public meeting with officials at the housing project.

The coverage is negative, implying that in his memoir
“Dreams From My Father” Obama exaggerated his role in the campaign and did not give sufficient credit to resident leaders working on the issue.

Obama’s campaign has issued a point-by-point rebuttal of the article. In the midst of a Presidential campaign, candidates are forced to respond immediately to bad news with massive force. The effect is overkill, but understandable.

The key point in my mind, having read both the memoir and the article, is that the LAT reporter has no clue about the purpose of either community organizing or memoir.

A community organizer works with the residents of the community, providing the research, strategic planning and encouragement that will allow disenfranchised people to speak for themselves and advocate for the improvements that will change their lives. The article does note that Obama stayed out of the limelight and let the residents have their say. He did his job and did it well, as many residents he worked with relate that he was quite inspiring.

The article faults Obama for giving short shrift to the efforts of one resident, a woman who had worked on this issue for many years. However, organizing is by definition not a solo game. People without money and influence have only one weapon, numbers. While the resident had done admirable work documenting the problem, no real progress had been made in dealing with the problem. It took an organized group of people jamming into a downtown office unannounced and a raucous 500+ person meeting at the housing project to get the Housing Authority to move on the issue.

Any criticisms about Obama focusing on his feelings and ideas about the campaign in his memoir are just flat out crazy. Is not a memoir about personal reflection? These events educated Obama, both about his abilities to influence and direct people and the power organized people have to influence entrenched power.

The section in Obama’s memoir on his time in Chicago before law school is the longest part of the book. During this time, Obama learned about the hopes and dreams of grassroots people and the power of community organizing. It is a major reason many people believe he can be more than just another gladhanding pol, and it is why I believe in Barack Obama.

The Pig In The Python

A recent article in the New York Times touches on a favorite subject of mine: just who is a baby boomer?

I’ve always accepted the idea that the American baby boom is comprised of those born between 1943 and 1964. Some people are now saying it ends with those in my birth year–1960.

It’s no surprise that those folks born in the early 1960’s do not have much in common with those born 20 years earlier. The author David Leavitt (born in 1961) wrote an excellent article in 1985 for Esquire magazine (I can’t find an internet citation) entitled “The New Lost Generation.” Leavitt pointed out that the tail-end boomers had different values than their idealistic boomer elders. Our part of the generation was more cynical, having grown up to see sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll degenerate into AIDS, addiction and ABBA. Marketers and brand-conscious capitalist trader-types even tried to come up with a name for us: Generation Jones.

Anyway, folks of my age are starting to even deny our membership in that hallowed cohort. The most famous example of this is Senator Barack Obama (born in 1961). In his book “The Audacity of Hope” Obama writes:

In the back and forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004, I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the baby boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago — played out on the national stage.”

The article also states that an interest in post-boomer politics is developing because we need to deal with post-boomer issues: the war on terror, global warming, energy, technology and globalization. Our nation needs a new set of ideas and a new mind-set to deal with the problems that will outlive the boomers.

In other words, the pig in the python is almost ready to be fully digested. Boomers have come to expect everything to be all about us and our numbers usually made it so–a huge bulge sliding through an otherwise narrow age distribution. This next Presidential election will have a full range of demographic interest: pre-boomers like John McCain, Hillary (an uber-boomer, just like her husband) and the tail-ender boomer Obama.

The Baby Boomers time is almost up, but as one of the youngest boomers I’ll (hopefully) be there to watch the python poop.

He’s Ready, Why Wait. Obama in ‘08!

I don’t often post about national politics. I still believe that what you do in your own town, with your own folks, has a more important effect on your life than the spectator sport of Presidential politics. And Obama’s not even an official candidate. Anyway:

This blog officially endorses Barack Obama for President of the United States.

1) National politics isn’t always relevant to our everyday lives. However, in an attempt to spread the freedoms of democracy, the current Commander in Chief sends young men and women overseas to die, tortures enemy combatants and suspends the constitutional rights of foreigners and citizens alike. It doesn’t get more relevant than that. We need a strong advocate for the dismantling of our current policies. Obama is one of the few declared candidates that has opposed the war since the beginning.

2) In order to move beyond the red/blue state divide, we need a candidate, like Bill Clinton in 1992, who combines a razor-sharp intellect with the political skills to reach out to a much broader spectrum of the populace than just an electoral college plurality.

3) Especially after the reign of Bush/Cheney/Rove, we need a leader that will explain, mediate and compromise. Our country needs a President that understands that his opponents’ views ought to be respected, even if they are not supported.

4) We need a campaign that focuses on issues, that elevates the public discourse and disavows the politics of hate, fear and division pioneered by consultants such as Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. No candidate is as attuned to this reality as Obama.

5) Barack Obama was a community organizer. He knocked on doors, developed citizen leaders, organized meetings and protests. Obama was recently quoted as saying that “ordinary people working together can achieve the extraordinary.” Organizers may never get this chance again, to elect one of our own!

6) Have you read his books? He doesn’t use a ghostwriter and they are not typical political tripe. Thoughtful, open and eloquent expression, a first for a politician.