(no subject)
Yesterday in a rush to jump into my car as it rolled down the driveway I totally killed my upper arm. Today I woke up mere moments before having to leave for school (starving and barely awake) to take a midterm I was already ill prepared for. My goodness. Also this week I'm finding it very difficult to find new health insurance coverage. Applying and making calls is entirely too time consuming and confusing. If a healthy 23 year-old who doesn't smoke or drink can't get health insurance for the sole reason that she's on birth control, something's just not right. It's infuriating and unacceptable.
For those who haven't heard, I gave notice at my job. Sunday is my last day and I'm sort of relieved and at the same time bummed because I liked a lot of the people I worked with and it had some perks. Busy looking for a new job now. Perhaps a place where my manager takes my needs into consideration instead of ignoring my multiple attempts at communication? That'd be swell. We'll see what happens.
To all of my pro-Obama friends (and to all my No on 8 friends, and pretty much any young Democrat...),
Please don't stop come Nov 5. Over the last few months some of you have been attentive to and inspired by politics and the possibility of social change, maybe for the first time ever. Some of you have even made personal sacrifices -- volunteered your time, canvassed, done all the unflattering media work, made phone calls to raise funds, stuffed mailers, attended rallies, even travelled to other states to campaign -- trust me, I know what all of it's like. That kind of stuff -- organizing -- has been my life for almost four years. Since literally the day after the last election. You've put all this blood and sweat and tears, this massive investment of your time and emotion, all for this other person, this candidate, to assume power and hopefully do what you want him to do.
You have no idea how much I hope you're right, that he does. Look, I may be a crazy radical, but I'm not stupid. I know how much worse a McCain presidency would be. Between his militaristic foreign policy, his totally senile economic platform, and his theocratic witch of a running mate, I have no doubt that four years of McCain/Palin would cost the lives and livelihoods of many, many people around the world, including several of my friends and family members. Not to mention the horrible cultural narrative another maverick/cowboy GOP term would create for America. Of course I believe in liberal reform -- it saves lives. It's necessary. But I believe in liberal reform only so far as it helps us accomplish something greater, something lasting.
Also, I've studied my history. I'm sure you have too, and you know most of the following as well. Please, allow me to indulge in a recap anyway.
I was young, so it's not very clear, but I do vaguely remeber what a catharsis, an elation Clinton was in 1992, after twelve years of Reagan/Bush. I stayed up that night to watch the election results. I was days shy of my 7th birthday. My mom and I were not long off welfare at the time -- this meant we were going to be alright after all. I also know how the Gingrich congress chewed to pieces his health plans, and most everything else he tried to do in office, eventually leading that absolutely trivial joke of an impeachment. I also know how he paraded NAFTA, WTO, GATT, and the rest of the globalization alphabet soup. How he got played like a fiddle by the nuclear weapons complex to keep their funding at cold-war levels. And how he brought US troups and bombs into Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq.
I know how Jimmy Carter, a political outsider elected on a platform and change and honesty in government after eight years of Nixon/Ford, confronted the recession and fuel crisis of 1977 with a FDR-esque plea of confidence and self-sacrifice, tried to lead the way with his sweater and his bicycle, and was made a laughingstock. Then he was chased out of office by Reagan in '80 by a landslide.
I know what happened to Harvey Milk, RFK, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Especially Dr. King, who was under nonstop government surveillance in the months before his assassination, whose dossier is still classified. The real Dr. King, who was more than a gifted speaker, more than the march on Washington. Dr. King was a community organizer with effective skills, strategy and tactics, who stuck with his movement from Montgomery through the Civil Rights act in Washington, and on to Selma, Chicago, and Memphis, fighting for poor and working people of all colors, and in opposition to the Vietnam war. But certainly not alone.
Barack Obama, no matter what he signifies now, will have different people than you or I talking in his ear once he's elected. Guiding his foreign policy will be people like Colin Powell, Gen. Petraeus and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Leaders of business and industry, funders, think-tank policy wonks and Democratic party strategists, all guiding and criticizing his every move. Whether or not he wants to do what we want him to do, we won't have access to him, and they will. That's part of the job. That's how the presidency is designed.
And then there's this: this planet is on the brink of unprecedented ecological collapse, and our society could be facing the largest economic collapse in 70 some odd years. We don't have the luxury of messing around, of dallying with four or eight years of Obama to pass the time until another Nixon/Reagan/Bush comes into office and screws us again, right in the same wound, the one that had almost healed. We need progress, we need fundamental change. We can use Obama to bring us there. But he's not it, not alone, he's not enough. And you know it. You know it because you got him there. It was your hard work and sacrifice, together with thousands of other young people around the country, that put him in the position he's in today -- the front runner, weeks away, it's in reach.
Look at the amazing power you have. You've nearly helped elect a president.
Now... what next? You didn't just dedicate the last few months of your lives getting Obama elected just to leave the rest up to him, did you? With all the pressure he's under? And all the organizing skills you learned on his campaign? Don't stop come November 5. You can't afford to. The word "Change" itself won't be on the ballot -- Roget's is behind the curve, so Obama's name is not officially synonymous yet. There won't be any place on the ballot to vote to end the Iraq war. No place to vote for universal health care, for reproductive or queer rights, for leadership towards green energy and curbing greenhouse emissions, or for disarming our nuclear stockpile capable of destroying the world multiple times over, much less a way to vote against US imperialism, to vote against a military budget nearly as large as the rest of the world's combined, or to vote to end racism. All of this will only happen if we make it happen. And Obama can only make it happen if we make it happen. Obama's key slogan for much of his campaign has been, "Yes, we can", and I'd like to believe it's not just an empty co-optation of the United Farm Workers' chant. I'd like to believe that he realizes that real change comes from the bottom up, that he realizes that change happens more than once every four years, and that it takes people like you and me fighting for these issues not on the ballot every single day to make real change happen. Change bigger than another Nixon, Reagan, or Bush could ever hope to repeal, if we ever let one of their kind back again. Change that could save our planet.
Change that you are able to create. You and me, and anyone else who wants to join us.
¡Si se puede!
-Steve