Hi Louisiana.Obama For America is now Organizing For America. The goals have shifted from getting Barack Obama elected to helping make sure his presidency is a success, both politically and policy-wise. You are still needed in this effort.Last week, Congress voted to pass our president's 2010 budget. Only 2 legislators from Louisiana helped to make that happen: Senator Mary Landrieu and Representative Charlie Melancon. We need help showing that Louisianan's care about how our members of congress vote.Could you please take a moment and send a letter to the editor of your local paper thanking Senator Landrieu (and congressman Melancon if you are in his district)? There is a great tool on MyBO to help make this really simple:http://my.barackobama.com/page/speakout/ThankCongressBelow I've attached some ideas for letters, but please write from your own heart. And thank you for continuing to support Barack Obama.Best,Lynda Below are a few ideas to guide your letter writing. Visit our website for more additional tips and information http://my.barackobama.com/page/speakout/ThankCongress LTE #1President Obama is talking to us like adults. He doesn’t sugarcoat his message or claim to have the silver bullet. Since taking office, he's encouraged us to be patient and persistent in charting our course - I think his words were, “more ocean liner than speed boat.”President Obama’s budget is big, but it’s a bold and important down payment on our long-term economic recovery here and across the nation.And that's why I applaud my congressional representative for voting in support of the President's plan to put our country back on the path to prosperity - a vote all of us can be proud of.
LTE #2I’m sick and tired of our bubble-driven economy. From the dot.com craze to the housing bubble, I know so many people who have been affected by the constant boom and bust that has made our economy unstable.President Obama’s budget plan takes on the challenges in our healthcare system, public education and energy policy – and aims to make those things operate better and more efficiently for people just like me here in my town.I agree with President Obama that now is the time to make significant investments to help our economy develop in a sustainable way, and provide real growth and services the people on Main Street need. And that's why I applaud my congressional representative for supporting President Obama's plan.
LTE#3I volunteered for President Obama’s campaign, was thrilled to watch his inauguration, and have been following the early months of his presidency.These days, all the pundits seem to talk about is President Obama’s budget plan. Is it too expensive? Is it too ambitious?I am happy to see that President Obama is engaging his supporters - the regular people who elected him to office – to help build grassroots support for his budget blueprint.Making healthcare more affordable, investing in education, and creating a safer, greener energy policy, are the changes we fought for during the election.And that's why I was so pleased to see my congressional representative vote in support of the President's plan and give him the help he needs to put a down payment on a more sustainable, economic future for all of us.
Change Corps of New Orleans is looking for some of our volunteers to help staff the St. Bernard Project's Women's Rebuild in May. Women Business Leaders from across the country will be gathering for this event and helping to rebuild homes in St. Bernard Parish. We would like to send 20 representatives from our organization to participate either for the whole week, or for whatever day (or two) you can commit. We need to provide volunteers' names by mid-April so that they can plan effectively. Below is a tentative schedule for the week:Monday, May 11 Work 8:30-4:30, Lunch PicnicTuesday, May 12 Work 8:30-4:30, Group Dinner @ 7 pmWednesday, May 13 Work 8:30-4:30, Dinner and a PlayThursday, May 14 Work 8:30-4:30, Happy Hour/Awards Ceremony at Tropical Isle on Bourbon St.Friday, May 15 Work 8:30-4:30, Welcome Home Party @ NoonSaturday, May 16 Work 9:30-3:30 Please send a message to lynda@changecorpsnola.org with the days you can volunteer as well as your contact information so that we can make arrangements with you.For more info on SBP, go to:http://stbernardproject.org
St. Bernard Project
8324 Parc Place
Calmette, LA 70043
Today the Secretaries of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, and HUD, Shaun Donovan, visited New Orleans to get an update on our recovery from the hurricanes of the last 4 years. At the same time, Brad Pitt was in Washington, DC meeting with Nancy Pelosi and James Clyburn to discuss his rebuilding efforts in the 9th Ward.
The president has already signed a couple of executive orders extending our recovery benefits in Louisiana... and has just named a new, well-respected director of FEMA, Craig Fugate. Additionally, Barack Obama recently met with the King of Zulu, Charles Hamilton, in Washington DC in order to receive his hand-painted coconut from this year's Mardi Gras parade dedicated to our new president.
I am well pleased to see our region, though greatly ignored during the campaign, take a bit of the spotlight these days.
Keep up the good trend, President Obama!
Lynda Woolard
Change Corps of New Orleans
www.changecorpsnola.org
From whitehouse.gov
Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 11:52 am
"We must ensure that the failures of the past are never repeated," President Obama said in a statement today, announcing the extension of the Office of the Federal Coordinator for Gulf Coast Rebuilding and his decision to send two cabinet members to the region. Homeland Security Secretrary Janet Napolitano and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan are heading to the Gulf Coast and New Orleans in early March to evaluate firsthand the progress that's been made and assess the region's needs. "The residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast who are helping rebuild are heroes who believe in their communities and they are succeeding despite the fact that they have not always received the support they deserve from the Federal government," the President said. "This executive order is a first step of a sustained commitment by my Administration to rebuild now, stronger than ever." Some important facts:
Words of Wisdom from the highway scribe
*the highway scribe is a blogger... please note, this post was not written by Lynda.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Why is the winter of our winning becoming the winter of our discontent?The media narrative has President Obama denied bipartisan support and schooled in the harsh realities of Washington politics, failing his core constituencies and settling for a plan that is not "stimulative" enough (which "spellcheck" agrees is not a word)."New York Times" columnist Paul Krugman says "Mr. Obama's victory feels more than a bit like defeat."Except that it's a victory.Joan Walsh at "Salon" says Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) "humiliated" the President by accepting and then rejecting his offer to head the Department of Commerce.Except that he'll go back to being one of a minority in the Senate and the President will still be the President with large majorities in both houses."The compromise stimulus is probably better than nothing," she writes. "With its expansion of food stamps and unemployment benefits, its tax rebates for low-income workers, aid to states and cities and billions for infrastructure projects." Sounds good right?"BUT," Walsh continues, "it won't be as effective as a bigger spending bill would have been, and let's hope Obama doesn't come to regret how much he gave Republicans to get so little."and later:"He better have learned that Washington bipartisanship is dead."It has been dead and not fixing it on the first go-round is hardly a failure. Lacking a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, Obama got the support of three senators who do not occupy red meat conservative seats. And they delivered him a stimulus package.Glenn Greenwald, also of "Salon," accuses liberal groups of precipitating this non-debacle by, "subordinating their concern about issues to their support for the party and its leading politician."That leading politician, of course, being the guy we all broke our asses and wallets to get elected: Barack Obama, the guy who renovated the Democratic Party and won states south and west long-treasured by rank-and-filers."During the 2008 election," he noted, "Obama co-opted huge portions of the Left and its infrastructure so that their allegiance became devoted to him and not to any ideas."That's because his Ideas where their/our ideas.Krugman is a brilliant, Nobel Prize laureate in economics, Walsh a darling and charming soldier of progressive forces, and Greenwald a hard-boiled walking left-litmus test who keeps his eye on the issue rather than the personality.But they are not helping things.Each, as a loyal member of the anointed commentariat, is allowing the mass media's narrative focus on stimulus to block out their own sun and bum the rest of us out.Day in day out, the Obama administration is doing what progressives, liberals, leftists, or whatever flag you fly under, had prayed for, but feared never would happen.Every place in government, in ways big and small, whether it's admitting the Earth is getting warmer, cancelling energy industry fire sales offshore and on treasured Western lands, undoing a conservative Supreme Court's ruling by signing the Lilly Ledbetter Law, forestalling foreclosures, or appointing a pro-union Latina to the Labor Department, we see change we dared not dream of in the darkest days of the Bush era.But romps in the House of Representatives are tainted by the fact Obama "failed to garner a single vote," from the GOP, when the failure, of course, is their own.Victories in the Senate are deemed "razor-thin" when 61-37 is something of a trouncing. Or should the scribe remind you of how votes went, say, three years ago under guys with names like Delay, Frist, and Bush?It's razor-thin because the Republican filibuster is an unchallenged daily blessing to a sorely challenged minority, when it should be subject to national derision.The way the Senate operates now, all you have to do is inform the leadership of your plan to filibuster and the altered, more difficult, voting math kicks-in.highwayscribery's suggestion is that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) drop the courtesy and force Republicans to sustain their filibuster for real.Reid should obligate them to wear catheters so they can pee while reading from newspapers, and do midnight relays to fresh senators making a spectacle of themselves while delaying the nation's business.(Just a thought).If the Republicans' desire is that they should glue themselves to one another while walking over a cliff, than liberals should be glad of it.They are not insulting Obama or the Democrats. Rather they are flipping a middle-finger at the American people, who are suffering and currently of a unified mind regarding the guy and party they want running things.Those senators and representatives of the GOP, in herding together like hunted buffaloes (which they are), will have a hard time separating themselves out should the public render a negative verdict on their obstinate groupthink, which is very likely.Paul Krugman is much smarter than the highway scribe, who agrees with him and would like to see more money spent on good things for a beleaguered people.But there are doubts and they are legitimate.The package is enormous and backed by the questionable force of an already overheated U.S. Mint. As most Americans are now painfully aware, spending with one hand while borrowing with the other usually triggers a law of diminishing returns.There needs to be a balance and to the extent the opposition party used a scalpel to trim things and orient some of the package toward their own constituents, the system is working the way it was designed to.The stimulus bill represents the largest nonmilitary expenditure on public since the Great Depression and deals a telling blow to Republican dreams of burying forever the New Deal and the idea of government activism.No wonder they are of one mind. What's perplexing, and the reason for this post, is that our joy doesn't match their despair.The president compromised and got nothing for it.But he remembers -- where Walsh, Krugman, and Greenwald don't -- that the idea is to look beyond the other party to the people they represent...and govern for the entire country.We just got through with a guy who governed for one half of the populace simply because he had the votes.His gang's gone. Obama would like a more enduring coalition like the one that lasts for some 40 years after Franklin Delano Roosevelt assembled it.You win big by being big, not petty.This stimulus debate, which has consumed our media's narrow bandwith of attention, at the expense of many other issues, is naught but an opening night performance.As the day-in-day-out business of legislating the country's future unfolds, a filibuster will not serve at every turn nor will its giddy impact on a dwindling Republican base resonate quite so strongly as in the first round.Because the reality will set in on both sides of this national debate.
Hello again Agents of Change!
There is finally some word coming out about the transition of the campaign from Obama For America to Organizing For America. It's been a slightly confusing time without any real input from the genius team at the top... but then, they've had their hands full with a few other minor issues.
We have been organizing as best we can here in New Orleans... we know fairly well how to self-manage at this point! Change Corps of New Orleans has a website (www.changecorpsnola.org) and a Facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=48577924364&ref=ts) and has been growing steadily. We have held several community service events and have many more in the works. We had a great Inauguration Night Celebration at Tipitina's and are planning an art show for this spring. We have been slow to get information out to people who have signed up to be members... but we are trying to work out a functioning emailing system that will fix that problem. We have also applied to be an active group on Organizing For America which will give us list-serving capabilites so we can communicate with one another. We are also hoping to link up to all the other Change Corps that are springing up across the state and across the country.
It has always been our intention to be a part of Organizing For America and USA Service. We will blend into/merge with whatever they are planning. Our work in the meantime is merely an attempt to keep as many people informed and active as possible as well as to start to build relationships with non-profits and government groups in our region. We are not looking to reinvent the wheel, but rather to push our volunteers out into the community to work with all the great groups who are already doing good works all around us. We hope to help build a network of caring citizens and promote the volunteering opportunities that await each of us in our own back yards.
Please sign up to join us and stay tuned for the exciting news that will be coming to us from Chicago and DC soon. By all means, check on our website often and keep in the loop as we are planning events weekly. We have the chance now to really make an impact on our world by taking care of our own little corners of the universe. We worked hard to see this dream become a reality. Now let's put the energy into keeping it alive.
Be the Change...
http://www.changecorpsnola.org
I DO BELIEVE NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT.
I have tried to get this to Mrs. Napolitano and Barack as well as some other ideas. I am concerned with our elavated crime rates, our cost of crime, elevate risk from a WMD, a Biological attack, The fragile economy,and solutions 1 system of systems a matrix, that multitasks, and solves multiple problems at the same time. We are looking at the overall solutions that we can provide:
United states total population 2008 = 300,000,000 peopleof that number:73 million are Childrenhttp://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/
Number of Children http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/indicators/53NumberofChildren.cfm
In 2006, there were 73.7 million children under age 18 in the United States. This represents an increase in the child population of more than 50 percent since 1950. 55,568,000 are on some sort of assistanceMonthly Statistical Snapshot, October 2008 55,568,000 are the Number of people receiving Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, or both, October 2008 http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/
U.S. Imprisons One in 100 Adults, Report Finds http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/us/29prison.html?_r=1
January 08, 2007"Incarceration Nation"The NationJanuary 5, 2007 (web only)Incarceration NationSilja J.A. TalviEvery year, American taxpayers fund an estimated $60 billion for our incarceration system. This system staples together a network of public and corporate-run jails, prisons, pre- and post-release centers, juvenile detention centers and boot camps. All together, these facilities hold well over 2 million human beings, locked away without public oversight or scrutiny. http://realcostofprisons.org/blog/archives/2007/01/post_4.html As Jobs Vanish and Prices Rise, Food Stamp Use Nears Record http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/us/31foodstamps.htmlEmployment Situation
http://www.bls.gov/Jobs lost in 2008: 1.2 millionPayrolls shrink by 240,000 in October, 10th straight month of cuts. Unemployment soars to 6.5%http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/07/news/economy/jobs_october/index.htm?postversion=2008110711
The TOTAL number of unemployed persons (10.3 million) in Americahttp://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm1,200,000 jobs lost just in 20081,800,000 jobs not replaced (economic growth replacing retirees) Some state unemployment funds drying up
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/08/jobless.claims/ECONOMY EXPLAINED / JOBLESS: UNEMPLOYMENT CHECKUPFunds in jeopardy: Georgia benefits trust relatively stable for now; 19 states face depletion in year.http://www.ajc.com/business/content/printedition/2008/11/23/unemployins.htmlsome macro economics explanationshttp://arnoldkling.com/econ/macro/unemp.html
300,000,000 People in America----------------------------------------73,000,000 Children 55,568,000 people receiving Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, or both, October 2008 costing 50,464,000,000.00 (Monthly) 2,000,000 are incarcerated (cost 60,000,000,000.00 (60 Billion))10,300,000 currently costing (unknown at this time)
143,431,343 total people working in America (as of now Dec-7 2008)so less than 48% (less than 1 out of 2) of america is supporting the whole nation.
Read more for the solutions to most of our problems.
The Change Corps of New Orleans is in its formative stages. It seeks to continue and grow the network of volunteers gathered for the Obama campaign in the last election... and to mobilize them towards community service. If you would like to be involved in our grassroots efforts... please log on to our webpage and fill out the form on the "contact us" page. We welcome all ideas and suggestions for what you would like to see us bring to our community.
http://www.changecorpsnola.org/
Gift Of Love: An Appreciation Of Obama's Relationship With His Grandmother
Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks
Posted November 4, 2008
In an earlier post, we celebrated the relationship between Michelle and Barack Obama. Now, in honor of his grandmother's passing, we want to honor his relationship with Madelyn Dunham and to celebrate the profound effect it had on his life and the lives of all of us.
Because of being raised primarily by his grandmother, Gay had a strong reaction to the moment: "Like many of you, I felt waves of sadness when I heard of the death of Barack's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham. I was in my car, but the feelings came so strongly that I pulled over to the side of the road to honor it until it passed. As the sadness resonated through me, I could feel that it was not only for Obama's grandmother but also for Rebecca Delle Canaday, my own grandmother, whose loving presence in my early life shaped every moment thereafter."
"As I sat in my car, deep in reflection while cars whizzed by on the busy street, I realized something I hadn't seen before: One of the reasons I liked Obama from the start was the quality of the love he expressed for his grandparents. I made a point of learning about his relationship with them, partly because his early life so closely resembled my own. I was born at a difficult time in my mother's life, and when hardship required her to relinquish her care of me, my grandmother was there to take me in. I can't imagine what energy source she drew on, at age 63, to care for a newborn baby, but I know that during my first seven years, the period of time she cared for me, I never once heard her complain of being tired."
"As I gave attention to the sensations inside me, I felt the sadness thaw and melt into gratitude. Of all the gifts I received from my grandmother, there's one gift that affects me as deeply today as it did 60 years ago. Wherever Barack is today and whatever he is feeling, I bet he also is feeling grateful for the same gift. It was the gift of love, a gift that continues to open and flower throughout life. Because of his grandmother's love, Barack Obama could attract as remarkable a woman as Michelle into his life. Because of my grandmother's love, I was able to attract as remarkable a woman as Kathlyn into my life. Because of his grandmother's love, Barack could run a positive campaign that inspired hope in the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Because of his grandmother's love, he could show us something we very much needed to see again: Proof that love could overcome fear, not by fighting against it but by embracing it in the wholeness of love, and by so doing liberate the exploration of a new galaxy of creative possibilities in the world."
Wherever Barack is in the world today, he knows that he would not be there without his grandmother's presence in his life. Wherever he is in the world today, millions of us join him in feeling the deep sadness of loss, the warm glow of gratitude for Madelyn Dunham, and the joyful celebration of a life that gently and with no fanfare would change the world. Click here for a slideshow, photos and video of Barack Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathlyn-and-gay-hendricks/gift-of-love-an-appreciat_b_140833.html
the many faces of Obama lovers & supporters in America, the world and beyond!!!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/04/obamamania-the-everything_n_140832.html
i cried yesterday when i learned about your grandma's passing and again when i read that Hawaii was going to count her absentee ballot. that made me so happy.my heart is heavy this day and i am keeping you & yer beautiful family close. you are all in my thoughts this day, election day, and everyday!for those who want to send cards, flowers and the lot... may i suggest that you make a contribution to support cancer research instead, in honor of Barack's mother and Toot and for all who have been touched by this disease! just a thought <3<3<3
** reposted from myspace blog **
www.myspace.com/ramona_grey
NO TIME FOR NADER: A LETTER TO NADER AND MCKINNEY VOTERS
Paul Loeb Posted November 1, 2008http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-loeb/no-time-for-nader-a-lette_b_140073.html
I'd thought little about Ralph Nader's potential electoral impact until I read recent polls suggesting he was drawing 3% among likely Ohio voters, 4% in Nevada (plus 1% for Cynthia McKinney), 3% in Pennsylvania, and 5% in Missouri. This means he might once again help tip an election.
Most of Nader's supporters suggest their votes won't make the critical difference. Or insist "the lesser of two evils is still evil." Or list Obama stands or votes they disagree with, some of which I disagree with as well.
But let's assume that the current election still hangs in the balance: that between Republican voter suppression, last-minute attack ads, latent racism, and the uncertainties of turnout among new registrants, McCain and Palin just might be able to win. If you're a Nader or McKinney supporter, I'd like to address this article to you, and ask how you'd feel if, by not voting for Obama, you ended up helping electing them. You may believe that America and both parties are dominated by a corporate oligarchy. I wouldn't completely disagree. You'll probably point out when Democrats (and sometimes Obama) have supported dubious policies backed by these interests, and those examples anger me as well. But after eight years of Bush, it's a dangerous game to assume there's no significant difference between McCain and Obama.
If McCain continues (or even accelerates) disastrous Bush policies that Obama would reverse, that matters. It matters that the Obama campaign has engaged people in a way that could launch a major rebirth of progressive organizing--one that could continue long past the election. Electing Obama also stops a Republican consolidation of power that's fundamentally undermined American democracy--a consolidation that more than a few Nader supporters have called "fascist," though it's not a word I tend to use. So yes, far too many Democrats facilitated the abuses of the past eight years. But given that our president will end up being either Obama or McCain, this question is who will be mostly likely to reverse these trends, and who will create the most favorable landscape for positive progressive change. Here are some key areas of difference:
The Courts: Federal courts can overrule practically any progressive initiative or authorize any regressive one. The Supreme Court justices McCain most admires have consistently extended unchecked corporate and executive power whether voting on torture, reproductive rights, Tom Delay's midnight Texas redistricting, the ability of workers to sue their employers (or for workers to join a union), or the massively disenfranchising Indiana voter ID laws. With three likely Supreme Court retirements in the coming four years, McCain would be able to create obstacles to progressive change for a generation.
Sarah Palin.: Can you say theocracy, with a major dose of ruthlessness? Do we really want someone a melanoma away from the presidency who won her small-town mayor's race by claiming her opponent was soft ..ion and wasn't a true Christian, fired the local officials who'd backed him, and later fired the head of the Alaska state patrol for refusing to fire her ex-brother-in-law? If evil can be defined as "militant ignorance," Palin fits the bill to a t, and since her convention speech, has embodied every character assassination scenario from the past 30 years. If you want a leader who whips up "real Americans" against disloyal allies of terrorism, she'd do Dick Cheney proud.
Labor Rights : Led by unions like SEIU and the United Steel Workers, we finally have a resurgent progressive union movement--one that raises broader social justice issues and builds broader coalitions, like with major environmental groups. But Bush's National Labor Relations Board has created obstacle after obstacle for union organizing, including the key "Kentucky River" ruling (upheld by the Bush Supreme court) that employers could challenge the right of employees like nurses to join unions because they acted as supervisors. Obama's approach, which includes strong support for a bill that allows union recognition as soon as a majority of employees have signed membership cards, would be very different. It comes both from his own experience working with unions in Chicago and from the practical value of empowering and broadening a political base of support. Given the labor movement's key role in pretty much every effort for progressive change in America's history, the shift from hostility to supportiveness would be huge.
Taxation and Health Care: Obama's redistributes resources downward, McCain upward. I'd like Obama to go further. But McCain wants to make Bush's disastrously regressive tax cuts permanent, while Obama has explicitly focused on challenging tax breaks for companies like Exxon and on having the wealthiest pay a greater share. He's called the election a referendum on thirty years of failed trickle-down politics. He's also pushing for a major expansion of Pell grants and tax credits for going to school, while McCain supported the ghastly Republican bill that until reversed by the new Democratic Senate cut $12.9 billion off federal financial aid three years ago. While Obama doesn't go as far as you or I might want, he's pushing strongly in the right direction.
On health care, McCain's approach gives total power to the insurance companies and gives companies that do provide insurance every incentive to dump all but the healthiest of their workers from the rolls. I'd prefer single payer, but Obama's plan, would be a huge step forward in the number of people covered (including all children) and the affordability of care, McCain's a vast step backwards.
Family issues and reproductive rights : It's abstract unless you or someone you know is unwillingly pregnant. McCain's explicitly backed overturning Roe vs Wade, and Palin and the Republican platform would support making abortion illegal even in cases of rape or incest. Obama also supports universal voluntary pre-school for all children.
Global Climate Change : Although McCain acknowledges our role in creating it, Palin who embraces the Exxon-funded skeptics (not to mention "Young Earth" creationism). This spring, McCain refused to be the deciding vote that would have ended a Republican filibuster on a bill eliminating tax breaks for the oil companies and using the money to fund alternative energy. While progressives will have to push against Obama's receptivity to the coal and nuclear industries, he still goes far further than any major presidential candidate in pushing green jobs as a centerpiece of his platform, with a $150 billion commitment. Meanwhile McCain supporters are left with "Drill baby drill."
Iraq: I wish Obama would pledge to get out more quickly. But he did speak out against the war before it happened, as part of an anti-war rally that any of us would have been proud to attend. And given that he was about to run for Senate, that wasn't a safe or easy choice. He also does at least have a withdrawal time-table. In contrast, McCain, who helped lead the neo-con charge to invade Iraq since well before 9/11, talks of an indefinite occupation and jokes about "Bomb Bomb Iran." It's another area where we'll need to push, but also another huge difference.
The Politics of Fear : Do you really want to reward yet another Republican campaign based on lies and fear? That's what the McCain/Palin campaign is reduced to. Pure slime, from Bill Ayers and "palling around with terrorists," to Rashid Khalidi and "socialism." If McCain loses, maybe we'll get a different politics. If he wins it's Karl Rove on infinite replay.
* * *
But the differences go beyond particular issues to how the respective presidencies would shape a broader context for progressive change. It's easy to dismiss Obama's community organizing background. But three years in south Chicago neighborhoods, plus several more representing the same community groups, is a serious involvement whose legacy has shaped Obama's campaign in a powerful way. No previous president has been a community organizer, or anything close to it. No major party campaign has encouraged supporters to act with as much autonomous initiative. And none since Roosevelt have brought as many new people into politics--people who represent a huge potential voice for ongoing progressive change. When Obama consciously asks volunteers to think of themselves as connected with a tradition that goes back to the abolitionist, union, suffrage, and civil rights movements he gets them thinking not only about a single campaign, but about their long-term ability to join together to shift America's history, and that, unleashed, can be a powerful force.
It's a force we can work with not only to help pass Obama's legislation, but also to push him to take stronger stands. Those newly mobilized might just play a role akin to civil rights movement participants who worked to get Kennedy and Johnson elected, then set their own agenda, dragging Kennedy and LBJ into overcoming initial resistance and taking genuinely courageous positions --like LBJ staking all his political capital on civil rights and voting rights bills that he acknowledged would lose the Democrats the south for a generation. Going back further, progressives turned out to elect and reelect FDR, but also organized unions, occupied factories, worked block by block in their communities, and fought in every possible way to create an autonomous voice. Progressives can do the same with Obama, so long as we keep speaking out after the election and working to engage those who supported him. Given the massive ability of a president to shape the national agenda, I'd rather fight for the Obama proposals I support and push him further in areas where he falls short, than spend another four years trying block an endless succession of horrific Republican initiatives.
As an abstract list of stands, I'd take many of Nader or McKinney's positions over Obama's. But they have to get passed in the Senate and Congress and if I could snap my fingers and install one of them as president, I'd take Obama without hesitation. If I'm looking for someone who's going to pass legislation and lead a country of three hundred million diverse people, I want someone who can work with well with those they disagree with, who's reflective and doesn't just shoot from the hip, and who's willing to be self-critical and self-reflective about their own choices (in a way that Nader, for instance, never really has been about the strategic choices he made to campaign in Florida in 2000). Obama passes that test, Nader and McKinney, though both have taken valuable stands and have wonderful positions do not. I'd like to push Obama in some more progressive directions, although much of what he's proposing as is as strong as any legislation that's passed in 30 6ears. But particularly in a time when we're facing so many multiple crises, I like that he'll step back and think before he acts. I like that he's going to listen to different voices. I like that he's a pragmatist who's going to look at a situation closely before imposing some abstract solution.
You may think the election's already won, so your vote won't make a difference. That may be true in California, New York, and Illinois, but as in 2000 and 2004, Nader's campaigning in states most at risk, with an effort in every major swing state and a final week's focus on Florida, Ohio, Minnesota, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Obama's four or five point lead in key battleground states is certainly better than being five points down. But if you knock out two or three percent for voter suppression, two or three for last-minute slime ads and potential racial backlash, and two or three because not all the new voters will show up, he could still well lose the election. As Tom Hayden points out in the Progressives for Obama blog, "Kerry won Wisconsin in 2004 by 0.38 percent, New Hampshire by 1.37 percent, Pennsylvania by 2.5 percent; he lost Iowa by 0.67 percent, New Mexico by 0.79 percent, Ohio by 2.11 percent and Nevada by 2.59 percent." That doesn't count the official Florida 2000 margin of 537 votes and New Mexico margin of 368 votes. As someone who's considering Nader or McKinney, you could well make the key difference.
Even assuming Obama does win, the margin of his victory will be key to his leverage following the election. Wavering senators or congressional representatives aren't going to add in third party votes when they decide how far to go to support (or improve) Obama's initiatives. But the more he wins by, the more mandate he has for shifting America in a fundamental direction from everything Bush has represented.
Maybe none of this matters to you. Maybe you feel, "the worse the better." and are gleefully cheering as American (and global) capitalism melts down. Maybe you like the idea of dancing at the apocalypse, and assume that the revolution will follow. But crashing empires get ugly. Real people get hurt and even die--witness Katrina. Add in climate change and a McCain administration would mean gambling with global catastrophe.
It may feel pure to vote for a candidate who will never get in power, so will never disappoint us. But this election isn't about abstract purity. It's about finally halting a Republican machine that wages preemptive wars, smashes unions, purges African Americans from the voting rolls, puts Exxon in charge of energy legislation, passes over a hundred billion dollars a year of regressive tax cuts, and brands everyone who disagrees with them an ally of terrorism.
Either we stop these trends or we don't. And the ballot's the most direct way to do this. If we place all our hopes in awaiting some future popular uprising, we throw away a concrete opportunity to stop the disastrous path of the past eight years. We also give away a chance to elect someone who has actually been part of our progressive movements, from Obama's anti-apartheid student activism, through his community organizing, to his speaking out at the Chicago anti Iraq-war rally. We can cast a symbolic vote for Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney. Or vote for Barack Obama and actually help shape the political landscape. It would be a tragedy if because of our own desire for pure and uncomplicated stands, we helped throw away a historic chance to move forward.
Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the 3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association. His previous books include Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. See www.paulloeb.org To receive his articles directly, email sympa@lists.onenw.org with the subject line: subscribe paulloeb-articles
because we all know and love someone with whom we can share this moving piece <3<3<3
By Shari MacDonald Strong
When I was about six years old, I decided I wanted to attend the little Baptist Church that was next door to my family’s house – and not just because I loved riding my bike with the banana seat around its parking lot. From that day until a handful of years ago, I attended evangelical churches of one kind or another. So, it’s no surprise that I spent much of my life in the Pro-Life camp, worrying about sanctity of life issues.
And yet, here I am today: a member of the Democratic Party, supporting a Pro-Choice candidate. In fact, these days I consider myself simultaneously Pro-Life (meaning that I would encourage a woman to continue her pregnancy if possible, and I would do whatever I could to help her) and Pro-Choice (because I believe that individual women, and not James Dobson or George Bush, should get to make wise, informed, thoughtful decisions about their lives) – a fact that boggles the mind of friends on both sides of the issue. How did I get here? With days to go before the election, I’d like to explain.
Dear Pro-Life Friend,
As a former Pro-Life Crisis Pregnancy Center volunteer, I’m as surprised (in some ways) to find myself supporting a Pro-Choice candidate as you are to see me here. There was a time when I couldn’t have envisioned it – back when I felt secure in my (comfortable and, I admit, self-satisfied) belief that I knew better than pregnant women whether or not they should have their babies. In church, I was taught that women who sought abortions were selfish, that they wanted a “convenient” way out of their perplexing predicaments. That they didn’t care about the life inside them, and that those of us who did care were responsible for intervening: with our votes in the voting booth, with our bodies at Pro-Life protests, and, yes, with our big, big mouths.
Then, when I was eighteen, one of my closest (and at the time, single) friends became pregnant; she was too frightened to tell her family, and she had nowhere to go. I helped my friend find a family to live with during her pregnancy, and another family to adopt the child. After that, I started volunteering at the Crisis Pregnancy Center. In my training, I learned to tell women that the one-minute pregnancy test took 10 minutes: enough time for them to have to watch the evangelistic VHS tape I was supposed to turn on for them while they awaited their test results. I was supposed to tell them about Jesus, and about abortion tearing their babies to pieces. But when I looked into the tired, anxious, heartbroken faces of the women – none of whom took their decision lightly – what I wanted to do was offer compassion. I never met one who was single and flighty and careless. The women were often married, all of them older than I was, some of them at the end of their ropes. They looked at me like I had no idea what life was capable of doling out – and they were right. My words would do nothing to ease the difficulties of their situations; my judgment would only make the women feel worse about what they genuinely believed they needed to do.
Many were poor, most were struggling, some were in abusive relationships, a number were barely surviving. And there I was: young, privileged, without a care – throwing judgment and Jesus at them, but offering no real help or hope. The pregnancy center claimed to offer support, but there were no real resources available. No halfway houses or homes for pregnant girls ever had room for them. I could help clients sign up for the WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) program, which gave them access to free cheese. But what good was cheese to the co-ed who had to drop out of college, to the wife in an abusive common-law marriage, to the woman with no place to go? One night, a pregnant girl begged me to help her find a place to live – and no agency I called could help. As she went out into the night, and into an uncertain future, I laid my head on the desk and decided I’d had enough of judgment and finger pointing. I decided the best way to help would be . . . to actually help. Contrary to what I’d learned in church, none of the center’s clients had been looking to abortion as a “convenient” way out; most were figuring out how they would survive, even without a baby. Talk about your inconvenient truths.
These women knew that resources and government support were scarce to nonexistent; they also knew that families were more than willing to adopt healthy white babies, but no one wanted the minority babies, the sick babies, the babies born to mothers who struggled with alcohol or drug addiction. They knew that if they had their babies, most of them would be on their own. It wasn't a question of convenience for most. It was a question of survival.
It was at that point that I began to make a shift. I still wanted to help prevent abortions, help save lives, bring abortion numbers down. But I no longer believed that picketing an abortion clinic or fighting for a law change was the way to do it. I came to believe, and still do believe, that the way to bring down abortion numbers is by helping the women in practical ways: working to get equal pay for women, better access to health care and day care, guaranteed paid maternity leave, etc. A number of studies show that abortion statistics actually go down under more progressive administrations and laws. (I'm sure people on both sides can cite a range of statistics, but it just makes sense to me that when women have more support, they're more likely to have their babies.) So, it's not that I don't care about the abortion issue. It's simply that I come at it from another direction now. I'm supporting the party whose policies I believe help women and families more, and believe their taking office will result in fewer women believing that abortion is their best option.
Finally, to those friends who have painted Barack Obama as “abortion-loving,” let me say that I know a lot of pro-choice folks, and I consider myself both pro-choice and pro-life, and none of us is an "abortion lover." People on both sides of the issue -- including me, including you, including Obama -- are compassionate. We simply disagree about what political actions are most helpful to women and families.
To sum up: I don't support Obama in spite of being pro-life, but because I'm pro-life. Women who are desperate will always find a way to get abortions, whether or not they're legal. I think it's a waste of time to exert our energy on judging women considering abortions and speculating about what their motives may or may not be, picketing clinics, and focusing on laws that won't prevent abortions in the end, anyway. I believe the real goal should be to create a society in which women and mothers and families receive the practical and emotional support they need in order to survive and thrive (again: healthcare, excellent child care, equal pay for equal work, education, access to social services, etc.) if they have their child. I believe that that is the answer to the abortion issue, and that's why I am a Democrat. I realize that many people have other opinions, but this is mine. And that's why I'm voting for Obama.
Love,
Shari
Shari MacDonald Strong is the Creative Nonfiction Editor for Literary Mama. Her essay "On Wanting a Girl" appears in the anthology It's a Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters (Seal Press, April 2006). She writes a column for Mamazine, and has also written for a number of publications, including Geez magazine. Shari worked as an editor and copywriter in the publishing industry for 15 years. She writes a blog from her home in Portland, Oregon, where she lives with her husband, photojournalist Craig Strong, and their children: grade-schooler Eugenia, born in Russia, and preschool sons Will and Mac, born via gestational surrogacy.
The Maternal Is Political
http://www.literarymama.com/columns/zen/archives/2008/11/an_open_letter.html
