NO PRETENSE

(U.S. athletes Tommie Smith, center, and John Carlos, extend gloved hands skyward and stare downward in racial protest during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner after Smith received the gold and Carlos the bronze for the 200 meter run at the Olympics in Mexico City on Oct. 16, 1968. Australian silver medalist Peter Norman is at left.)

No pretense.

That's what I'm asking for this inauguration, and of you who have a chance to witness it in person tomorrow.

If you respect Barack Obama's message, the platform he ran on, the possibilities that are waiting for him and us, you will demonstrate that by respecting him AND by having the guts to disagree with his mistakes. (He does and will make mistakes.) Inviting Rick Warren to usher in this new era with prayer is an offensive mistake.


If you agree with the positions Rick Warren promotes about the role of women to be submissive to their husbands, his Johnny-come-lately recognition that AIDS exists with a position which favors abstinence and prayer over condoms and sex education, his refusal to accord human rights to lesbians and gays (including being instrumental in fundraising for the recent effort to remove marriage rights for lesbians and gays in California), his insistence that someone who does not believe in g*d should not be allowed to hold public office, his opposition to reproductive choice and equation of legal abortion to the Nazi Holocaust, his insistence that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers, his "nonegotiable, nondebatable" opposition to stem cell research, his disavowal of evolution, his refusal to take a public stand against torture, his contention that Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and other non-Christians will "burn in hell", his request to followers that they emulate the mindless devotion of Hitler youth -- then you'll find no reason to object to his presence on the podium. But if you agree with the man, you're not an advocate of progressive human rights, that's fairly clear.

If, on the other hand, you find his views repugnant, you should not pretend to allow him to speak for you (and us as a nation) in his address to g*d. Do not pretend to a respect you do not feel. You'll regret your silence, you know you will.

Here's where you make your chops as a feet-on-the-street activist, instead of a keyboard theorist. Stand up and turn you back on the man when he starts to speak. If you believe in prayer, do your own, out loud and with honest feeling. If you don't believe in prayer, sing "America the Beautiful", which was written by a LESBIAN. (Except if it was me, I'd replace every other "brotherhood" with "sisterhood".)

I booed Tommy Thompson at the Kennedy Center when he came to speak to an international gathering of disabled artists. It made some heads explode, but he heard it, others heard it, and who knows how far those ripples have traveled.

And you won't be alone. There's a Turn Your Back on Rick Warren Campaign well underway. (I wonder if its inception was my original post on this issue here.)

I'm all for forgiveness. I live by forgiveness. But since being given this honor, this reward for past hateful behavior, Rick Warren has not sought our forgiveness nor has he sought reconciliation. He's scrubbed some of past (and no doubt future) hate-based views from his website. He's raised money for his anti-liberation work by parading his selection around as proof that the conservative message of convert or die is working. He has Not Changed. And when people resist growth, you can have patience but you don't give them respect for persistent shitty choices.

No pretense. Not on this day.




{And, just to prove the point that Obama could have chosen from a vast number of religious leaders who DO live/preach genuine liberation messages, check out Reverend Al Sharpton's keynote speech at the Human Rights Ecumenical Service held at Atlanta's Tabernacle Baptist Church to welcome the Atlanta-based Alliance of Affirming Faith-Based Organizations.}

[Cross-posted at Group News Blog.]

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OBAMA'S NATIONAL SECURITY PRESS CONFERENCE, 1 DECEMBER 2008

(First 11.5 minutes of today's press conference with President-Elect Barack Obama announcing his national security team; does not include conclusion, acceptances and press questions)

I woke up at an odd hour today, my sleep definitely out of whack, and after deciding I would not be able to drop right back off, I turned on the television hoping for more than diet tips and small claims court. I was just in time to see yet another Barack Obama press conference, this one announcing his national security team, as follows:

Secretary of State -- Senator Hillary Clinton of New York
Secretary of Defense -- Robert Gates (currently in this position)
Attorney General -- Eric Holder, former Deputy Attorney General of the United States
Secretary of Homeland Security -- Janet Napolitano, Governor of Arizona
Ambassador to the United Nations -- Dr. Susan Rice, former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs
National Security Advisor -- General James Jones, former Commandant of the Marine Corps, former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe and former Commander, United States European Command

A transcript of this press conference is available from the Chicago Sun-Times here.

Let me begin by saying what an unholy relief it is to be able to once again face speeches from a President (Elect) with trust and interest, instead of fear and embarrassment. I know you know what I mean.

I think Obama is using this series of pressers in a number of ways. First, he's assuming power, respectfully but definitively, and it's being ceded to him by our frat-boy loser who patently cannot wait to go cut mesquite an hour north of where I live and be allowed to openly drink himself into oblivion. (Deeper oblivion, I should say.) To quote Vice President Elect Biden from today's speech, "These are extraordinary times, and that's not hyperbole". We are in death-rattle need of leadership, and watching it pull on hip boots is giving everybody except the End-Timers a chance to breathe again.

Second, he's re-educating America to expect communication, useful information, and respect from its government. Like, speaking in, whoa, complete sentences, you know? No code words, no bluster, no shoddily-concealed lies, no fear-mongering, and no "dumbing it down". I'm pained by how unusual it looks and sounds. And I very much appreciate how he is all business. These are not joking matters he's bringing to us. I'm more than ready to be around grown-ups again.

It reminds me of my second-favorite "News of the Weird" story, concerning a deputy sheriff who went to an isolated campground on his patrol and had to use the outdoor toilet there. A one-holer with a large aperture, to be specific (it matters to the story). As he was pulling back up his pants, his wallet fell from his back pocket and into the opening. However, he thought he was lucky because the offal had not been emptied in quite a while and was both at a high level and relatively thick, in viscous terms. His wallet remained on the surface in plain view, a few feet down. He grabbed hold of the side and leaned in -- money can be washed, after all.

You can guess what happened. When he splashed upright, he was up to his neck in it. He hadn't radioed in his pit stop, and no one thought to look for him for hours. He wound up spending the night standing in the crapper. When they finally found him the next day, and he had been safely extricated, one of his colleagues began laughing. Bad move: The deputy tried to kill him.

We have a long way to go before we'll feel like laughing about what's been done to our nation. If ever.

Obama is also using his professorial skills, so very evident in his campaign, to teach us how to think logically and deeply again. He is an oddity, a charismatic who is not an ideologue but instead a pragmatist. Intelligent thought and analysis is at its heart very practical. Our current rule by punditry is full of white boy sound and fury passing as intelligence, but is usually more emotion-laden than a slumber party prank phone call spree.

In particular, Obama seems to be trying to teach our media how to ask rational, probing questions, a skill few of them apparently possess. Today the press corps was obsessed with Hillary (CDS in full spate) or if Obama wanted India to bomb Pakistan for the Mumbai tragedy. He dealt with both graciously the first time, even managing to get a laugh at one reporter's expense by (gently) pointing out how the press wants to dredge up campaign rhetoric again. The second time he was asked the same questions, he was more clipped and brief, but not in that sulky, dim-eyed Republican way. He simply wasn't going to reward bad behavior, and the issue on the table was not Clinton or threats of war. In fact, when you heard Clinton's acceptance, it was extremely clear she's making herself part of Obama's administration. Her remarks were the most eloquent of all the acceptances, and the most supportive of him as a leader. But -- right over the heads of the press corps.

Watching many of these reporters try to adjust to direct, clear language, complicated ideas and responsible government is like watching Vince Vaughn discover his new girlfriend in a movie actually wants to have conversation with him: They're simultaneously resentful and intrigued. This should be fun to watch unfold.

Years ago, I had a chance to hear Anne Lamott speak at the annual Art and Soul Conference at Baylor University. She said things that literally changed the direction of my life, but when she paused to drink down a glass of water before taking questions, she gave us her personal ground rules: She wasn't interested in being attacked or disrespected, and would not participate in any form of it, even that deft academic version which leaves working class folks like me wanting to say "What the fuck do you mean?" She said she only wanted to hear honest questions, not pontifications or arguments. If someone wanted to pontificate or argue, they could write their own books, thank you. And if somebody chose to ignore her guidelines, or tried to slip one over on her, she said she would smile at him (she added it was almost always a him, because men having such a hard time listening to powerful women without arguing at least in their heads) and go on to the next questioner without reply.

It worked like gangbusters. Only one guy tried to weasel past the verbal barrier, and she did exactly what she'd warned: He and his multisyllabic quasi-harangue was left hanging as she called on the next person. We all roared in laughter, the weasel crept away, and the questions (and answers) got very, very interesting. Obama is likewise trying to give us all room to be smart, connected, and decent, to have a conversation where we may disagree without shouting each other down or scoring points off each other. We sorely need it.

Another irritating attempt at "gotcha" journalism which surfaced twice was repeating the Right-Wing derision about assembling a "team of rivals", as if the only form of governance of value is surrounding yourself with those who dare not argue with you. (We see how well that's worked.) Obama brushed by it. I wish he'd used the chance to point out that McCain tried to run his campaign on how much he disagreed with Duyba, a myth we all saw through, and that was never questioned by the right-of-center press as unworkable difference of opinion.

My other major impression of this particular press conference was jubilation at seeing 50% of the population of my nation represented among his choices. And not just sisters, but one of them a Sistah. Susan Rice's background is in African affairs, which may not be spotless but certainly bodes well for Africa being treated as a player on the world stage.

But next time, folks, can we please either have a dais for short people to stand on so they aren't blocked by mics on the podium, or, even better, raise the camera angle so we get a full view of their faces?

I'll leave the commentary on the political meaning of these appointees to others, except to say none of them would have been my choice. But, then, I'm a liberal. I'm sorry to see Senator Clinton leave the Senate. She's been a strong force for women there. Likewise, I'm sorry to see Arizona lose Napolitano as Governor. I wish Obama's team wasn't so loaded with hawks, but then he is a hawk (and definitely not a liberal), so it was to be expected. I agree that Gates isn't of the same stripe as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, but that's hardly a recommendation, is it? Still, I'm willing to accept Obama's exhortation that he's interested in competence and effectiveness over ideology, at least for the time being.

That's another bit of job retraining he's having to bring to our government, the ability to recognize competence and effectiveness, to reward it and learn to expect it once again. What a concept.

[Cross posted at Group News Blog.]

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SPIKE IN DEATH THREATS AGAINST PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA

(Poster image by Alvin Blair)

I sat down to write a post on this and discovered Digby already covered it yesterday, with good detail, so I'll begin by referring you to her post Losin' It: The Secret Service is reporting a spike in death threats against President-Elect Obama which "from Maine to Idaho, it’s the most threats ever made against a President-elect."

The Statesman Journal from Salem, Oregon reports that the Secret Service has warned the Obama family about the dramatic surge in threats, and that they have begun investigating former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin because her attacks on Obama are believed by them to be responsible for the increase in threats.

According to a cited Associated Press count, "One of the most popular white supremacist Web sites (Stormfront) got more than 2,000 new members the day after the election" and had to temporarily go off line because of the increased activity.

The Statesman Journal article states "The verbal attacks by Palin on Obama had provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling 'terrorist' and 'kill him.'"

Eliminationist rhetoric, ably tracked by Dave Neiwert and our own Sara Robinson, is frequently a canary in the mineshaft when a prevailing lie (such as the bedrock of racism in American culture) is effectively contradicted. Our response must deal with the core issue, not just the most evident symptoms. In particular, we must continue on our path of progressive vision without retreating in strategy or downgrading our expectations; we must insist on naming and speaking out against hate speech in all its forms (including from our own ranks, even if it seems to come from a place of "reacting to their attacking us first"); and we must be able to differentiate between examples where constructive dialogue can lead to long-term cultural change versus examples where an imminent threat means seeking legal intervention.

For more reading, check out the Appendix on Eliminationism in America compiled by Dave Neiwert at Orcinus. This appendix supplements Orcinus's 2007 series on eliminationism, and is arranged "by categories of eliminationism, namely: Expressing a desire or a demand for extermination, removal, or infliction of harm; identification of opponents with national enemies; identification of opponents as a target for retaliation or incarceration; expressing a desire for or approval of genocide or murder; identification with vermin or disease."

{Cross-posted at Group News Blog.)

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CHARLOTTE TAFT WRITES: IF YOU'RE FEMINIST, YOU'LL VOTE OBAMA

(A young supporter at a rally with Michelle Obama in Las Vegas, New Mexico on October 29, 2008. Photo by Adrienne Booth.)

Charlotte Taft is what I think of as a Feminist's Feminist. She is particularly well-known and respected in Texas because she founded the Routh Street Women's Clinic, the first feminist reproductive rights clinic in our state. Routh Street became known, under her leadership, as a place where the whole woman was treated, where abortion was approached as the complicated and life-altering decision that it is without judgment or denial. With her efficient pragmatism and creative humor, she managed to dissuade Operation Rescue and other hate groups from keeping Routh Street Clinic as its number one target. Her kind of feminism is MY kind of feminism -- never single issue, never stepping away from identity but not living entirely in its tent either, a feminism which is an ethos and a world view, not just a stand on a few issues.

(For more information about Charlotte Taft and Routh Street Clinic, I recommend the fascinating article about her in the 1995 Dallas Observor.)

When Charlotte's letter, below, was forwarded on to me, I immediately knew I wanted to post it for international distribution. It's brilliant and open-minded and compassionate in that bold way I associate with women leaders. What I hope from sharing this to expand upon Charlotte's intent to begin a discussion, long overdue in this country, about the real meaning of feminism and why we can't go forward without it at our core. We've allowed others to kick dirt on it for too long, and now, with the likes of Sarah Palin claiming to be some version of "feminist", enough is enough. Just as we are taking back liberal, I'm leading the charge to take back feminist. It means what WE say it means.

And if you are a feminist, you will be voting for Obama. With pride. -- Maggie Jochild



An Open Letter to my fellow Hillary supporters who are considering casting their precious votes for McCain/Palin.

When I first heard that there were former Hillary supporters --- women --- who were going to vote for McCain I thought it was a vicious and cruel hoax. Now I realize that it is true. I think we must be coming from very different points of view. I can’t imagine what underlying beliefs and values are most important to you that his candidacy appeals to.

I’ve read some of the web sites that express anger and resentment at Hillary’s loss, and the sexism that was to blame. I was very disappointed, too. I agree that there was sexism, but when it comes down to it she didn’t win enough primaries. It doesn’t make sense to me to blame Obama, who represents and shares so many of the beliefs that Hillary stands for. It is traditional and convenient to pit women and minorities against each other. But we have more in common than not. And I wonder who benefits when we who have had so little power are scrambling to blame each other. I am hoping that your consideration of McCain doesn’t come from something as sad as racism. Every one of us has grown up in a society in which race is an issue--some of us more than others. I’ve been fortunate to have less to ‘undo’ than some people. But I hope you will see that not voting for someone because of race is exactly the same as not voting for someone because she is a woman. As a adult you either continue that kind of thinking, or you challenge it in yourself and others. That’s up to you.

I think you already know what you want to do, and you are looking for arguments that seem to make it acceptable. Though you have every right to use your vote in whatever way you want, I feel angry that you may vote for McCain not so much because of how this will affect my life, but because of what I believe is at stake for the future of women, the country, and the planet. I’m writing this letter for myself. You can read it or delete it. I fear that nothing I have to say will make any difference to you.

I’m going to write about what’s important to me, and why I think this election is so crucial. But before that there are a few points I want to make. Some of the women writing as feminists say that the Republicans respect women enough to take them seriously. I must disagree!

1. This is the Party that killed and buried the Equal Rights Amendment -- the total text of which was “Equality of Rights Under the law Shall not be Denied or Abridged by the United States or by any State on Account of Sex.” Over the past 30+ years they have killed thousands of bills and initiatives for child care, family leave, increased funding or education, alternative energy, funding for poor women to have the choice of abortion, funding for birth control and requirements that it be covered by regular insurance plans, comprehensive sex education programs, international family planning assistance, peace through diplomacy, early childhood education, school lunch programs, after school programs, wildlife and wilderness preservation, comprehensive health care, violence against women programs, and so many other things that I care deeply about. I have never felt respected or taken seriously by the Republican party. Their choice of a female whose views are antithetical to all I hold dear does not make me feel any more respected.

2. Some of the writers are intimating that Geraldine Ferraro and Bill and Hillary Clinton are going to vote for McCain. Of course I can’t read their minds, but I think it is the height of arrogance and solipsism for anyone say that just because they are going to vote for McCain, they also just know that these other great Americans are going to violate and abandon everything they campaigned for and stood for and believed in to support a ticket that epitomizes the polar opposite. I don’t know what is attracting you to McCain. I doubt it is something I can understand. But at least just be honest and say you have changed your mind about what you value. You have every right to your beliefs, but don’t cloak them in the pretense that this is some kind of righteous feminist anger. If you actually knew what Hillary Clinton stands for and supported, the issues and principals that she has worked so hard for, it would be a cavalier betrayal to throw your vote to the farthest Right Wing ticket we have seen in this nation since Barry Goldwater (who was, by the way, pro-choice!) I happened to serve on the National Democratic Platform Committee in 1984 which was chaired by Geraldine Ferraro the same year she was nominated as VP. I didn’t have any problems recalling her candidacy -- I’ve heard women say, “We can’t let the Republicans be the first.” The Democrats demonstrated that they trusted women 24 years ago. Do you even know that both the Green Party’s candidate for President and for Vice President are women? Cynthia McKinney and Rose Clemente. If what’s important to you is to support women, wouldn’t you at least cast your votes for them who support much more of the issues that Hillary supports?

3. I can’t let you think that we will not lose Roe v, Wade if McCain is elected, no matter what you hear. Better to acknowledge that you don’t care that much about it, or you don’t need an abortion, or birth control, or sex education, than to pretend to yourself that this will not happen. Currently 7 out of 9 Justices are Republican appointees. Three who have supported Roe v. Wade are older than Senator McCain and have been holding on so that the Court is not run by fundamentalists. Far Right anti-choice Justices like Scalia (who McCain has specifically cited as the type he would appoint) claim to be ruling based on Constitutional principles. But they never mention that abortion was legal when the constitution was ratified, and didn’t become illegal until the 1830’s. Many people don’t even realize that the court has already made significant inroads into legal abortion and access. The anti-choice Justices have been very clear in their opinions that they think Roe should be overturned -- as have Senator McCain and Governor Palin. McCain even says on his web site that he supports a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting abortion! When there is a vacancy on the court the President will be given a list that has long ago been made up. McCain has shown that the support of the far Right is so important to him that he gave up any shred of moderation in his choice of VP. He will have nothing to do but to appoint the ones who have been chosen for him. He won’t have a choice, even if he wanted one, just like the women of this nation. But I realize that is not your problem.

So what do I care about?

. The divide between rich and poor in this country is nearly as great as it was during the Great Depression. McCain’s approach to economics appears to me to be identical to Bush’s--to make sure the rich get richer and hope the money trickles down. It doesn’t work. The stability of our country is totally thrown off when we really don’t have a middle class. McCain has already said that he thinks middle class is anyone who makes less than $5 million! He doesn’t even know how many houses he has--so I think you can say he is out of touch with the experience of actual people. The government has gotten us into this mess, and Obama knows that the government has to take a strong role in getting us out of it.

. Choice--already discussed above. Just a tidbit-- our nation has cut off international family planning aid during the two Bush administrations. That doesn’t just make us fools, it means that nations that used to look for us to expand education and the rights of women now need to look elsewhere. Our teenagers deserve to have education about sexuality that provides them with information and assists them in making good, safe choices for their lives. Women of all economics have the right to reproductive justice. Obama will appoint Justices who truly respect women.

. We must have an administration that sees war as a last resort, not as an interesting sport or business venture. Palin thinks God sends us to war. Isn’t it a coincidence that the people we are attacking believe the same thing.

. The planet cannot afford another administration that fights and doubts and ignores the contributions of human pollution to the degradation of the climate. Thirty years ago President Carter sat at his desk in a cardigan sweater and told us that we were in a crisis and we needed to immediately invest in alternative energy technologies and stop our dependency on foreign oil. When Reagan was elected, he didn’t just ignore that, he actually used taxpayers money to have solar panels removed from the White House property. It is not an accident or coincidence that what was already a crisis now has us close to the point at which none of our efforts can be enough. This will take a bold vision and the total commitment of the nation. If you are in doubt, just look at the weather history. The number of hurricanes and tornadoes and tsunami is increasing every year. We don’t know how to protect ourselves from these natural disasters, because there is no protection save to embark on a bold move to curtail our CO2 emissions and begin to heal the planet. The planet needs our leadership. In nominating Palin as VP, the Republicans are telling us that it’s OK with them to have a potential President who lives in denial of the basic scientific facts. We literally cannot afford it.

. During this election season, many Hillary supporters saw sexism everywhere -- and they are right -- it was there. What I have learned is that Obama supporters saw racism everywhere. They were right, too. Our society has long pitted one group against another. And who do you suppose benefits? Looks to me as though the John McCain and George Bushs of the world do. I have great hope that the Obama Presidency will be a very important step in healing our nation’s old birth defect of racism -- as I believe Hillary’s campaign was an important step in healing sexism which has also been around since the beginning. I’m happy for Sarah Palin to be treated fairly, but it is more than a little ironic to me that the Republicans are all of a sudden the ones charging others with sexism. For me, Sarah Palin is to the Women’s Movement as Clarence Thomas is to the Civil Rights Movement -- a recipient of the benefits who carries none of the heart of the vision. Yes, feminism is about women getting to do what they want, but for me that is not nearly enough. For me feminism is also about enlarging our compassion for all people; about expanding both accountability and choice; about caring for the earth as if she were our mother; about becoming evolved enough to find peaceful ways to solve our differences; it is not just about having a bigger piece of the pie, but about baking a bigger pie so that all can experience their own importance and power; it is about valuing life so powerfully that we only bring a child into the world when we know that child can be loved and cared for, and that each woman is trusted with that sacred decision; it is about truly honoring ourselves and each other. For me feminism and fundamentalism are across the Grand Canyon from each other. That’s how far I am from McCain ad Palin. For me Obama’s campaign represents a feminist approach to the country that is more about values than it is about genitals.

. As a lesbian, I care a great deal about how those outside the accepted mainstream of society as far as their sexuality are treated, both legally and with regard to policy and attitude. I am so fortunate to have grown up after the years when gays and lesbians were institutionalized by their families; were denied employment on the grounds that we were abnormal, or else were security risks because we could be blackmailed; were marginalized and openly hated. I came of age during years when so many people courageously ‘came out’ to an often ambivalent public. I was a plaintiff in a class action lawsuit in Texas designed to challenge the antiquated ‘sodomy law’ that was used to discriminate against gays and lesbians in many of the same ways that Jim Crow laws had been used to legitimatize discrimination against Blacks. My lawsuit isn’t the one that changed the world for us--that came many years later. Our society itself has begun to come out of the closet because virtually everyone now realizes that they know or are even related to someone who is gay or lesbian or transgendered. That makes it harder for the hate to be legitimate, but we still have a long way to go.

For much of our nation’s history, racism made interracial marriage illegal in may states. In 1958, polls showed that 94% of whites were against allowing interracial marriage. It was not until 1967 that the Supreme Court declared that laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional. Who really knows why no one thought of suggesting ‘domestic partnerships’ or ‘civil unions’ for interracial couples. I have been disappointed that all the major party Presidential candidates, including Hillary, were on the ‘play it safe’ bandwagon of supporting civil unions or some kind of contract, but not gay marriage. Yet that tells me that, Massachusetts and California notwithstanding, they all saw the marriage thing as political suicide. In terms of Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin, it is only Sarah Palin who is really opposed to even the most basic fairness in benefits, etc. You were very adamant that she allowed benefits for gay government workers. But you didn’t tell the whole story. When the Alaska Legislature passed a bill prohibiting same-sex benefits, Palin’s legal department told her she had to veto it because it would have violated a court order requiring such benefits. But note the second paragraph clearly demonstrating Palin’s disagreement with the order that benefits be provided!

"The Department of Law advised me that this bill... is unconstitutional given the recent court order... mandating same-sex benefits," Palin said in a statement. "With that in mind, signing this bill would be in direct violation of my oath of office."

The statement added, "The governor's veto does not signal any change or modification to her disagreement with the action and order by the Alaska Supreme Court. It is the governor's intention to work with the Legislature and to give the people of Alaska an opportunity to express their wishes and intentions whether these benefits should continue."

So none of the candidates supports gay marriage, but there is a significant difference in attitude between the Obama team and the McCain team. The Democrats stand for an expansion of rights and civility, where the Republicans have over and over sponsored attempts to create Constitutional Amendments prohibiting gay marriage, and it is Republicans who have supported and in some cases passed, laws prohibiting gays from adopting children. This is truly astonishing given that our current Republican VP has a lesbian daughter who has said that she considers her partner to be her spouse. The two had a baby together, and they wanted to be free to make their own choices, and to have others see theirs as a private family matter. Just as with Palin’s teen aged daughter’s pregnancy the Republicans view their families issues as private, while at the same time supporting laws that restrict others’ freedoms. They want to live their lives as they see fit. Gee, that’s all the rest of us ever wanted.

. Americans are one of the few civilized societies in which working people often cannot afford their health care. What difference does it make to be technically advanced if people go bankrupt when they have a catastrophic illness--or if they choose an abortion because they can’t afford another child when they have one with a chronic illness--or when they have to pick between getting their medication and eating? Hillary tried so hard to tackle this one all those years ago. What Party do you think stood in the way? Who protected big insurance companies and scared Americans into fearing ‘socialized medicine?’

. If you were to get a job with General Motors today, you would be making less than someone who started in the same job forty years ago. Actual earning power has declined. Foreclosures haven’t even begun to taper off, gas is off the charts, huge white collar corporations have gotten away with hiding millions of dollars for their corporate executives and squandering the pensions for working people. I waited for the Republicans to apologize to the American people for the last eight years. As far as I know they didn’t.

. In the past 30+ years there have been many programs to lessen the incidence of rape and domestic violence in this country. Yet most of our attention has been on trying to help victims and get them to safety. It is time to focus time, energy, and resources on prevention. Among all the Senators Joe Biden has been one of the most active and vocal on these very painful issues that affect thousands of families every year.

These are the things I can think of. I’m sure there are more but it is late. ---Charlotte

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Charlotte Taft is currently co-director of IMAGINE! retreats and workshops in Glorieta, New Mexico. Further information about the issues mentioned in this letter can be found by reading the 2008 Democratic Party Platform and Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog.



[Cross-posted at Group News Blog.]

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MOVE ON RACISM: OBAMA OR ELSE

[Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?, by NY Street Artist TMNK™ (The Me Nobody Knows)]

Bill Clinton was on Letterman last night, mostly talking about the Clinton Global Initiative and explaining the current economic crisis. I wish he'd done more to assign blame, but that's an emotional reaction on my part.

In fact, here's my entirely emotional, working class reaction to the economic hooha: Ya'll are JUST NOW figuring out things are in the crapper? As usual, awareness of reality starts at the bottom and works it way up to the rarified air of the so-called "leaders". And thinkers. You know what I'd like to see? NO MORE WHITE MEN IN SUITS TALKING GRAVELY ABOUT THE ECONOMY. I've had it up to here on my fat red neck.

Furthermore, if I go to Walgreen's and steal a package of batteries, and the alarm goes off at the door, here's what happens: I get questioned, probably charged, and I don't get to keep the batteries. If I get charged, I get fined or do time. The penalty will depend on my looks (if I'm non-white, I do time; if I'm white and female and look poor/fat, I do time; etc.)

So what I want to see FIRST, before anything else, is the homes, condos, cars, boats, and pensions of every single fucker who has headed up banks and investment firms SEIZED and sold, with that money applied to the debt they've run up. Then they get fined on top of that, and their asses get FIRED. As Clinton said about the economic crisis last night, he's interested in seeing someone apply gaming theory to the situation, because there's no way things could get worse so any action will lead to improvement. If that's true, then ANYBODY hired in place of the alleged experts will make things better. Let's give it a try, shall we?

The penalty for greed at the expense of others (and that sums up the past eight years in a nutshell) needs to be deprivation on an epic scale for those who indulged themselves.


Okay, back to Bill: What I've been most thinking about is his assessment of how the Presidential race will come down to personality, not issues. How the Republicans want to keep it on that level, because they've won with idiots several times in a row now and it's all they have left. (That last sentence is my paraphrase.) And with the current ADD, so-you-think-you-can-raise-a-baby-while-dancing-to-don't-forget-the-lyrics mindset of the populace, perhaps they are right, perhaps nobody can win running on intelligence any more.

But that's okay, because we can win on personality, too.

There's been a lot of angst about the race gap in polls of voters, that there's a certain percentage of white voters who will never cast a ballot for a non-white. Yep, I'm sure that's true as it sits today. Just like there's a certain percentage who will never vote for a woman, or never vote for a non-Christian -- and I'll bet those numbers are comparable or even higher. But people who know they won't vote for a black man, who can answer a poll about it honestly, well, they aren't going to vote for our side anyhow. Whether we run a black guy or not, we're the party who acknowledges the reality of racism and at least makes noises about addressing it, so we're not the choice of someone for whom maintaining racism makes sense.

It's the other folks, the white people who believe they aren't racist, who are the voters we need to care about. And that's most of us. But we have some real advantages to doing this work, winning the hearts as well as the minds of white racists who don't believe they are racists.

Here's the skinny: Nobody is born a racist. (Cue music from South Pacific....) We learn it, from the people we love and trust the most, who are teaching us the nature of the world. We resist as long as we can, in every way we can, until it overwhelms us in spite of our best efforts.

People who have given up fighting racism, who openly admit they hate blacks, for instance, are developmentally still at a level where they dare not comprehend their parents and church and ancestors are damaged liars. They can't bear facing it; better to just give in to becoming like mom and dad.

The rest of us are, on some level, willing to admit the pars were not perfect, not right about everything or maybe even most things. We try to admire Thomas Jefferson's vision and ignore his raping slave women. We admit to some problems, but always need that "but" in there, that America wasn't COMPLETELY based on lies and hate and theft. And because we need a loophole for the myth, it's easy to squeeze our own personal racism through the sphincter as well.

Still, it's exhausting. It's exhausting either way we go, frankly.

For those who choose not to fight internal racism on any level, they have to stay mad. Mad covers up the fear. It also shortens life spans. I mean yeah, depression kills, but not as fast as cardiac disease. Being chronically angry and hostile is a coronary risk factor that ranks right up there with smoking and lack of exercise. On some scales, it's worse than having high cholesterol. It plays hob with our adrenaline systems and we wear out fast, like an engine with the timing set too high.

And being mad in a public way requires continual escalation to keep people in the game. That's why right wing radio gets worse every year, more overt, more dangerous: It's the only way they can keep people from numbing out, from losing listeners. It's like pornography or junk food: Once you give up on human reality, you have to keep feeding the addiction of substitute reality.

For those of us who do admit to doubt, to fear, to grief, even, we're also looking for a high: The high of truth. The relief of responsibility and power. The blood-surging thrill of community and connection.

But we have shitty role models for how to reach those planes of existence. The prevailing Christian model says we must abase ourselves in repentance, surrender to complete reconfiguration and never look back. This doesn't work for most people who are not either homeless, in prison, or running from facing what their parents told them. New Age approaches can be similarly based on katabatic winds of redemption and renewal.

In most instances, however, real change is gradual, sloppy, shifts back and forth like a smoker trying to quit, and arises almost entirely from a one-on-one connection with another human being. We are hard-wired to change when we are trusted and believed in, not when we are shamed and vilified. Go figure, huh?

I believe the current level of polarization in this country, a divide constantly stoked by the systems of oppression because it prevents meaningful change, is comparable to the Israeli/Palestinian or Catholic/Protestant Ireland conflict in every regard except the use of car bombs. (If you don't count Timothy McVeigh.) It's that serious. And overcoming it will mean abandoning military solutions, eliminationist rhetoric, and, especially, "venting" our "perceptions" about one another. Venting means you dump your gases into another environment temporarily, but you wind up breathing it back in eventually and you simply piss off more people in the process.

In my lifetime, I've seen racism go from almost universal public expression to the current state where accusations of it float around in dispute and some overt forms of it are condemned as unacceptably to "polite society". This doesn't mean it has actually diminished, necessarily, only that some of the racist terms and ideas I heard on TV and radio as a child are not now on mainstream channels. It's gone underground. And part of the cover-up has involved academic theories such as "privilege", which do little to help the average white person actually undo the lies of racism: Guilt is not cathartic and does not engage useful parts of the brain. In too many cases, "owning our privilege" is Covermark instead of exfoliating.

Let's just admit, our entire culture and all the systems it has created are white supremacist. The degree may vary, and that's important to quantify on a strategic level, but we're all in the belly of the beast. "Privilege" is not going to determine who lives in clean air, because none of us do.

Admitting racism is much harder, and much more illuminating, than admitting "privilege". I believe part of the reason why Obama has won over so many guilty white progressives is because he doesn't demand they admit their own racism -- they get to blame others for that. "At least I'm not like those people in Mississippi", they think with self-congratulation. Forgetting, of course, that Mississippi was the birthplace of the Civil Rights movement because of its brilliant and powerful African-American population, almost 40% of the state -- but that doesn't count as the "real" picture of a Mississipian.

We are at the next step in this campaign, now. We are being called on to build bridges across new divides -- or, more accurately, as Barbara Love (an African-American activist) once said, the bridges between us and every other human being already exist. We don't have to do the hard labor of building them, we only need to clear off the debris which has rendered them temporarily unusable.

It's not merely about race, of course. You can't discuss race without factoring in class, and you can't discuss class without factoring in gender. They are all expressed in different ways but with equal impact in the long term. So, today's "Obama or Else" assignment is to literally talk to another human being about who you are, what you believe, and, much more importantly, listen to them in turn.

MoveOn.org is making it easy for us. Last Sunday, they hosted "Call for Change" parties which resulted in almost HALF A MILLION phone calls recruiting new volunteers for Obama. My friend Liza in Burlington, Vermont was one of them. On Monday we had an exhilirating conversation where she described what it was like to talk with people in Lake Jackson, Florida. I was very moved, second-hand, by what she experienced. These parties will be occurring again this coming weekend, and MoveOn is looking for people to host them as well as participate. Click here to get started: Call For Change Parties.

Whether or not you garner a single new vote for Obama, you will have made a human connection which raises the energy and pushes into the ravine detritus from the bridge we are all ravenous to see open to traffic in both directions. Undoing racism involves action, first and last. Your ancestors are cheering you on, whoever they were, believe me. And please come back here to share with us what it felt like, whatever you did.

[About the graphic above: NY Street Artist TMNK™ (The Me Nobody Knows) has this text about the painting at his Flickr site:

In Stanley Kramer's 1967 movie "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?", a whirlwind romance by an interracial couple forced their families to confront their attitudes about race. The male love interest, and lead was a young NEGRO played by Sydney Portier. Matters were only further complicated by the fact that this was no stereotypical NEGRO. Smart, accomplished, ARTICULATE, polite, and sophisticated.

Well here we are some 40+ years later, and guess who may be coming to dinner?

Yep, another smart, accomplished, ARTICULATE, polite, and sophisticated Negro, accept today they're called Black.

It seems America is in the midst of filming an updated version of that cinematic classic starring Barack Obama. This time around , however, the love interest is not a "white woman", it's THE WHITE HOUSE! And just like the parents in 1967, America is being forced to confront it's racial attitudes (the one's it supposedly doesn't have).

You think Tilly had a fit when Sydney Portier's character wanted to marry the sweet little white girl she had helped raise. Well Tilly honey, will likely piss in her panties when she sees who's at the front door of the white house.

Guess who's coming to dinner now Tilly? "Hi, my name is Barack Obama."



H/t to Liza Cowan for her post Picture the Future: Obama Art Part 3 which introduced me to TMNK. Cross-posted at Group News Blog

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LIGHTWORKER? NOPE, THAT'S NOT LOADED LANGUAGE

There's been an interesting thread over at Dykes To Watch Out For regarding assimilation (especially in response to the lesbian/gay marriage shift this week), wimmin's bookstores, and continued consideration of the "Magical Negro" cultural expression as evidenced in white response to the current Presidential campaign.

One reader (Josiah, a Maoist Orange Cake diva), referenced the David Ehrenstein column in the Los Angeles Times in March of 2007, Obama the Magic Negro. Alison Bechdel also drew our attention to Mark Morford's column in SFGate on June 6, Is Obama an enlightened being? (he decides Obama is a "Lightworker" and his essay is a textbook example of Magical Negro thinking).

I wrote a long comment on this thread and have decided to reproduce it here:

'I think Obama and his campaign strategists are very aware of how much white America depends on tokenizing minorities and imbuing them with “special powers” in order to internally overcome their own racist conditioning. It’s a shortcut through the real work of undoing conditioning, in the same way that women are put on pedestals or constantly portrayed as “sexually liberated” in order to sidestep the need to alter male conditioning which forces boys to see females primarily as sex/nurture objects.

'I don’t believe the majority of Obama’s supporters are riding the Magical Negro train. And while he’s aware of it playing a role, he’s not discouraging it, either, because a significant aspect of his success as the “first black candidate” depends on him being non-typical black. He is charismatic but, if you didn’t see his face, you would not recognize his voice or speaking style as American black. He is beautiful but clearly mixed race and more African than American black. These help him make end-runs around the racism that actually dominates our culture.

'Those who view him as redemption for America’s racism, who are subconsciously assigning him the Magical Negro role, are fairly easy to spot. They fawn on him — adulation is our culture’s way of finding/reinforcing our level in the power hierarchy, and has no relationship to reality, especially to the person being fawned over. (Right, Alison?) They are swept away by his speaking and presence, instead of simply being impressed or, god forbid, noticing his mistakes. They believe he has mystical leadership attributes — mystical because when you ask them for specifics, they fall back on “But just LISTEN to him!” (He’s a junior senator who has big gaps in his experience, folks.) The adulation slops over to his wife and children, again not grounded in firm reality. They take any criticism of him as a personal attack, assume it comes from racism (a little projection going on there), and simply cannot hear it without vicious reprisal. And — they hate Hillary, because she dared to present an alternative. Because they are not dealing with their own buried racism (the REAL deal, not the groovy I-can-vote-for-a-black-guy version), they have also not dealt with their sexism (big surprise) and their method/rhetoric used to assault Hillary reveals this in glaring fashion.

'These, in other words, are the Obamabots. They will not get him elected and, in fact, have hurt his cause. The rest of us who intend to vote for him are sick of their adolescent antics and ready for increasing substance in this campaign.

'I don’t expect Obama to make serious inroads in our national racism. I don’t think that is his intent, for one thing. He will have a huge impact on the self-perception of blacks, of course, especially children, and that’s extremely important. I’m counting on him to do what he HAS stated as his intent: To extricate us from a megalomaniacal war; to restore Constitutional balance to our government; to address health care reform (though his plan will not solve it); and to slow, if not stop, our slide into becoming a masculinity-worshiping police state.

'I also have my fingers crossed that when it comes time to appoint the next Supreme Court justice, his advisers will once again keep him from making the error he almost made in supporting John Roberts. The make-up of SCOTUS will affect our liberty for decades to come.

'He will be attacked constantly by the Right, and if the November election does not also bring into office a significant number of Congressional Democrats with eggs of steel, he will be hobbled from making substantial legislative change. Once he falls from the pedestal (which is the fate of all charismatic politicians), the Obamabots will be the first to turn on him.

'I say all this because I watched progressives in 1992 (not radicals, but those left of center) cream in their drawers about Bill Clinton, his gift for speech-making, his good looks, his admirable family, his constant invocation of hope. I was at a neighborhood party the night he received the nomination and people were sobbing because he was going to lead us to the Promised Land. I looked around me in disbelief then, too. He was at best a moderate — and, by all concrete standards, he was more liberal than Obama (despite the right-wing smears, Obama is less liberal than most of Congress). He was an enormously popular President and did a great deal of national good. But all we hear now is the right-wing stereotype of Bill Clinton.

'His fall from grace resulted in impeachment. Obama’s fall will be more severe, because racism will come to the surface and punish him for not just failure, but failing while black.

'The road to undoing racism will follow other paths. It’s simply more complicated than that to undo millenia of lies reinforced by every single institution we have.'

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NOTHING EVER "JUST GROWS THIS WAY"

I'm very proud to announce that some of my thinking/writing, solicited by Jesse Wendel, is included in an extraordinary essay by Lower Manhattanite over at Group News Blog right now, titled Ad-Topsy.

LM takes on the viral video, put out by Lee Habeeb and members of the McCain campaign, intended to destroy the inroads Barack Obama has made among independents, crossover Republicans, and some white members of the Boomer generation. His dissection, assisted by other members of the Boomers who HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN THE ORIGINAL BATTLES (me included), is essential to stop this kind of shit from stealing another American election. Please read it and carry it on.

And -- if you have not yet watched Obama's Speech on Race, a brilliant offer to have a grown-up discussion with us all on this topic, here it is in full. A complete transcript is after the fold. Don't let them divide us again. We can have it ALL. Raise the roof.





Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
"A MORE PERFECT UNION"
Constitution Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
18 March 2008

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today - a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."

"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

-------------------------------------
If you'd to read another great (related) essay, check out the guest post at Group News Blog by TerriInTokyo, a minister's daughter brought up in Harlem and Queens Village, at Black Liberation Theology.

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THINKING OUTSIDE OF THE BALLOT BOX -- AURORA LEVINS MORALES SPEAKS

(Aurora Levins Morales)

Last night I was avoiding reading some of my heretofore favorite political blogs, especially Daily Kos which has, to quote a blogger friend of mine, turned into a seething viper's nest of misogyny. I was tracking down a piece of women's herstory, or trying to, when I ran across an essay which broke air and light into every fissure of this campaign for me. Now for something COMPLETELY different...

I want to share the whole thing with you, but I also want to support the site on which it appears, online archive of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union, so I'm linking to it and will extract fair use portions to whet your appetite here.

A bit of personal background: The author, Aurora Levins Morales, is a woman I knew and respected without qualification in the Bay Area. (Pay note to that "without qualification" -- not many people get that accord from me.)

Raised Jewish Puertorriqueña, she's been a bridge builder her entire life. She's a poet, essayist, community historian, activist, and curandera. Her essay on being middle class dropped into the lesbian-feminist 1980s community like a lifeboat, ending any number of class wars. She's a mother, a straight woman whom I trust as much as any dyke, and a woman of color who -- well, years ago I was at a gathering where Barbara Love, an African-American activist, said the notion of building bridges is overused (as I just did above) because most of the time, the bridge between us already exists, has been there all along. It's simply obscured by the debris of lies. And it's important to realize this because building a new bridge is much more work than clearing an extant structure of garbage. So, I revise my definition of Aurora: She's got one hell of a broom, and she's clearing strutwork with every breath she takes.


At the outset, Aurora says:

"First let me make clear my view that as progressives in this country we have very little impact on the outcome of the elections, and less still on the post-election behavior of the winner; our votes are not the kind of favors presidents reward. In a way, that means we have less at stake in the short term and can concentrate on our long term goals. We're a small part of the electorate. We're far more potent as organizers and catalysts than as voters.

"Our ability to save our species from extinction and create a world we can thrive in does not depend on who wins this election. It depends on our ability to dismantle profit-based societies in which greed trumps ethics. As my brother Ricardo Levins Morales points out, we live in an empire in steep decline. The election is about finding a CEO capable of holding domestic constituencies in check as they are further disenfranchised at breakneck speed and, as much as possible, make them feel that they have a stake in the military aggressiveness that the ruling class understands is necessary. Having a Black man and a woman run helps to obscure the fact that this decline of empire is what is driving the whole political elite to the right. Both these people represent very reactionary politics in ways that I don't want to get started on. Part of the cleverness of having such candidates is the very fact that they will be attacked in ways that make oppressed people feel compelled to protect them.

"There are two points here:
1) Neither Obama nor Clinton represents an alternative human strategy to propping up a failing empire that is based on pirating the world's resources (including ours) for the sake of a small elite.
2) The fact that someone is being targeted by oppression may arouse our outrage and lead us to identify with them, but it doesn't change their actual political positions."

A while later, she points out (and backs up fully):

"Among all the candidates running for national office Clinton and Obama rank first and second as recipients of health industry contributions, and are in the top four recipients of donations from the finance (banking, investment and insurance), energy/natural resources, communications/electronics and construction industries. What's more, Obama is ahead of Clinton in taking money from pharmaceuticals, electrical utilities, internet companies and foreign and defense policy PACs."

She goes on to clear a giant path for us with:

"First let me say that as a woman of color, though I am not surprised, I am disgusted and angry at the way a Black man and white woman have been put into the ring against each other, while the white male elite looks on. So should we all be. As Robin Morgan says in her essay Goodbye to All That #2 , it's strongly reminiscent of the way the same two constituencies were pitted against each other to compete for the right to vote during the late 19th century. It was utterly predictable that the first serious female and Black presidential candidates would run against each other.

"The people who disappear in this contest are women of color who are subjected to both sexism and racism, and who, with our children, are suffering more devastation at a faster rate than anyone else in this country. In 1981 I was a contributor to This Bridge Called My Back: Writings of Radical Women of Color, a collective refusal to make an untenable choice, and resist the pressure we faced to abandon ourselves either as female or as people of color, to distance ourselves from the political struggles of one or the other of our peoples or face being called traitors. The book had a strong impact on many progressive people, but not, of course on the wider society. In 2008 we are being told, as usual, that we have to choose between a man of color and a white woman, neither of whom will do much to change the increasingly desperate conditions of our lives."

Aurora makes it clear throughout her essay that she is neither a supporter of Clinton nor Obama, not in the advocacy sense. She says:

"I began this article in response to Robin Morgan's article on the viciousness of the sexism in this campaign. What it's permissible to say in public is only one marker of oppression, but it's an important one. I agree with her that its important to notice and talk about how much easier it is for Clinton's opponents and the media to go all out with violent and degrading sexist attacks on her than it is for the same level of racism to be openly expressed at Obama. Which is not to say that he isn't constantly targeted by racism, but in the public arena where this battle is taking place, sexism is considered trivial.

"The power brokers expect Obama to be a model minority candidate, and he has that option. He can assimilate himself enough to be Black in a way that's acceptable to a workable number of white people. There's no comparable role for Clinton. To the degree that she assimilates by acting like one of the guys, or taking hawkish positions on the war, she loses her femininity and becomes less acceptable, not more. A model female doesn't run for president."

And, finally, she give us the blessed relief of an utterly fresh viewpoint (fresh for those of us impaired by racism):

"Recent history gives us another way to redefine American politics. America is much larger than the United States. After five hundred years of brutal economic and social oppression, Bolivia, the poorest country in Latina America has elected a radical indigenous man with a mandate to take back the countrys natural resources and redistribute wealth into the hands of its majority indigenous population. In Venezuela, under the leadership of a mestizo man, petroleum wealth is being used to put power into the hands of working people, and to improve the quality of life and build solidarity and mutual support far beyond its borders. Cuba, in spite of 49 years of economic blockade, has one of the best health care systems and most ecologically sustainable economies in the world. Together with newly elected progressive governments in other Latin American countries, they have created an alliance that allows them to start defying the corporate powers that force their will on so much of the world.

"Imagine that instead of arguing about Clinton and Obama we put our considerable energy and smarts and capacity for thinking big toward joining that alliance; toward stripping illusions, revealing possibilities and overcoming discouragement in order to make such a thing possible."

Imagine...

(Aurora Levins Morales at the River Residency, a program of Tulane University)

Other blogs linking to this post: Yes We Can (do anything): On the elections, feminism, and our future, by Victoria Marinelli at Anachroclysmic.

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