Monday, December 8, 2008

Spring is here. Winter's coming...

I wrote this the day after the November 4th elections.

Battle Creek rally

On election night, tears flowed. Literally tears. Tears of joy, hope, love. I've been jolted, as most of us have, to radically reexamine the American political landscape and my place in it, historically, today, and for the future.

My earliest political memories are family memories: my mother being "Another Mother for Peace" during the Vietnam War. Or my father conducting a memorial concert at Yale for the students killed at Kent State. And, as my mother cut my hair in the kitchen when I was seven, we heard on the radio about the shooting of Martin Luther King. I remember my mother's gasp. By the time I was in college, I was politically active, then in opposition to Reagan. A political lens has colored my worldview and my actions ever since.

A political worldview shaped the father I became. Nora, barely two, was with me at a 1990 Democratic victory party in Minnesota, as another improbable candidate, Paul Wellstone, rose to national office. Tragically, it was just a dozen years later when Nora and I walked together in a peace march to Wellstone's memorial service when she was fourteen. Now at twenty, Nora watched Obama in Grant Park in a crowd of hundreds of thousands. Her home-made shirt read: "Rosa sat so Martin could walk, Martin walked so Obama could run, Obama ran so our children can fly." Her sense of hope and optimism, her generation's faith is infectious. I'm so goddam proud of her, it brings tears to my eyes.

The 2008 presidential campaign will include my five year old son Ezra's first political memories. Before he could pronounce it correctly, he would hear the name Barack Obama on TV or the radio and would excitedly proclaim, "Dad, they just said 'Barack Obama'!" Ezra heard someone on NPR say "I will vote for John McCain" and Ezra snapped back "What? Why would they vote for McCain?"

Last week, as Ezra and I were making the bed, NPR did a story about the skinhead plot to kill Obama and attack a black high school. "Someone wanted to kill Barack Obama? Why?" He seemed stunned. His best friend across the street is an African-American boy. So then came the discussion of how, sadly, there are some people in this world who want to hurt or even kill people just because of their skin color. Or religion. Or sexual orientation. Who knows how much of this he absorbed at age five and how much he'll remember as an adult? But I'll remember. And more discussions will follow.

Madison and Owen, our ten year old twins, will also come of age under an Obama presidency. At ten, they bravely stood up in their conservative rural school district and voted in their school election for Obama against the McCain majority. Madison was annoyed that it took us so long to get an Obama sign. Owen had developed an antipathy for the Bush presidency long before Obama was even the nominee. Children can be so smart.

And as a father, it's good to feel I'm doing something right.

My personal contribution to this election was small. But a consistent refrain of Obama's message is how this victory isn't about him. It's about us, each one of us. Each and every individual one of us who stood up, donated $10 or $25, made phone calls, went door to door... whatever ... each one of us helped make this happen. So I'm proud of my humble little list: Organizing a Barackstar chapter of high school students for Obama (yes, in Jackson, the birthplace of the Republican Party which went BLUE for the first time since Johnson was elected president, 44 years ago), presenting Obama's platform on education for a policy forum, writing persuasive letters to the editor, and helping get out the vote door-to-door on election day. And, of course, the unrelenting distribution and dissemination of articles, essays, photos, videos, jokes, and musings like this.

It just so happens that on the day I was born, February 2, 1961, Groundhog's Day, Obama's mother, pregnant with Barack, married Barack the father. Six months later, Barack Obama was born. Who knows what the Groundhog saw that morning in 1961? But in these early November days of 2008, I'm filled with the image of spring coming soon, of a new birth of hope and progress and peace.

Winter looms, literally and figuratively. The wars, the economy, poverty, and new challenges to equality and freedom like California's abomination, Prop 8.

But spring is in the air. Time to get to work.

With peace and love, hope and pride,

dani

Battle Creek rally

Nora n Carrie Grant Pk

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