Election Night Tears

Though the election is a few days behind us, today I came across a piece in the NY Times that moved me deeply. Perhaps it is the visual nature of the metaphor articulated in this piece that is so powerful, perhaps it is simply her point. Either way, I will carry this image with me for years to come.

 

Two images will forever stay in my mind to mark this epoch-breaking election day. One is that of Jesse Jackson’s face, drenched in tears, in Chicago’s Grant Park on Tuesday evening.

 

And the other is a photo that ran in The Times on Wednesday. In it, a black mother and daughter sit on the floor of a church in Harlem. The mother, Latrice Barnes, having heard of Obama’s victory, is doubled up in tears; her daughter, Jasmine, is reaching a tentative hand up to soothe her. To me, she looks like the future, reaching out to heal the past.

 

It is, I suppose, in part a matter of temperament, whether one shouts or weeps at happy transformative moments. But I also think it’s a matter of what has come before. The young people joyfully frolicking in front of the Bush White House never knew the universe whose passing was marked by Obama’s victory and Jackson’s tears.

 

This moment of triumph marks the end of such a long period of pain, of indignity and injustice for African-Americans. And for so many others of us, of the trampling and debasing of our most basic ideals, beliefs that we cherished every bit as deeply and passionately as those of the “values voters” around whose sensibilities we’ve had to tiptoe for the past 28 years.

 

The election brought the return of a country we’d lost for so long that it was almost forgotten under the accumulated scar tissue of accommodation and acceptance. For me, this will be the enduring memory of election night 2008: One generation released its grief. The next looked up confusedly, eager to please and yet unable to comprehend just what the tears were about.

Election Round-Up

Gail Collins had a very funny election week national round up in the NY Times this week, with a sobering, yet heartfelt, ending: 

Finally, on behalf of the baby-boom generation, I would like to hear a little round of applause before we cede the stage to the people who were too young to go to Woodstock and would appreciate not having to listen to the stories about it anymore. It looks as though we will be represented in history by only two presidents, one of whom is George W. Bush. Bummer.The boomers didn’t win any wars and that business about being self-involved was not entirely unfounded. On the other hand, they made the nation get serious about the idea of everybody being created equal. And now American children are going to grow up unaware that there’s anything novel in an African-American president or a woman running for the White House.

We’ll settle for that.

Bits and Pieces

Yesterday’s election of Barack Obama was a truly momentous occasion, for the change it signifies in the political preferences of the American people as well as its historical significance. Both Senator McCain and Senator Obama gave excellent speeches, which you should read if you missed them the last night. The commentators have a lot to say about it all, below are some of the most interesting bits and pieces I have read. 

EJ Dionne, of the Washington Post: 

Above all, it is time to celebrate the country’s wholehearted embrace of democracy, reflected in the intense engagement of Americans in this campaign and the outpouring to the polls all over the nation. For years, we have spoken of bringing free elections to the rest of the world even as we cynically mocked our own ways of conducting politics. Yesterday, we chose to practice what we have been preaching.

Micheal Gerson, of the Washington Post:

This presidency in particular should be a source of pride even for those who do not share its priorities. An African American will take the oath of office blocks from where slaves were once housed in pens and sold for profit. He will sleep in a house built in part by slave labor, near the room where Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation with firm hand. He will host dinners where Teddy Roosevelt in 1901 entertained the first African American to be a formal dinner guest in the White House; command a military that was not officially integrated until 1948. Every event, every act, will complete a cycle of history. It will be the most dramatic possible demonstration that the promise of America — so long deferred — is not a lie.

I suspect I will have many substantive criticisms of the new administration, beginning soon enough. Today I have only one message for Barack Obama, who will be our president, my president: Hail to the chief.

NY Times Editorial:

Mr. Obama will now need the support of all Americans. Mr. McCain made an elegant concession speech Tuesday night in which he called on his followers not just to honor the vote, but to stand behind Mr. Obama. After a nasty, dispiriting campaign, he seemed on that stage to be the senator we long respected for his service to this country and his willingness to compromise.

That is a start. The nation’s many challenges are beyond the reach of any one man, or any one political party.

And finally, Thomas Friedman, of the NY Times: 

But a new politics of the common good can’t be only about government and markets. “It must also be about a new patriotism — about what it means to be a citizen,” said Sandel. “This is the deepest chord Obama’s campaign evoked. The biggest applause line in his stump speech was the one that said every American will have a chance to go to college provided he or she performs a period of national service — in the military, in the Peace Corps or in the community. Obama’s campaign tapped a dormant civic idealism, a hunger among Americans to serve a cause greater than themselves, a yearning to be citizens again.”

None of this will be easy. But my gut tells me that of all the changes that will be ushered in by an Obama presidency, breaking with our racial past may turn out to be the least of them. There is just so much work to be done. The Civil War is over. Let reconstruction begin.

A New Kind of Pride

Eugene Robinson wrote today about the historical accomplishment of Barack Obama’s campaign from the perspective of the African American community. But some of his words are relevant for all of us.

Even if John McCain somehow prevails, that won’t change the fact that Obama won all those primaries, or that he won the Democratic Party nomination, or that he raised more money than any candidate in history, or that he rewrote the book on how to run a presidential campaign. Nothing can change the fact that so many white Americans entrusted a black American with their hopes and dreams.

We can all have a new kind of pride in our country

What He Said…

Andrew Sullivan signs off for the night…

 

Blogging has been light today because I’ve said all I want, made my closing argument, and the rest is noise. Take your time to consider your vote. It matters. And pray that we all come to the right decision, and that the losers and the winners accept the result with the requisite grace and grit… Know hope. And get ready. It will be a day to remember.

Jim Wallis and a Religion of Hope

James Dobson released a “Letter From 2012 in an Obama Administration” earlier in the week, which coming from a leader of the religious right, was embarrassing to Christians around the country.

Jim Wallis, also a leader in the evangelical movement, called Dobson out for his biased and hatred-filled prose and asked for an apology. The letter “shows the kind of negative Christian leadership that has become so embarrassing to so many of your fellow Christians in America. We are weary of this kind of Christian leadership, and that is why so many are forsaking the Religious Right in this election.“

He goes on to say…  ”Dr. Dobson, you of course have the same right as every Christian and every American to vote your own convictions on the issues you most care about, but you have chosen to insult the convictions of millions of other Christians, whose own deeply held faith convictions might motivate them to vote differently than you. This epistle of fear is perhaps the dying gasp of a discredited heterodoxy of conservative religion and conservative politics. But out of that death, a resurrection of biblical politics more faithful to the whole gospel–one that is truly good news–might indeed be coming to life.”

We can only hope that Wallis’ vision for the future comes to pass. 

Are Campaigns too Costly?

George Will discussed the price tag attached to this years presidential campaigns as McCain has attempted to discredit Obama’s campaign because of the large amounts of money being donated and the offer of public financing he declined. 

I think this is the best summary of the situation to date: 

“The Center for Responsive Politics calculates that, by Election Day, $2.4 billion will have been spent on presidential campaigns in the two-year election cycle that began in January 2007, and an additional $2.9 billion will have been spent on 435 House and 35 Senate contests. This $5.3 billion is a billion less than Americans will spend this year on potato chips.“

 

You Can Vote However You Like…

This may be the best thing to come out of the entire election cycle! 

Religion is not a hat you can take off…

I found Susan’s post to be an interesting summary of the shifts in political voting some parts of the country is seeing, as it relates to our religious views. 

“Religion is not a hat that you can take off or put on at will. When I voted in this presidential election (and yes, I’ve already voted), I didn’t take my religion off and leave it outside in the care of an election monitor while I did the civic thing and cast my ballot. So, yes, I think there is a religious reason to vote for one candidate and against the other.

For some, voting their religious values means voting on a set of issues like abortion or gay marriage. To me, religion is the sum of all my values, my fundamental conviction that the world is a divine gift and we humans are responsible for receiving that gift with joy and working with God to serve one another and all living things. God loves this world and we are to love God with our whole hearts and our neighbor as ourselves…

My religious reason for voting for Senator Obama is because I believe in hope. I also believe the fear-mongering of Senator McCain’s campaign violated my religious convictions at the deepest level and it was the main reason I did not vote for him and Governor Palin.

But come January 2009, I will not expect any president to do the work of faith for me. I expect, no matter who is president for the next four years, to work side by side with all my fellow citizens to see that we hope for more and we give in to fear less. ”

Troubles in the Congo

Yesterday afternoon Rebels in the eastern part of the Congo (DRC)  took over the small town of Goma. To many, this is a conflict thousands of miles away in towns we’ve never heard of, involving people with names we simply cannot pronounce. 

But what happened yesterday in Goma is huge. Goma is the capital of the North Kivu province, and sits at the top of Lake Kivu, which seperates Rwanda and the DRC. Tension have been high in the eastern provinces for some time. It is home to the largest UN peacekeeping force on the planet, with over 17,000 troops on the ground. The ongoing conflict stems in part from the Rwandan genocide. Hutu’s fled to Uganda and the Congo after the Rwandan genocide, because they feared retaliation from the Tutsi’s who had been the target of the genocide. Some of these Hutu’s formed militias, which Rwanda and a cultish group of rebels under the leadership of Laurent Nkuda have denounced. The Congolese armies have been collaborating with these militias and the government has failed to control them. Nkuda’s group was formed in order to ‘defend the Tutsi population’ but Nkuda has recently expanded his mission to include the ‘liberation of all of the Congo’. The population is largely unsympathetic to Nkuda’s cause, and are resenting all Tutsi’s in increasing numbers. 

Early Wednesday fire was exchanged along the border between Rwandan and Congolose militaries. Citizens began to flee the region and headed for Goma, a small city considered a safe haven for refugees. Nkuda and his rebels then advanced on Goma, but stopped short at the city gates. The citizens and refugees then began fleeing again, this time alongside the Congolese troops who are refusing to fight any longer. They are not being paid regularly and are exhausted from years of tension in the region. Nkuda agreed to a cease-fire with the UN troops left to defend Goma. 

UN officials have give the UN troops in Congo permission to defend the city from the rebels if need be. However, they have not been given permission to defend the city from Rwandan troops, who are rumored to be crossing the border and engaging in some of these firefights. There is an increasing sense of frustration with the UN among the civilian population who do not feel any safer with the troops there. 

The conflict is rife with ethnic tensions, international controversy and domestic problems. The UN, the Congolese Government and Nkuda have begun another round of peace negotiations, though many are cynical about its potential to change much on the ground. The last deal signed in January 2008 only lasted through August when tensions led to new rounds of violence. Many fear that if a stable solution is not worked out in coming months, the entire region will explode with ethnic and nationalistic violence- and that the presence of 17,000 UN troops will not be a sufficient international response.