Day of Possibility, Once Again

God bless America, whose children make its possibility possible.


We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day....

Praise song for struggle. Praise song for the day....

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun. On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp, praise song for walking forward in that light.

excerpts from Elizabeth Alexander, "Praise Song for the Day,"
Inaugural Poem, January 20, 2009
(transcript from the Chicago Sun-Times)

Make your Shepard Fairey-inspired icon at Obamicon.Me

Two Articles

I'd like to recommend this very thought-provoking article on transracial adoption from The Stranger: "Black Kids in White Houses." It raises many of the difficult issues we need to think about as white adoptive parents--even if we'd rather not. (Hat tip: Habesha Child.)

I also recommend this short article by Gwen Ifil, "The Malia and Sasha Effect."

I am taken by what America will now see in these two little brown girls. Not victims, like the little girls who died at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 1963. Not hoochie mamas, like the Black girls who shake their rumps in music videos. Just two happy, playful, well-adjusted future Black women. . . .

[Barack Obama] mused about what it would mean for other children to see his daughters running around on the South Lawn. "That changes how America looks at itself," he said. "It changes how White children think about Black children, and it changes how Black children think about Black children."

Symbols can be powerful, I agree.

When One Part Rejoices, All Rejoice

I have been holding these thoughts in my heart for over a week now, trying to find true enough words. I also wanted to be sensitive to those disappointed in the election results, because I know that can be difficult. But a couple friends who voted differently took the time to graciously say congratulations, good work for your candidate. And besides the fact that I did so, so little, here’s the thing: sure, I’m happy and proud for me. But I’m rejoicing for these brothers and sisters:

Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, election night

When one part rejoices, every part rejoices with it.

Oh, yes, I’m pleased that Obama won and hopeful that he will be a wise president and bring about progress on health care and other things that concern me. I’m relieved that the election was not decided by prejudice or muddied by recounts. I’m thankful that all those who gave up so much to do so much for what they believe in could see their labors pay off and encouraged by the level of determination to participate in democracy.

But my deepest happiness is for those to whom this means so much, much more: our fellow citizens who because of color have felt (even if they didn’t really realize it until now) not quite represented, not quite included in the possibilities, not quite sure they would ever see a brown, bold, beautiful first family like this one. The grandchildren of slaves, the survivors of Jim Crow, the marchers and riders and friends of the martyrs, the millions who have borne the burdens of our tangled American history—this means something to them that it never quite could to me, and I am proud that America has affirmed their hope.

I hope we can all recognize the significance of this moment for many of our brothers and sisters even if we do not feel the same or voted differently. We can be happy or disappointed about the electoral outcome, and for me, I am happy—but for black America, I rejoice. I share in their joy in a spiritual way knowing this was more than a political moment. We share it as a human moment.

I rejoice for John Lewis.

I rejoice for Jesse Jackson.

I rejoice for Ebenezer Baptist Church.

I rejoice for the black boy of about nine who tried to explain what it means—“It means no one can tell you you can’t do something . . . No limitations . . .”—but he choked up so badly he had to sit down, his friend patting him comfortingly on the back.

Their joy, pride, and emotion has humbled me and brought me to tears many times this week. I hope we can all recognize the significance of this moment for many of our brothers and sisters even if we do not feel the same or voted differently. We can be happy or disappointed about the electoral outcome and still share in their joy in a spiritual way knowing this was more than a political moment. We share it as a human moment.

What does it mean for the future? Who knows. Black Americans know better than most that inequalities don’t disappear because somebody shared a nice moment. We are not now “post-racial”; we are not “colorblind.” The absurdity of this should be as plain as the ridiculousness of Steven Colbert telling a guest on his show, “I don’t see color, but I’m told that you’re black. Is that true?” Of course he sees color. We all see color, and there is nothing wrong with that. I see color, I see hair—I see brown skin and cornrows on the White House lawn, and it is a beautiful sight!

For me, right now, it means just one less question my daughter will ask: “Why aren’t there any brown presidents?” (A thousand more will still test my—our country’s—ability to answer.)

It means the possibility of seeing one of the first daughters on TV and saying, “Anna, check out Sasha’s twists—should we try your hair that way tomorrow?”

It means many who sometimes felt not quite represented now feel more connected to the community that is our nation, and that is a good, good thing.

It means our children may believe, and that is the greatest of all.

These two boys waited as a long line of adults greeted Senator Obama before a rally on Martin Luther King Day in Columbia, S.C. They never took their eyes off of him. Their grandmother told me, “Our young men have waited a long time to have someone to look up to, to make them believe Dr. King’s words can be true for them.” Jan. 21, 2008. © Callie Shell / Aurora for Time

LINKS for perspective:
"In Our Lifetimes" by Henry Louis Gates at The Root
"Free Our Minds" by Lynne Duke at The Root
"The Imagery of Tuesday" at Jack & Jill Politics (I encourage you to read the comments on some of these election night and day after threads)
"We Rejected So Much History and So Many Rules That Have Bound Us" by Baratunde Thurston
"Daring to Dream of a Black President," leading black voices share what it means to them

Why I'm Doing What I'm Doing Tomorrow

We get a rinky-dink free mini-newspaper every week. These items made up the front page this week:

• Housing Crisis Pains Hippieville
• Dental Van to Offer Free Clinic
• Number of Homeless Youth Grows [on pace to be double last year's number]

And this sign has been on our church door for a couple weeks:


These vouchers, which several local churches give out, are for emergency help with gas, utilities, food, medical expenses. It has never been able to help everyone. Now there's nothing left to help anyone, until the next month. Too many people needing help. Too many problems.

This is a tough place to live in a lot of ways, for a lot of people. Fishing and logging are no longer major industries; the work that's left is very seasonal and service-oriented, which means it goes away in winter and when the economy suffers. My wise friend who knows the community and the medical/insurance world well observed, "This is the worst I've ever seen it," in terms of families struggling to find work, get insurance or medical care, to just make ends meet. And that was a couple months ago. All signs point to things getting worse before they get better.

Meanwhile I watch the news and read the blogs and follow the campaigns. I fret about our budget and the church's budget and whether this investment we made in our home still holds any equity and how we'll ever obtain health care if our situation changes and the kids taking home food the church has collected after youth group because their cupboards are bare. I feel alternately disgusted and inspired and alarmed by the things I hear and see and read. I'm sad, I'm upset, I'm hopeful, I'm determined.

And I'm not going to let that be the end of it.

I am going to do something.

Tomorrow I am going canvassing to register voters and talk to people about Barack Obama and other candidates. I've never done anything like this before. Never been involved in politics at any level beyond voting and a couple of local school or community issues meetings. But like I told the guy when I stopped by the Democratic office today, if I say this is so important, I have to do something. I need to harness and channel my angst and my obsession and my desperate hope into something productive. I need to know that if I'm disappointed, it's not because I didn't do anything. If my kids ask me someday what happened in 2008, I want to say: I did my part for what I thought was best.

I can't explain in this one blog post why this election feels so important to me--other than to point you back to the problems above and your own nightly news--or why I've chosen the candidates I have. And I'm not going to try, because right now I'm not asking you to think like me. I'm asking you to act on what you think.

I honestly want everyone I know to vote, no matter how they'll vote. Most people have an opinion on how things should be, but far too many Americans don't follow through on this fundamental way of expressing our views.

So let me practice my spiel on you:

• Are you registered to vote? Are you sure? If you've moved or haven't voted in a while, you should verify your registration before the deadline, just in case. Oregon's deadline is this Tuesday, October 14.
  
• Do you know where you stand on issues?
• Do you know where the candidates stand?
• Will you be sure to vote on (or by) November 4?

That's really all there is to it, this voting thing. But this democracy thing? That requires a bit more of us to work at its best. I'm looking forward to seeing it from another angle--to see what we'll observe in neighborhoods, what stories people may tell, what people are concerned about, who I'll get to know. I'm sure it'll be interesting, if nothing else.

Report to follow, film at 11.


Disclaimer: These thoughts are the sole property of the person who just happens to be the sole owner of this blog. They are not intended to be partisan (see section 6b, "vote for whoever you want") but if you feel they distract you from your sole goal of seeing how cute my baby is, feel free to pretend this post never happened. Those of you who would like to discuss this topic or others, feel free to leave a comment!

Ask and Ye Shall at Least Get Your Question On Record

I was almost proud of our Congress over the last week. They were told they had an emergency and given a crappy bill, and for once they did their job, going to work turning it into a better bill as fast as possible. They worked together like serious grownups—well, then they didn't, but I think that was just a lame cover-up. (Hey, I did say almost proud.)

The more important lesson is that making our wishes known makes a difference. Citizens went ballistic over the original bailout bill, thinking it was rewarding the crooks, and the House killed it. Citizens went nuts again this week after the market tanked, saying they need to do something, and they are getting it done.

Shaping our democracy is about so much more than November of every four years. Call your representatives, write letters, tell them why something is important to you, and they are likely to listen, especially if enough people do it. Whether it's because you convince them on the merits or they just want to do what their constituents want almost doesn't matter. Just make them get it done. Give them the political will by proving that it's our will.

This is what the ONE Campaign is all about. This is what Bread for the World is all about. This is what groups from Save Darfur to the one saving your local school help us do.

We didn't get a question about global poverty, hunger, genocide in Darfur, human rights and/or religious persecution, or the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the first debate. I understand that because the format did not allow for many questions (only 8) and some of them were diverted to the economy. But the next debate is a town hall format with questions from the audience and submitted over the Internet. If enough people demand that these questions are asked, they will be. Later we must demand that the answers are followed through on.

What would you ask if you had just one question?

Save the Economy, Save the World?

"It is extraordinary to me that you can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can't find $25 billion to save 25,000 children who die every day of preventable treatable disease and hunger."

—Bono, at the Clinton Global Initiative summit, 9/24/08

Another strange and scary week in the world. It's hard not to be at least a little nervous about our nation's finances and the value of our investments and homes. It's hard not to think that $700 billion is an INSANE amount of money.

But you know what? When something is important to you, you can always find the money.

It's interesting to observe what we choose to use our money (or our credit/debt, actually) for, especially when compared to what people think we are or say they would like us to use it for. If you ask Americans how much of the federal budget goes to foreign aid and development, most people think it is one of the largest spending areas. In reality, although the U.S. pledged in 1992 to give .7 percent of gross national income to development, in 2005 the actual amount was .16 percent. Those decimals are correct—less than one percent.

In 2000 the UN set out the Millennium Development Goals for reducing global extreme poverty by making achievable gains in education, clean water, child mortality, fighting disease, and health care for women and children in particular. The goals are specific, and more importantly, they are achievable. If the world's rich nations raised their development funding by just 1 percent, we could cut extreme poverty and hunger in half by 2015.

We haven't done it.

I went to a Bread for the World workshop on this about seven years ago, when 2015 seemed long off. Now we are halfway there and many of the gains that have been made are being erased by the global food crisis (sudden unavailability of and exponential rises in prices of staple foods) and other factors. Now with our economy requiring a massive infusion of (imaginary?) cash, what will happen to the will to invest beyond our borders?

I know the world is complicated. I know changing spending habits is hard (just ask my own checkbook). I know priorities can sound good in the abstract but get trampled by the tyranny of the urgent.

But I also know that millions of people are suffering, thousands are dying every single day, and we can do something about it—if we want to. Because when something is important to you, you can always find the money.

So in the midst of all the economic nervousness and financial pinching and political drama and excessive pondering thereof of which I am as guilty as anyone, I am trying to keep perspective. I am trying to remember that I am blessed to be able to send a small-to-me, huge-to-her birthday gift to a girl in Ethiopia, even if I feel like I should cling to every ten dollars I can. I am trying to remember that a few dollars more for junk foods I don't really need is nothing comparing to a doubling or tripling in price of the already meager staple foods some live on. Yes, it could still get really bad here. But we still have it really, really good.

And as America turns to the standard bearers of our major political parties for some confidence, some direction, some vision for the future of our country, I will be listening to what they say about our world and hoping for Just ONE Question on global poverty in our increasingly interconnected world. I hope they both say yes, we'll find the money, because that's important to us.

Although it's easy to forget, that's important to me.

Save the economy? Yes. Then, please, let's do what we can to save the world.

We don’t need a mommy war. We’ve got real battles to fight.

I’ve stopped my involuntary crying, but now I have a new problem.

I can’t stop thinking about Sarah Palin.

I think that as a VP candidate, she’s a train wreck for oh so many reasons.

As a mother? I think she seems to love her family, I assume she has plenty of competency and resources to care for them, and beyond that, it’s none of my goshdarn business. But the blogosphere is filling up with questions and opinions about her family situation, her work/family balance, whether or not it’s sexist to question her work/family balance, and so on. Do you see where this is headed?

Yep. Too late. I saw those dreaded, inflammatory, useless words in a headline today: “Mommy War.”

Sigh.

Come on now. We all make compromises in life—to make ends meet, to advance our careers, to follow our passions, to live where we want to live, to deal with how one family member’s actions affect the others, to decide how to focus our time and energy. We have some nonnegotiables, and the rest is constant readjustment, looking for the balance.

In that, Sarah Palin is no different than Michelle Obama, or Joe Biden, or me. Or a million other women and men who are trying to walk the minefield without starting a “war.”

If you want to talk family and politics, let’s talk about all the women and men who whose work/family choices aren’t really choices.

Let’s talk about the parents who don’t have a spouse who can help support the family and how an American can work full time and still earn less than the federal poverty level.

Let’s talk about the women who go back to work right after they give birth not because they are ready but because they can’t afford not to or are afraid they’ll lose their position.

Let’s talk about the families with a child or adult who has a disability, chronic condition, or other preexisting condition that requires care denied by insurance—or who can’t even get insurance because no one will sell it to them due to their condition.

You want to talk about teen pregnancy? Instead of putting a microscope on one family, let’s talk about how even in the best-intentioned and most-attentive family, kids are being crushed by pressures and insecurities most adults have no idea about; let’s talk about how adolescents today are being systemically abandoned by a society that is so narcissistic and adult-centric that it leaves kids on their own to figure out how to become adults—then wonders why they try to grow up too soon yet get stuck in adolescence longer and longer before they really do. (For research and explanation read Hurt by Chap Clark.)

There are plenty of issues having to do with families and children and work and policies that we can and should talk about. These aren’t mommy wars; they’re issues for our whole society—because no one’s family lives in a vacuum. It’s not just how we each build our families; it’s how we want to shape our world.

If we spend all our scrutinizing each other’s choices, we won’t have enough energy left to work for the people who don’t have any choices. We’ll never get anything done except arguing.

I personally don’t think Sarah Palin is the right person to be nominated to be second in line for the one who sets the course for our country. But I don’t think arguing about how the course she is taking may affect her family is helpful for women or for the decisions our country has to make about policies and direction. A “mommy war” over Sarah Palin won’t end oil dependence, stop genocide, or educate kids for the global economy. If we let this time become a battle between women, we’ll never win the fight for our children’s futures.

We don’t need a mommy war. We’ve got real battles to fight.

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy...

Sometimes following the news is just too much. Or just too bizarre. What's happened over the last five days?

Nominations and speeches and rallies capturing us and surprising us and being scaled back.

Hurricanes and levees and the traditional reckless endangerment of weathermen.

All manner of revelations leaking out of Alaska.

All hell breaking loose in the Atlantic.


That's a lot for a holiday weekend.

But since like many a freelancer I am actually laboring today, for now my time crunch will spare you a blogging dump of my spinning mind. It's enough to say: Happy Labor Day, everyone. Stay safe, Gulf and Atlantic shore residents.

For John, and Martin, and Anna

Something is wrong with me.

I keep watching the Democratic convention, and I keep crying. Crying!

I know, you’re thinking, Who even watches a convention, let alone cries? Put down the C-SPAN and eat some chocolate, woman!

Yeah, I know. It’s half boring business convention and half rah-rah rally, and I shouldn’t get sucked in. But in between the charged rhetoric and the glammed-up theatrics, I keep seeing these moments of humanity that remind me that these are real people working for their real convictions for how the real world should be.

The overflowing pride of Marian Robinson for her little girl, Michelle.
Michelle Obama steadying Barack's frail old great-uncle Charlie Payne—an interracial family, like mine.
The free-flowing affection of the Biden family, from feisty grandmamma on down.
Lily Ledbetter, who will never personally benefit from the justice she keeps seeking for America’s daughters.
The old African American delegates from all over the country, blinking back tears because they thought they’d never see this day.
Even (good God!) Hillary had me choking up, not at her words but simply to see the clear bond between her and Chelsea.

Oh what an America we would be if we could all be so proud of our families and work so hard for our convictions.

After Barack Obama was officially nominated, one of the networks caught Rep. John Lewis for quick interviews on the floor. In 1965 John Lewis stood and prayed and took a beating on a bridge in Selma, Alabama, for the right of black Americans to be able to register and vote. In his lifetime he will be able to vote for a black man who calls himself a son of Selma because he knows that when he was born, many like Lewis were still being beaten bloody for his right to vote.

That doesn’t mean everyone should vote for Obama—such decisions are based on many factors. I have many friends who won’t, and that’s fine. But I hope that despite our differences we can appreciate that this moment in history is possible because many have stood bravely, many have toiled thanklessly, and yes, many have dared to hope.

So when Barack Obama accepts the nomination for president tonight, yes, I will cry. I am not ashamed to be emotionally overwhelmed by witnessing this moment and knowing I was a part of it.

I will cry knowing that this year, America helped make John Lewis’s dream come true.

I will cry remembering how 45 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream helped make my dream come true.

And here she is.

My tears, my joy, my dreams, my work for a better world are for her.

There has never been anything false about hope.

Any Youth Worker Could Have Told You That

"Depression, teens and marijuana are a dangerous mix that can lead to dependency, mental illness or suicidal thoughts, according to a White House report being released Friday. . . .

"For example, using marijuana increases the risk of developing mental disorders by 40 percent, the report said. And teens who smoke pot at least once a month over a yearlong period are three times more likely to have suicidal thoughts than nonusers, it said.

"The report also cited research that showed that teens who smoke marijuana when feeling depressed were more than twice as likely as their peers to abuse or become addicted to pot — 8 percent compared with 3 percent."

Really? Pot is not a good thing? And it's addictive? But all the lazy, depressed, spaced-out pothead kids and their lazy, depressed, spaced-out pothead parents say it doesn't affect them, so it can't possibly affect them. After all, everyone knows that nothing gives you the ability to conduct an honest, thoughtful self-analysis like being on drugs. So just mellow out, doctor dudes.

OVERHEARD IN YOUTH MINISTRY

Student: My stepmom gave my stepbrother pot for his birthday because she said she knew it was all he wanted anyway.