take obama. a week ago i was in tears at his election. my mind is visual and so the first image that came to my head was the (old) federal courthouse in eugene, and how many times i’d stood there supporting peace and protesting the war. i couldn’t believe we’d finally elected someone who’d been against this war from the very beginning. the images in my head made me cry. all of those pleas for peace to the top offices in this country were going to finally be heard! all the work against the u.s.a. p.a.t.r.i.o.t. act was going to finally be heard by the top office! the nearly 8 years of talking about guantanamo bay was finally going to be taken seriously by the top office in this country! seriously - what came from my throat was a combination of laughter and tears. i’m glad i didn’t care in the moment what it sounded like, because i must have sounded like i was truly crazy.
but then i think about jeremiah wright and the things he said that obama distanced himself from. and i think about the speech that obama made as i was in the old city of hebron about a united jerusalem being the rightful capital of israel. i think about the people of dheisheh and the almost daily horrors that they have to go through. and the humanitarian horrors of the sudan. and the poverty in appalachia. and i wonder what obama is going to do for all of them. i wonder if obama is going to remember his working class background, i wonder if obama is going to not think about being re-elected again but rather doing what needs to be done not to help someone like me - because even with my own personal struggles and being poor because i am a student, i am privileged - but rather to help those who’s voices we don’t hear unless some privileged person magnifies their voices for them.
it breaks my heart. so much so that i can’t even read about it most days because of the guilt i carry that i’m not doing anything right now. yep cherice - i get it - i can tell their stories, but - and you know this my friend - i don’t feel it is enough. i’m here in my little white town in my ivory towers in northern utah and i don’t feel like i’m doing enough - even if i AM speaking about lgbt rights in a town that voted 29% (or some low percentage like that) for obama and 71% for mccain, and where i’m sure prop 8 would have passed by some even more ridiculously high percentage.
i get angry about it a lot and unfortunately people hear that anger. i need to be better at all this. but IT JUST ISN’T FAIR.
we have a history of not caring. it’s amazing how when i start talking about palestine someone, inevitably, brings up the holocaust. well, the jews needed to go somewhere, because look at what happened during the holocaust, and the united states believes in helping everyone and so for a population that that happened too we HAVE to help them! ha! i’m really the wrong person to be bringing that up to because i have been studying that subject for at least 20 of my 35 years.
- even with knowledge of kristallnacht, roosevelt and members of congress did not increase the numbers of jewish refugees allowed into the united states.
see? and this is just one (seemingly unknown) example of how the men in the highest offices have stood silently by as those without voices continued not to have any - those who’s voices needed to be heard and acted upon weren’t.
as i was standing there on election night, after obama had been announced as the new president, talking with this new really cool person that another friend (and professor) of mine had introduced me too i talked to her about my disappointment with obama - that he’d moved to the center to get elected. and she voiced a bit of hope - that i think a lot of people have - that he’ll just be centrist during the campaign, but once he gets elected he’ll remember those who’s stories break my heart. that night i held on to that hope - and into wednesday even - i held on tightly to that hope because i wanted to be elated at obama’s election. with the personal demons i’m currently battling i find myself without hope a lot. with my memories of my trip to palestine i find myself without hope for the palestinians. with my thoughts about the last 8 years (and if you ask my friend sue, the 16 years previous to those too) i find myself without hope. and i wanted it (hope). and waking up the next morning with the news about proposition 8 i wanted it even more. i needed some hope and i wanted the party of hope i’d felt the night before to continue.
but a week later, and i see who obama’s chief of staff is and i wonder if he’s going to forget about the palestinians. i wonder if he’ll just be one in a long line of us presidents to not really care about those who have to use their own bodies as bombs because they don’t have the privilege of getting aid from my government to pay for jets and bombs. i wonder if he really will go into darfur and use some of the money that we’ve been spending in iraq - that he’ll save because he’s going to pull the troops out - to really stop that genocide. i wonder if he’ll take some money from the big companies and their ceo’s and go into appalachia to give them health care. i’m cynical, too cynical. i’m bitter, too bitter. i’m angry, too angry. and i’m hopeless. no barack, i don’t “got hope” because i can’t believe it until i see it. i wish it could be different for me, i really really do. i can’t tell you how much i want it to be different, i can’t tell you how much I (do i need to remind you - I, a person with SO much privilege) need the hope you spoke about during your campaign - that hope that you infused into so many young people and people of color. i hope i get to see that hope to come to fruition, i hope my bitterness, cynicism, and anger is proved wrong.
