This is opportunity. Please, I beg you, don't waste me.
Do not listen to the polls. Do not listen to your strategists. Do not let your opponents drag you down into the mess. Listen to your heart, your soul - run on what you believe and know. Let the rest of us step up and elect you.
I know this is wishful thinking. I know this is not how our current election process (for lack of a worse term) is run. I know you will have to pander and make mistakes and "get dirty", but I wish it weren't so. I wish for everyone to simply and clearly understand what you bring to the table. For you, for me and especially for our world.
Tom Hayden's article, "An Appeal to Obama" (11/09/07 on Huffington Post) discusses problems with the campaign's strategies from lacking a definitive constituency to trying to distance itself from the 60s generation. While most of the article is critcal of these perceived missteps, Hayden also offers a succint glimpse to your unique promise:
"The greatest gift you have been given by history is that as the
elected tribune of a revived democracy, you could change America's
dismal role in the world. Because of what you so eloquently represent,
you could convince the world to give America a new hearing, even a new
respect. There are no plazas large enough for the crowds that would
listen to your every word, wondering if you are the one the whole
world is waiting for. They would not wait for long, of course. But
they would passionately want to give you the space to reset the
American direction."
This is what we want. This is what we so desperately want, yet the need to campaign is getting in the way of the message you radiate. America is a skeptical bunch. One that is undertandably weary and leery of what seems to obviously be "the answer". It's too easy and we've had our hearts broken too many times before. As huffpo blogger akhinaten says: "Obama is a manifested impossibility that is slowly being deconstructed to find his tribal allegiance." It is safer for us to break you down into systematic categories and pick your every detail apart. We feel the need to define you in a way that makes sense to us instead of believing in our own ability to transcend definition. That way, we can see your shortcomings and somehow justify relinquishing our hope for the future we really want and need.
Barack, you alone find yourself in this precarious position. As the first African American man that has an honest chance of winning the presidency, you are our history and our future. People ask "Is he black enough?" or " Can a black man be elected to the highest office?" Instead of thinking of this as a liability, we should be honoring the fact that we have grown (albeit slowly) as a nation to a place where this is even a possibility. Sad, but true.
Can you live up to your enormous potential? Will you even get the chance? Can we, as a people, put aside all of our prejudice, ignorance and greed and truly step up and start to heal the extensive damage in this country that we say we love? I hope so. It will break my heart if we (you and me) let this opportunity pass.
Hayden also included this memory in his article.
"I sat listening to you last year at an RFK human rights event in our
capital. I was sitting behind Ethel Kennedy and several of her
children, all of whom take more progressive stands than anyone
currently leading the national Democratic Party. They were applauding
you, supporting your candidacy, and trying to persuade me that you
were not just another charismatic candidate but the one we have been
waiting for."
That is pretty huge coming from the Kennedy clan. Let us remember the words spoken by one of their own:
"So let us begin anew—remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."
(JFK's inaugural address - 1961)
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Obama: Connecting the dots..................................
The Jefferson Jackson speech has being well received but the question is did we get the subtext. Did we understand what Obama was saying about Him self and about the moment in time.
Lets use a quote “fierce urgency of Now” this is a quote from the “I have a dream” speech, one of the most famous speeches in America it is a speech of one Dr Martin Luther king 1963 in Washington DC in the shadow of the “great emancipator” Lincoln memorial.
In that speech the good doctor laments over some of the so-called liberal intellectuals who argued that the Negro should have patient with the pace of progress in America.
They were essentially saying to MLK to cool it down, to demand a gradual improvement it was in response to the “wait till the next term” argument that we formulated the phrase “fierce urgency of Now” Obama uses this phrase as a hypertext linking the two speeches.
In order to betray the subtext in his repeated use of the word “NOW” in his speech. He said “the time is NOW America” this is an answer to those whites and black those timid souls to argue that Obama should somehow wait his turn as if Hillary had a natural right to go before him. Institutionalized to the comfort of living out of the white-guilt some black leaders are actually against the Obama candidacy. Without this opposition there would not have being the ridicules claim that Obama was not really black. As if Hillary was.
It is a symptomatic argument one that reveals that the slave mentality is connected to the relationship between the slave and the master. These black intellectuals define themselves and thus blackness in relations to enslavement it is their point of Origin. Obama is a challenge to that, he is from a time before that origin he is pre-enslavement and therefore not black as blackness is defined by these intellectuals.
They see in him a promise that was not fulfilled for them; they see him as having some immeasurable quality that slavery has distilled out of them. They see him as coming last and wanting to go in front of the line.
What Obama is saying is: don’t compete against me, compete against others, and see that you can aspire to the position of others, you to can be the president.
But for the promise of “liberty and justice for all” to be fulfilled. Obama is trying to convince a white liberal establishment that is shaking in its boots for fear of nominating a black man and having him loose to an idiot republican. That he can win and that they should just forget about holding him back. Because in 2008 justice would finally come as a tidal wave.
Obam is calling from the mountaintop. This is the man, MLK foresaw, seas the moment!
Akhinaten
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