Lucky White Girl

Thinking of shopping at Wal-Mart this year?

Watch this video before you do:

Just say No! to Wal-Mart

How much influence does the President really have?

A lot of people are asking whether Obama is really going to change Washington or if Washington will change him.  Here are some of my thoughts on that:

The Presidency is bigger than any one person; it's just one part -albeit a very powerful part-- of the "filty rotten stinking system" (as Dorothy Day called it) in which we live.  Which is why nothing short of a real old-fashioned revolution (i.e. from-the-ground-up movement to overthrow the current government) will ever really bring about fundamental change in this country. 

[Make no mistake: despite my enthusiasm for the Obama administration I (still) believe that.  It's what my conscience demands.  I cannot give 100% support for a system that results in such huge economic disparities between the haves and the have-nots (such as we have not seen in this country since the 1920s), locks up such a large percentage of its population (primarily black men), and continues to attack and invade other sovereign nations (talk about a "rogue state"!).  This system is immoral, corrupt and dangerous to the majority of the world's people.  Indeed, it should be overthrown.]

That said, I think that the past eight years have showed us just how much influence (for better or worse) an individual President can indeed have.  Putting G.W. behind the wheel was probably the most disastrous decision the people of this country have made in a hundred years (longer?).  He nearly crashed us and it's going to take some time (and lots of money) to undo the damage.  Obama can be as influential as Bush was just hopefully in a positive way instead of a negative way.

So do I think Obama will change Washington or will Washington change him? Yes. I do (think both).

Some righteous hurt about Proposition 8

wow this is the best commentary on Proposition 8 I've heard.  damn.  you go Keith!



"To those who voted for or supported this proposition, I have some questions: ...What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships these people want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want: the chance to be a little less alone in the world... The world is barren enough. It is stacked against love and against hope and against those very few precious emotions that enable all of us to go forward. With so much hate in the world, this is what your religion tells you to do?... This is what your conscious tells you to do?... You want to sanctify marriage, then spread happiness. You are asked now to stand on one side or another, on the question of love. You don't have to help it, applaud it, you just have to not put it out."

Well said, Keith, well said.

More than a slogan

This is still not the post-election blog entry I've been meaning to write but hey, there's plenty of analysis of the new president-elect out there, and much of it speaks my heart and mind these days (see for example, Eugene Robinson's column Morning in America). 

So no analysis from me yet.  Instead this is the kind of personal-political post that you've come to expect from this blog.  [If "Lucky White Girl" weren't such a damn pithy-and-memorable-yet-dead-on-accurate name for this blog it might be called "The View From Here" (la vista desde aca) because one of the main ideas of standpoint feminism is that one's understanding of the world is profoundly shaped by one's place within it, that is, by your socio-economic position which, in turn, depends a whole lot on the race and gender identity society plops on your head (which may or may not coincide with the one you yourself choose)]. 

So I'll just say that from my (feminist) standpoint, the view from here is just fine these days!  I've never felt this way before about a leader of our country, never felt a glimmer of hope for a future where maybe my country doesn't rule the world with a bloody iron fist, invading sovereign nations left and right, engaging in immoral wars and irresponsible fiscal policy and using and disposing of the planet as it sees fit for short-term convenience.  Maybe things can indeed change.

Coupled with this, is my own struggle with adjusting to life in this strange world that is Washington DC.  (Although how different the city seems now that I know the Obama family will be moving into the White House down the street!) and my recent vacation back home to Florida gave me time (not enough!) to reflect on my first year in the big city and wonder if it suits me or not.

I decided that if I'm ever going to feel at home here I'll need to develop a sense of place.  Easier said than done.  I have such a sense of place for where I grew up: the smell of recently trimmed lantana bushes, the light in the sky after a rain on a humid summer day, that classic arboreal mix of oaks and palm trees that formed the backdrop of my childhood --all that is gone here.  There are different things.  Things I don't know yet.  Cherry blossoms and cold weather.  This is the city of Presidents, about as far away from the cypress knees and black muck of Florida backwaters as you can get and I need to start feeling it, really feeling it.  Especially now that we have a new President. 

Obama reminds me of the best of our country's former leaders, Roosevelt (Franklin D.) or Kennedy, (in some ways one, and in other ways the other).  I've never really studied much domestic (U.S.) political history.  I might as well start.  So I'm reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's Pulitzer Prizing winning history of the Roosevelts called No Ordinary Time.  (Any thoughts on this book?)

For the first time, I feel really invested in my country.  Invested in the sense that I don't just see it as the place where it just so happens that I was born and if it gets too bad or ugly I can always leave for friendlier shores, but I feel, instead, that it's a place representative of an idea --democracy, progress-- that, surprisingly enough, turns out to be alive after all.  This is the road back to the embodiment of greatness that this country was on, in some ways (not in others), in the 1930s.  It's an idea I want to help make happen.

I know expectations are high for this man we just elected last Tuesday but this is a country so demoralized by eight years of the worst leadership in its history that I have to say we need this feeling of unbridled enthusiasm, of idealistic aspirations.  It's more than just a slogan, it's a prescription for a sick nation; yes, we can!  Democracy is not dead.  The dream of America is still possible.   And a great leader like Obama is going to be the one to bring us there.

Beautiful Day

I think last night was the happiest day of my life.  Being home with friends in Gainesville meant the world to me!  My face hurt from smiling so much.  I'm dehydrated from crying so much and I'm utterly exhausted from going on about 5 hours of sleep.  But I got to watch history being made with my friends at my side at the Hippodrome theater downtown.  The place was packed and everyone was shouting and laughing and whooping it up and after it was clear Obama was going to be our next president strangers hugged strangers and people literally danced in the street.  My friend Sand and I sat on the floor in front of one of the TV screens and watched Obama's acceptance speech with our arms around each other and tears in our eyes. Afterwards a crowd gathered on the corner of Main Street and University Ave waving Obama signs and cheering.  It reminded me of something a police officier once said about Gainesville celebrations: "our main objective is to keep people out of the trees and off the lamp posts".  The crowd was still there more two hours later.  We finally left a bit after 2 in the morning.

It's the dawn of a new era.  We have much work to do.

I gotta go catch a plane.  More later!  Congratulations everyone!  We all did a great job!

A crack appears in the wall of Empire

I've never seen people waiting in lines several hours long for EARLY voting.  1/3 of the electorate have already voted (including me --I waited about 45 minutes in Volusia County).  It just goes to show that when people with integrity run for public office, when it's not politics-as-usual, the people of this country do still believe in democracy and are excited about it.

I'm in Gainesville at my friend Chris' house and woke up this morning to a note from him saying he "wondered how people felt the morning this country elected Kennedy to the Presidency".  Excitement is in the air all over today.  Last night watching him Live on TV I teared up thinking this man is our next president.  He doesn't have to be the most radical progressive out there, it's STILL a significant blow to my jaded view of the country I live in and I can't think of anything I'd rather have radically reformulated than that image of a country ruled by powerful white men with no thought for anything other than their own position.

Things are going to change in this country.  We're going to push back --waaaay back-- the threat from the radical right to make women's bodies the property of men, denying women the right to make such personal decisions for themselves as whether or not to have a baby.  We're going to stop coddling the rich at the expense of the poor, put the brakes on the growing disparity between the haves and the have-nots, have a slightly fairer tax plan.  We're going to stop catering to corporations who eat workers up and spew out the remains in pursuit of ever increasing profit margins.  We're going to enforce labor and environmental protection laws and the names of federal administrations are no longer going to seem so ironic.

Maybe we're going to do all this.   But maybe not.  There's a crack in the wall we can see light through, the possibility is there, if Obama is elected and Democrats get a majority of the Senate.  But we're not there yet.  The Democrats could help us do all this but they won't unless we hold their feet to the fire after the election.

So go out and vote today but then don't think it's over.  We can take back our country but this election is just the beginning.  The real work starts January 20th.