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06.24 Mr. Holder, You Must Hold Torturers Accountable

Health & Environment

06.29 Thinking about Climate

06.26 False Health-Scare Ad on CNN

06.25 Louella Learns the Limits of Medicare

06.23 The Simple Answer to America’s Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All

06.23 Tell ABC: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate

06.23 Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex

06.22 Thinking about Recoveries

06.20 Obama's Health Care Waterloo

06.15 Obama, Like Clinton Before Him, is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform

06.11 Two Key Health-Care Numbers

06.10 Big Breakthroughs for Single Payer Health Care

06.10 Readying Americans for Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations

Media Watching

06.29 WP's Connolly Back, on Health Reform

06.17 Hypocrisy and Hope: Western Coverage, Iranian Courage

06.15 Excusing Outrages of the Right

06.11 Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess

US Politics, Policy & Culture

06.30 Obama's Torture Hypocrisy

06.30 Court Circular: Annals of Imperial Continuity

06.29 Obama, They Want You to Fail

06.26 Who to Trust on a Truth Commission?

06.26 Tarnished Shields: The Morally Bankrupt 'Family Values' Republican Leadership

06.25 America's "Bases of Empire"

06.24 Twelve Angry White People: Jury Nullification in a Pennsylvania Coal Town

06.24 Touring Empire's Ruins

06.23 Employers are Undermining the Economic Stimulus Program

06.19 Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black

06.17 Afghanistan's Operation Phoenix

06.16 Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran?

06.13 Where's the Anger as the Wheels Come Off Obama's and the Democrats' Recovery Program?

06.10 Waiving the Rules for Old Glory

06.10 Obama's Era of Openness Is Closed

“High Crimes?”

07.03 Reviewing Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's "Rules of Disengagement"

07.01 Iraq: A Bitter Strategic Failure

06.25 It's All Good, Again: 'Uptick' in the American-Made Tides of Violence in Iraq

06.22 Obama Opposes Plame-gate Release

06.21 Dexter's Legions: The "Good" Killers of the "Good" War

06.18 Extending the Tradition: Proudly Taking American Torture Into the Future

06.15 New UN Report Denounces America's Human Rights Record

06.14 Fear Rules

Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance

07.01 Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism:" The Economic Strategy of Imperial America

06.23 Obama's Financial Reform Proposal - A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control

06.10 Cyberscares About Cyberwars Equal Cybermoney

International

07.01 Pirates of the Mediterranean

06.29 Color Revolutions, Old and New

06.25 Iran Divided & the 'October Suprise'

06.23 Astringent Corrective: AbuKhalil on Iran's Turmoil

06.22 Reviewing F. William Engdahl's "Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order:" Part I

06.20 Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?”

06.20 Through a Glass Darkly: Sifting Myth and Fact on Iran

06.19 Iran's Election and US - Iranian Elections

06.16 The Ir-Af-Pak War: Obama Looses the Manhunters

06.12 Israeli War Crimes Against Children During Operation Cast Lead

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  Let us shed tears of gratitude for this moment of grace. It will be brief.
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COMMENTARY:

Let us shed tears of gratitude for this moment of grace. It will be brief.

by Mike Ferner
Wednesday, 5 November 2008
Obama's campaign has inspired millions of people to become active, to expect more, to work hard with many people towards something larger than yourself.
My friend, Lucy Bohne, an English professor at a state college near Erie, Pennsylvania, wrote to her daughter today about Barack Obama’s victory. Lucy did a fine job describing how many people feel the day after the Senator's historic victory.

“Thank you for calling last night. It sounded like NYC had gone mad with joy!...I have spent the night in a roller coaster of amazement, shadowed by despair, counting the days between your birth and MLK's murder. Twelve, to be more or less exact. That was the joy--to think that 40 years later your generation would hand the White House over to the leadership of a black American. That is an amazing thing!

"...The shadows--well, you know them. This amazing thing that happened in America--that only we, as Americans, can understand and share--won't make a difference to the world, to the children in Baghdad, Beirut, Gaza, and Teheran, and all the other places in the crosshairs of our guns--unless we make that difference. Might as well be brave and strong and admit that there is work to be done, struggles to embrace, disappointments to endure.

"But, for the moment, let us shed tears of gratitude for this moment of grace. It will be brief."

—Mom”

Considering that race is always the subplot to the American story, many of us surely will “shed tears of gratitude for this moment of grace,” no matter how brief.

As we move beyond today’s fleeting joys, I will recall how often during this presidential campaign people asked if I thought an Obama administration would by and large be a good thing. My response was always this: the best thing about an Obama victory would not be his policies—he's shown too often they differ little from the status quo. The best thing his campaign and election offers is the way it has inspired millions of people to become active, to expect more, to work hard with many people towards something larger than yourself—in short, to gain a sense of purpose.

Then, if Obama’s inspired grassroots campaigners discover in their hearts that citizen vigilance and organizing are just as important as elections; that creating democracy from the bottom-up is more important than our quadrennial extravaganzas; that investments of time and energy commensurate with their newly-raised expectations must be made—only then will we see change significant enough to make Obama’s election more than a historical footnote.

Who knows today what forces the hopes and dreams of this campaign may have unleashed? Who can say what historical events may be about to unfold, or how far they may go if we make conditions right for their growth?

More importantly, when our “moment of grace” is indeed found to be brief and we must regroup over and over again, will these new, hopeful campaigners be savvy enough to overcome the American appetite for instant gratification that today is found only in shopping malls?

That, I believe, is the challenge faced by all those who want schools and healthcare, not empire and warfare; who want to “...make a difference to the world, to the children in Baghdad, Beirut, Gaza, and Teheran, and all the other places in the crosshairs of our guns.”

It is a tall challenge indeed. But if we are not up to it, who is?


Mike Ferner is a writer and activist from Ohio. Contact him at mike.ferner@sbcglobal.net.



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This story was published on November 6, 2008.
 


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