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Local News & Opinion
Ref. : Local Newsbriefs Travel
Letters
Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters:
03.05 Open Letter to Congressman Bart Stupak Health & Environment
Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries 03.09 Kill Bill: Death to Obamacare! 03.09 Obama’s Rhetoric May Be “Fiery,” But His Health Care Reform Is Still Lukewarm 02.24 Obama’s New Plan 02.21 Time to Pass the Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act of 2009 Media Watching
03.05 Sorry, Rove, Bush Did Lie About Iraq 03.03 It's Snow News 03.03 The Woeful Washington Post 02.28 The NYT Veers Neocon 02.18 US Media Replays Iraq Fiasco on Iran Ref. : The Daily Howler Legal Matters
02.26 America's Supremes: Court Over Constitution US Politics, Policy & Culture
03.09 Thinking About Countings 03.07 Unnatural Acts: Breaking the Fever of Militarism 02.25 Future Shock: A Better World Beyond the Imperium 02.24 The Last Flight of Joe Stack 02.22 Thinking About Sadie 02.18 All Systems Go: No Dysfunction in Profitable Afghan Enterprise High Crimes?
03.08 The Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Barcelona Session 03.01 America's Permanent War Agenda 02.25 Global Sweatshop Wage Slavery 02.23 Israeli Unaccountability and Denial: Suppressing the Practice of Torture 02.22 American Genocides: is Haiti Next? 02.16 MK-ULTRA: The CIA's Mind Control Program Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
03.09 The Business of Water: Privatizing An Essential Resource 03.05 Is the Recovery Real? 03.04 IMF-Style Austerity Measures come to America: What “Fiscal Responsibility” Means To You 03.04 Barry C. Lynn's "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and Economics of Destruction" 03.01 Thinking About Fees 02.22 Campaigning for State-Owned Banks 02.22 Social Security Will Fall To Obama Before The Taliban Do 02.19 Obama’s Stealth Entitlement Commission 02.19 Selling Out America to Wall Street International
03.05 Targeting Israeli Apartheid 03.03 Muslim Disunity 03.02 Funding Israeli Militarism, Belligerence and Occupation 02.26 Iran Captures a 'Good' Terrorist 02.24 The Dubai Hit 02.22 Holland Has Had Enough: Killing of Innocent Civilians Goes On Apace in Afghanistan 02.19 The Placeman Cometh: New IAEA Chief Stokes Iran War Fever for the Bush-Obama Regime 02.18 Israeli Abusive Administrative Detentions We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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COMMENTARY:Let us shed tears of gratitude for this moment of grace. It will be brief.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! 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. Copyright © 2008 The Baltimore News Network. All rights reserved.
Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. Baltimore News Network, Inc., sponsor of this web site, is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed in stories posted on this web site are the authors' own. This story was published on November 6, 2008. |
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