Changed

I feel like I’ve died and gone to America.

–composer Barry Franklin

I can’t stop crying.  I have been crying for five days now.  Every time someone says something to me that includes the words “President Obama,” I well up.  Jessie Jackson, Will Smith, and Oprah Winfrey cry, and I’m snot-nosed and red-eyed right along with them.  Colin Powell cries and–defends his right to cry–and I weep.  

Intellectually, I understand why I have been so invested in the Obama campaign, but until he won, I didn’t know myself how emotionally invested I was–not in his campaign, but in a dream of America that I pretended to stop dreaming some time during the Reagan years.  Or maybe it was after the The Cosby Show was cancelled and Cops debuted.  I can’t put my finger on it.  But it died when I was young enough that dreams were dying off by the dozens, and I don’t remember taking particular notice of it then.  

Now, in its triumphant return, I begin to wonder what other dreams I put aside that, instead, I should have worked toward.  It’s a scary, brilliant moment.  I am glad to have been here for it, and I hope I am up to the things it will ask of me in the coming months and years.  

 

The Revolution Wants Candy…

 

Hope comes knocking and asking for candy...

Last night, we had three Barack Obamas at our house.  The first was the teenage girl next door.  The second was the ten year old boy from down the block.  The third was someone’s father.

There were no John McCains, no Sarah Palins, and no George Bushes.  And we’re supposed to be a red state.

I will wait with the rest of you for the results of the election.  But I have seen the results of the primary:  two children, years away from voting,  dressed up on Halloween as the black man who, according to the poles, is most likely our next President.  

These children will grow up to be people who do not say, as people my age said for a very long time, “He’s a great candidate, but I don’t think even the Democrats will elect a black man as their Presidential nominee.”  They won’t say, as people I love have said as recently as last week, “It’s a shame, but this country isn’t ready for a black president.  He can’t win.”

They will have always known a black man can be president.  

The revolution has come.    Last night, it knocked on my door, along with a gaggle of Hannah Montanas and Darth Vaders, and held out its pillowcase for candy.

Why West Virginians Should Support Obama…

 

Does anybody else remember that West Virginia used to be a “yellow dog Democrat” state, meaning that we would rather vote for a Democratic candidate who was a yellow dog than a Republican, no matter what his/her qualifications?  There was a good reason for this:  more than most of the country, the people of West Virginia deal with poverty, disability, and the issues of rural communities.  We voted for candidates who stood behind labor, were willing to fight the war on poverty, and supported initiatives to ensure that people living in rural communities had good schools, good roads, and the chance to raise their children to have good lives. 

Then, somewhere along the way, we let ourselves be told that those things didn’t matter.  That, in fact, the folk who wanted to build roads, improve schools, and care for the elderly and disabled were, in fact, the bad guys.  Why?  Because somehow we let ourselves be tricked into believing that “Christian” and “Republican” were the same thing.  We let ourselves forget that Jesus gave us not The Ten Commandments, but the far more difficult and demanding Sermon on the Mount. 

I believe that if you look at the issues, you can’t help but come to the conclusion that Obama is the best candidate for West Virginia.  He supports strengthening the supports for persons with disabilities–a key issue in the state with the highest percentage of citizens with disabilities in the entire country!  He supports initiatives to ensure rural small business can compete by bringing high speed internet to currently unserved areas, and he supports keeping the market open to these small businesses through net neutrality.  He has the best plan for providing health care to everyone–a key need in a state that only a few years ago saw the head of DHHR refuse to answer the legislature’s questions about how their healthcare reforms were impacting West Virginia citizens!  On these, and so many more, issues, Obama is clearly the candidate with the best plan  West Virginia’s future.

It is time for us to have hope again.  That’s not something that comes easy here in West Virginia, where wave after wave of reformers have come and gone without providing much relief from the hard times that seem always to hit us the hardest.  But Obama isn’t offering us a hand-out.  He’s offering us the tools to carve out our own prosperity, and better lives for our kids.  And isn’t that what we all want?