Best picture of the whole campaign

Via.

We have the power to resist fear

This article scares the bejeezus out of me. The fact that still-president Bush has first suspended the law that prevents him from stationing American military forces on American soil, and then the deployment of a brigade of 4,000 soldiers on American soil under the auspices of "crowd control"; makes my imagination run wild. It makes me wonder what they're preparing for... riots caused by the stealing of the election? riots caused by something so much more sinister that I dare not publish the thought on a public blog? Bread riots? What?

And then, I wonder what would happen to me... would I courageously participate and be imprisoned, rendered, tortured? Would I participate and fall victim to the lethal options that would be available to those performing crowd control? Or would I cower like those executing this bastardization of OUR country want me to? I don't know. I do know that I fear what would happen to me in either instance. If I participated, would I survive? Would I be held indefinitely? Would I be abused? Raped?

If I didn't participate would I run? Would I stay and try to resist whatever it is that happens next? Would I continue to cower until everything that I love no longer has meaning? Would I survive my own cowardice?

I fear these things. I fear impotence in the face of oppression. I wouldn't want to just go about my life in the event of a military coup. But the alternative seems equally frightening.

After oppressive regimes eventually topple, Nazi Germany, Pinochet's Chile, the Soviet Union, we learn about artists who resisted the regimes without getting into too much trouble because art can always have many meanings... slaves in this country developed what is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard, gospel singing, as a means of communicating with each other without their overlords realizing they were planning their freedom, and keeping each other safe in the hope that they would one day taste that which all humans yearn for.

Art is resistance. I've been seeing a lot more graffitti lately. Resistance. If something happens and there is a military coup, resistance will crop up. Artists will take to the streets. You and I will become invisible, undetectable, but omnipresent, just as the overlords, but we are more powerful beacuse we have something they fear more: hope.

Tomorrow is Yom Kippur, the Day of Attonement. I, like millions of other Jews across the globe will be fasting, but tomorrow I will be praying, not for myself, but for my country. I will be praying that Barack Obama wins this election handily -- even though I know that will not be the end of our problems as a country -- because I have to hold onto the hope that so many of us have. With hope, with those three words that we pray will ring out from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea, "yes we can", we don't have to be afraid.

We have the power to resist fear. We have the power to save ourselves, our families, our country, and as long as there is hope in our hearts and a song from our voices those who would seek to oppress have no power over us. Ghandi said that the only power anyone has over you is the power you give them.

Let us keep our power. Let us keep our hope. Let us keep our country. Let us elect Barack Obama so that we can start on the path to rebuilding our country, our politics, and dispelling the fear that has been wrought over the past 8 years.

Hope

It occurs to me that a lot of people don't understand the hope that is inspired by Barack Obama. They think he's all flowery speeches and charisma. They think there's no there there... no substance, or that if there is substance the substance is ego; that this man is campaigning for president as a means of placating his own ego.

It occurs to me that over the past nearly-thirty years, a lot of people have lost sight of the American Dream to the extent that all those who offer hope, who speak well about it, who seek to provide change for this country, the change it needs: those people are just liars. They're not leaders, they're politicians. They're not leaders, they're just trying to get into power so they can... what?

It occurs to me that there are too many people who have become so jaded by the politics begun by the President many of the admire for his so-called greatness. That President did change the game. His advisers were fond of saying "I don't want everyone to vote; in fact the majority of elections are won [by Republicans] when people don't vote"; they said they wanted government to be so small they could drown it in a bathtub. Except that they and their progeny in the current administration have grown government exponentially, yet these same progeny continue to espouse goals of small government that stays out of American's business -- unless you're a woman of child bearing age, a homosexual, or some other undesirable.

It occurs to me that too many people have gotten so caught up in this whole jaded-about-politics-and-thereby-everything-else thing (that is, politics they don't pay attention to), that they've lost the message. They've lost the dream, and they've forgotten how to hope. These are the people who can derive no pleasure out of Barack Obama's historic presidential nomination, because they feel the deck was stacked. Because they weren't paying attention to the movement that had begun long before Barack Obama was able to get out in front of it and say more eloquently what everyone in that movement was already thinking.

There are others, too, who have forgotten how to hope. Others who hear the fears and smears in the media and nothing else because they don't have time to listen to progressive talkers, or because they aren't even aware they exist. These people aren't jaded so much as terrified. They see the media screaming about John McCain and Sarah Palin, and they get scared. Frightened almost into submission because they too have forgotten how to hope.

"We have been told that we cannot do this," Barack said when he lost the New Hampshire Primary. "We have been warned against giving the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope."

This has become my mantra. For so long, before Barack became this superstar in the Democratic party I was afraid that there was no hope for a future for this country. We would continue down this path that we have been dragged down by partisan politics that have divided us, unrelenting greed (that we were told was good for everyone, good for the economy) that has robbed us, unregulated industries that have poisoned us, and a group of people who seek to deny us our rights while demonizing those who seek to make the American Dream accessible to all the people who live in this nation not just those who have enough privilege to be handed the dream fulfilled.

There are a lot of people who have lied to you. They have told you you're better off than you are, better off than those people. They have told you that there is such a thing as "us" versus "them", and the "them" of the moment has to be defeated whether its Reagan's Welfare Queens (did you know that 70% of the women on Welfare are white?) or George W. Bush's "terrists" (did you know that by invading and occupying Iraq we have created more terrorists than we have killed?).

"But America's children are not those children, they are OUR children," Barack said. There is no US and THEM.

I don't know how to teach you how to hope. I do know that my heros have always told me that the person I should be listening to is the person who gives me hope rather than the one trying to scare me. I do know that hope has always been a driving force in my life, and even when things seemed the most bleak, there was still music that could help me. In that light, here are a couple of performances from the DNC that you may have missed.

Melissa Etheridge at the DNC



Yes We Can at the DNC



If you aren't weeping, you need to watch them again.