What a night. What a wait. What a victory.
I don't really know how to write what I want to write without sounding trite, but here goes...
I am profoundly happy about Barack Obama's victory! I so happy about it because it has made me believe again. I believe that human beings are capable of positive change and that change is capable of making human beings believe. Now, I'm not especially religious (although I do have a strong agnostic sense of my place in the world that defaults to my seeing it through my Anglican/Episcopalian up-bringing) but, without sounding too trite or getting too caught up in the empty side of (what I think is mostly amazing) Obamamania, I have a renewed faith in God and humanity.
As some of you know, human rights and social justice, particularly the issues surrounding racial equality, are a big deal to me. I swear, somewhere in my soul there is a former slave, a 1960s American civil-rights activist, and a protester in the Soweto uprising...I know, it all sounds ridiculous from a white girl born in the Canadian prairies, but that's how I feel and how I've always felt. The Shirley Maclaine in me thinks it's some kind of reincarnation; the me in me thinks it just is.
Anyhow, having spent the last six years in London totally consumed by the academic/NGO human rights world here, I was starting to lose my faith in humanity. Throughout my studies for my Human Rights MA at UCL, I began to feel like there were a lot of people who were able to talk a lot about the moral imperatives for "doing the right thing", but very few who were willing to act. And, rather sadly and totally ironically, my time working at Amnesty International UK made me more cynical than I'd ever been about the power of one person to change more than a light bulb. All of this made me very sad and disempowered in a way I'd truly never felt before. (And this, other than the main reason of wanting/needing to be with Jones full-time, is why I didn't return to Amnesty after all...).
I, like millions of other American citizens, am desperate to see the United States lead by example on issues of human rights and social justice. With Barack Obama's victory I believe this is possible.
I must admit I was late supporter to the Obama camp. After working in media and PR for a while I'd become (have become) increasingly suspicious of campaigns/people who were too successful in the mainstream media. The cynics had me on their side for a while and made me believe that Obama seemed too good to be true. Fortunately, being a absentee American voter living in Britain, I was able to keep well away from the PR machine and get to know Obama (and Clinton and McCain) on my own terms, often reading their websites as I nursed a sleepy Jones. During the (never-ending) primary season, I was unsure about both Obama and Clinton. Clinton was too establishment for me and Obama? Well, I wanted to believe that this guy could do something - he had everything in the right place and was saying all the right things - but I used to work in PR for a human rights organization that had a lot of people working there who didn't really believe in human rights and I couldn't get passed his persona as being anything more than a well-oiled PR exercise. But, then the Democratic convention came and the substance was there and then the debates came and, wow, this wasn't just hype. And, suddenly, I was all "Obama! Obama! Obama!"
Then my little moment of believing (again, for the first time!) happened...Just before 5am GMT on the morning of November 5, 2008 I'm watching the acceptance speech of the first black man being voted into the highest office in the America - only 40 years after blacks were still being hosed on the streets, bombed in churches, and segregated in mealtimes and endless other ways - and I realize my faith in humanity has been restored. As I cradle Jones in my arms, with Angus cradling me in his, I am overcome with a real faith and belief that the world Jones is inheriting is truly a good one. A spiritual realization. It was, in the truest of true senses, truly inspiring.
Yes, Barack Obama has the weight of change now on his shoulders, and it WILL be impossible for him to maintain his status as our modern-day saviour, but, to me, his human fallibility makes the obstacles he's overcome and the change he's already enabled that more real and that more profound.
I now get to tell my son that he can be anything he wants to be and truly believe it; and encourage him to fight the good fight and believe that victory is out there. Lord knows, there's a whole lot of fighting to be done, but we need to believe to be able to do it, and, now, I finally do.
(let's start by fighting Prop 8 and encouraging Obama to follow through on his fighting words of closing Guantanamo! See http://blogs.amnesty.org.uk/blogs_entry.asp?eid=2282 for a somewhat cynical, but informative post on Obama's close-Guantanamo-pledge)
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