Thursday, November 6, 2008

OBAMA!!!


The afternoon before the election, I sat in the Western Addition Community Center in San Francisco volunteering for the Obama Campaign, making phone calls to the battleground states on my native coast. Skin and hair, damp from the constant downpours the city had been eager for, i trudged through the flooding streets, broken umbrella and all, to find my way into a building converted to a Barack Obama paradise. People were dispersed throughout having quiet conversations that were occasionally interrupted by a bell, which meant that someone had just spoken to a citizen who was a definite voter for Obama. I entered this environment solo, so some intimate space was what i searched for. I sat on the stale carpet floor, alone, wedged between a floor plant and a fogged up window, cellphone glued to my ear and a stack of phone numbers to strangers i would only speak to this once, for this one reason.
I was calling Virgina, my once neighboring state, now so far away. Initially, I felt an East Coast comradeship, at the same time anticipating a distance not geographically, but in opinion.
As i began to make phone calls, and continued to do so for hours, i noticed that on my checklist, i still hadn't talked to anyone who supported McCain. Was it a coincidence...or was i really communicating with dozens of like minded Americans of all ages, ethnicity, and political backgrounds?
At a point, I feared the "outside", so-to-speak, opinion. It has been easy for me to feel comfort in the people a liberal and open minded artist naturally flocks with.....living in one of the most open minded cities in the country. So i prepared myself for rejection and ignorance from the other side of the receiver....only to be pleasantly greeted with plenty of pro-Obama responses. And when i did eventually receive the "Why don't you go Barack-Obama-yer-ass somewhere else," response, i could only find pleasure in the ignorance, and the chuckle i responded back with, well it brought me back to reality. As well as tying that nervous knot inside my stomach a little tighter.

The most gratifying phone call I made was to a 46 year old African-American man in central Virginia. He had indecisiveness in his voice from the minute he answered, a tiredness, a defeated undertone, but for some reason he wanted to talk to me. He said he wasn't voting for McCain..but he didn't think he would vote at all. In his explanation, he expressed his discontent with the government as a whole, with the two party system, and in an exhausted manner, confided in me, his fear that nothing will be different or can change. I surprised him when i agreed with him fully and provided him not with a robotic campaign volunteer response, but with an honest opinion and vision. I shared my political views, and my ideas for a solution, focused on unity and the concept that we must work with the system we have now in order to move forward.
As we discussed all sides, the conversation was to come to an end. The tone in his voice didn't change much, due to heavy contemplation on his end.
"Can we could on you to vote for Obama tomorrow, sir?"
"....:silence:.....Yes...Yes you can....thank you."

In one phone call...i helped a man realize that his vote was important and so was his voice. I helped him realize he wasn't alone in his views, and that our shared concerns about our society are worth fighting for.

So message to all of you is this:
If we let the system work us, or resist the system completely, we will fail inevitably.
We must take a different approach this time. We can no longer mimic past failures, nor can we revert back to a way of thinking that our minds have evolved away from. A new generation....a new mission.
We have created this opportunity for ourselves to make the last attempt to save who we are and the country we live in.