President Obama ... yeah!

I can feel my little activist brain gearing up as things seem to keep coming at me from all directions -- and I keep thinking, yikes!  I need to blog about that.  And that.  And this too!

I'm going to start with Obama's speech last night.  Did you watch it?  Did you get chills?  Did you have tears running down your face?  Did you feel it inside ... as the little glimmer of hope that has been slowly igniting shot up and infused your body with warmth?

Last night was special all on its own -- it was a smashing venue for a small group of 84,000 people to witness an historical event that will be one for the history books to be sure.  An African-American could potentially (YES YES YES HE MUST) be president of the United States.  But there was also something else ... did you see when he would open his mouth despite the fact that there was applause and yelling ... it would go silent instantly.  It was almost ... impossible.  These people cared -- they wanted to hear what he had to say.  And some of his statements were great.  

One of my favorites was "you don't make change in Washington, you BRING change to Washington."

He did a good job.  I know he has speech writers, I know that he has advisors who have advisors who study focus groups and all that political craparaptrap.  But you can't take away the fact that he is the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas.  You can't take away the fact that his wife is a descendant of slaves.  

Why does this matter?

Because it does.  It matters as much as the fact that George Bush was brought up in an entitled world -- and has been sure to prove how entitled he is during his presidency.   The United States of America has run out of cache based on its pedigree -- we can no longer show up to the party assuming we will get in because we are who we are.  George Bush, McCain (there is a photo of McCain clasping George Bush in a hug with his head pressed against his chest in a political ad that is just priceless.  Like he is holding on to the good old days for all he's worth), they will never understand what it is like to not get into the party based on who they are.

They are different, or they are like the upper middle class Americans who can afford multiple homes, lavish vacations, private schools and private clubs so their better-than-everyone else children can consort with their own.  Which is fine, but when this word CHANGE is bantered about, there is the negative contingent who grumbles and says yeah fine, change, but what does that mean?  Change means what it implies -- as in, no longer existing as we do at this very moment.  Will McCain do anything differently than Bush?  No.  Because it's a party thing -- and as Obama said in his speech last night, they will continue to reward the rich through tax cuts in the hope that their wealth trickles down.

Are you getting any trickles?

Change means that we all have to stop assuming that we deserve more.  The American Dream isn't here you go, so glad you were born here, now head over to the appetizer table and start there.  We have possibility in the USA -- and opportunity and hope and a lot of people who feel as though they deserve more -- and don't have to do anything to get it.

Change means that when you are a candidate for any particular office, when someone that is a part of your life becomes a hindrance and not an asset -- that you don't disassociate yourself from that person one hundred percent to appease the people.  The Clintons, the Bushes, and I am sure countless leaders behind them, were always quick to discard of the controversial members of their inner circle -- and there were times where suicides and other untimely deaths followed in that wake.

But in Obama's speech last night, he addressed the issue of his former pastor, the Reverend Wright, and he put it right there on the table:  Yes, he said some things I don't agree with, but I can't discard him any more than I could discard my white grandmother.  

He managed to take what most candidates would view as one hot potato that needed to be thrown out the window and buried, and weave it into his speech and turn potential political suicide into gold.

 Following is an excerpt from a speech he gave in March in the midst of the Rev. Wright BrouHAHA:

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

He not only doesn't discard the man -- he explains what he saw in him and why, and that there is both goodness and badness in people that makes them say things they shouldn't say, or believe things that are either not true or based on misinformation.

His attitude alone is change.  Obama understands that many of us have no understanding of the life of a black man, or I guess I should say person.  He gets that.  And he is patiently attempting to get us to understand.

Oh, another one of my favorite comments was ... "America, we are better than these last eight years.  We are a better country than this."

And he gives examples of what he is going to do.  I can't blog about this endlessly -- it is obvious that I didn't need this speech to push me to vote for him from earlier blogs, but he's got it, as they say.  He's got the charisma, the oratory finesse and hopefully the winning power to start heading this country toward a future of good things -- not bad.

It's really that simple.  And as I stated in a previous blog this week, if hurricane Gustav somehow manages to screw up the Republican Convention, then it proves that the Universe realizes it's time for CHANGE.  We need to listen this time.

Head to this link if you're interested in reading the speech.  Senator Barack Obama - Democratic National Convention