It was block by block, from the ground up, community organizing. which
won the White House for Barach
Obama. Inspired by his eloquence and
audacity, his commitment to change we can believe in, and his faith
in
himself and in human possibilities, determined to leave behind us
the shameful legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, the
Iraq war and the other
atrocities of the Bush- Cheney regime, and to begin healing and
redeeming our country
and ourselves, tens of thousands of Americans,
of all ages, ethnic backgrounds and faiths, members of
unions,
churches, synagogues, peace, women’s and other community groups,
discovered in them/ourselves
the energy that comes from renewed hope
and commitment to a just cause. So, especially after the Democratic
convention.
we/they went door to door, block by block, in neighborhoods
all over the country, persuading strangers and folks
who had never
voted or who had lost faith in voting, to vote for Obama. It was a
great feat, worth celebrating.
Where do we/they go from here?
Some people will use the experience to
advance their own careers. Others will be content with Obama’s
closing
down Guantanamo and undoing similar Bush- Cheney abuses.
Still others, outraged at Obama’s appointments
of pro-Israel zealots,
rightwing Democrats and economic heavyweights whose only concern is
growing
the economy, will organize protest demonstrations, trying to
push Obama to the Left. Or they will regret that they did
not vote for
Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney I will not be among them.
I think that Obama has already done our
country a great service by encouraging tens and hundreds of millions
all
over the world to believe that America can change and that
together we can change it. I do
not delude myself that despite
Obama’s formidable multi-tasking skills, he will be able, in
the
Oval Office, as commander in chief of the U.S. Armed Forces,
struggling to extricate this country from two
unwinnable wars which
have become occupations, saddled with a trillion dollar deficit, and
needing to court both
Republicans and Democrats even for modest
health care legislation that will not make us more healthy but only
make heath
insurance more available, to initiate the profound changes
in our values, in how we live, how we make our livings
and how we
educate our children, that are urgently needed at this milestone in
our evolution when we are
in the midst of a cultural transition as
far-reaching as that from hunting and gathering to agriculture eleven
thousand
years ago and from agriculture to induntung ustry three
hundred years ago.
Changes of this magnitude cannot come from the top down, only from the
ground up.
And that is where they
are coming from. All over the country citizens
from all walks of life, parents, teachers, administrators, recognizing
that
our Fordist model of schooling is the main cause for school
dropouts and expanding prisons, are exploring
new ways of educating our
children that involve their hands and hearts and engage them in
community-building.
One outstanding example is the Catherine Ferguson
Academy in Detroit where caring for small animals and planting
community
gardens is part of the science curriculum for teenage mothers.
In Milwaukee former basketball player Will Allen has founded Growing
Power, an urban farm that not
only grows produce for thousands of
city-dwellers but helps communities grow their own gardens in order to
bring the
neighbor back into the ‘hood.
"We have to go back to when people shared things and start taking care
of each other. That's the only way we
will survive. What better way
to do it than with food?" said Will as he was honored with a 2008
MacArthur
Genius Award.
All over the United States the local foods movement is helping
Americans cope with spiraling food prices,
at the same time slowing
down global warming and making us healthier because we are not
importing adulterated foods
grown on factory farms and transported
thousands of miles in gas-guzzling trucks.
In neighborhoods all over the country the economic meltdown is forcing
people to rethink the waste of suburban living
and SUVs and the cost
of shopping at malls rather than neighborhood stores. So this
Thanksgiving people will be
swapping stories of an older generation
whose hands were more calloused but who cared not only for themselves
but
each other.
At the end of 1966, four months before his anti-Vietnam war speech,
Martin Luther King Jr. wrote “Where
do we go from here: Community or
Chaos” in which he called for a radical revolution of values against
the
giant triplet of racism, materialism and militarism. It would be
fitting if on January 20 as we celebrate Barach
Obama’s inauguration
we also commemorate MLK’s 80th birthday by holding teach-ins on this
little pamphlet.
