round up of radical election reactions

The other day I was yearning for more spaces in which to hear and participate in radical conversations. I feel like it’s so important to see your own experiences and struggles and reactions mirrored in other people–I’d even go so far as to say that it’s necessary for many choices and ways of being. So, I’m going to become the media and take a small step towards creating those spaces by posting this round up of radical reactions to the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States.

I want to say a couple things first. I feel like so many on the left are so quick to judge and so harsh in their expectations. I want to create a space where it’s okay to disagree–where people who voted for Obama, people who voted for McKinney or Nader, people who wrote in their own names or their friends’ names and people who chose not to vote at all can feel comfortable and free to speak. I want to create a space where it’s okay to ask stupid questions, okay to make mistakes, okay to admit that you’ve changed your mind or that you’re not sure.

I hope that posting these varied reactions will provoke a further conversation. Do any of these voices echo with your own thoughts and feelings? What does this election mean to you? What radical dreams are sprouting in your mind or communities in this altered political landscape? Are there other perspectives, other voices that you’d like to see included here?

Here’s the round-up.

Brownfemipower says:

…I can be happy, genuinely happy, for the Obamas, for the U.S., for all of us.

But I am who I am–and I have to admit–with the genuine happiness, I am also more than a bit sad.

I don’t think that I’ve truly understood until yesterday exactly how terribly the black community has been hurt. How devastated the black community was by the violence inflicted on them. How deep the ache of murder, lynching, rape, benign neglect, and threats etched themselves into the black community.

I mean, I had known–but not really, not until last night.

crudo says:

Last night I watched with several other anarchist friends as Obama became the next President of the United States Government. As someone who battled drug addiction and worked as a community organizer, counter poised to someone like McCain and Palin who own several houses and planes, (while claiming to be ’just like us’), it’s easy to get excited about things changing in this country. After all, just the idea that a half African-American President will be in office is enough to make many people think that the fundamental nature of the power structure in this country will change in a significant way. Some even believe that the very essence of their lives will change in the country. After all, that’s what Obama sold us on. Yes we can, change, hope…

But our lives have changed in the past year, even with Obama already in office. Let us not forget he has already served in the halls of power, as the government launched wars into other countries, increased repression against US citizens, deported migrants, and as the prison population within this country continues to grow and grow. Even Obama’s platform for election offers threats against Pakistan and Iran, calls for more corporate mercenary groups like Blackwater to go into Iraq, the buildup of a ground war in Afghanistan, new ‘clearer coal’ and nuclear energy (ha!), and continued attacks against immigrants.

thefreeslave (who was writing before the results came in) had this to say:

I don’t believe in this system and I don’t believe in confronting it with lies and illusions about itself, treating the people as the ignorant rabble that they are. On the other hand, a black president is BIG. To see a black man of some intelligence and charm who is clearly “presidential” cannot help but move a soul bred in this racial pressure cooker. But my conscience won’t allow me to lounge in a placebo hot tub for long.

No, if you, like me, want REAL change, you speak up not down to the people. You raise them up to your level (if they happen to be less conscious); you don’t leave whole swaths of reality off the table in order to appeal to their tender retardation. People know what they deny in their marrow, despite their crossed eyes and arms. Denying them the opportunity to engage with the elephant in the room that we all tiptoe around only prolongs the rampage. You can’t break the cycle if you don’t claim, draw and paint the elephant, admit its existence, tell where and how it crushes you, where it punctures the skin with its tusk and bleeds you. What kind of change can occur when you don’t tell the doctor where it hurts?

Sunera Thobeni asks: is Obama Change the World Can Believe In?

Senator Obama seems resolved to end the Iraq war quickly. But it appears that he plans to escalate the Afghan war by sending in more American troops. This has the makings of a disaster that could well bog down his Administration in a quagmire.

American, British and Canadian forces have been unable to provide security to Afghans, or stabilize the Karzai regime. Anger is mounting in that country at the ongoing occupation. As a number of top military commanders, including the British Commander, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, have acknowledged, the Afghan war is militarily un-winnable. The only exit strategy is negotiation with the Taliban for a political solution. The sooner the Obama Administration does this, the quicker the mounting of casualties can be stopped.

Another Obama priority should be the immediate closure of Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and all the secret prisons that the U.S. has set up around the world. The Abu-Ghraib photographs, the graphic testimonies of Moazzam Begg and other British detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, as well as that of the young Canadian, Omar Khadr, all confirm a seemingly cavalier use of torture at these prisons.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore says:

I’m sobbing because so many people have such high hopes for an Obama presidency and I can see him shredding those hopes one by one until we’re left with nothing but the shredder. It’s tempting to say that an Obama presidency has to be dramatically better than a McCain presidency, but then I remember the last Democrat to replace a Bush, the charming saxophone player who succeeded in Reaganite dreams of dismantling welfare, expanding the security state, and grandiose “free trade” agreements like NAFTA that further trashed environmental standards, job security and standards of living.

We don’t have to look far to see the ways in which Obama will betray us. After all, it’s only been days since he shepherded the trillion-dollar Wall Street giveaway by actively campaigning for its passage and securing enough Democrats in favor to override free-market Republicans who were staunchly opposed.

Bert Garskof sees an opportunity to build a more participatory democracy:

I was happy as someone to the left of the Democratic Party to join the Obama campaign. We needed to do the hard work of electoral organizing alongside the thousands of Obama volunteers. A progressive government was desperately needed to moderate the worst excesses of late capitalism and they knew it. Obama touched millions of people, especially young people who were
dissatisfied w/o (mostly) being political, and even fewer being consciously leftist in any way.

I think that these Obama volunteers could become the base of a mass ongoing movement that lives on after Obama wins, a movement that would be in place to give the Obama Administration direct, on-going, immediate information from the base up and hear what Obama thinks from the Government down.

And, last but not least, Ran Prieur says:

…we should be excited that we elected a black president, a smart president, a calm and non-ideological president. We can be cautiously optimistic about what the government might do, and what we might do through it, in the next few years. And we can be relieved that we’re not going to get a civil war right away. But it’s a mistake to see Obama’s win as a sign of a deep or permanent change in American consciousness. The Democratic party is still pretty far to the right on corporate rule and foreign policy, and their gain in congress is well within the usual swing of the pendulum. If we do get a deep and permanent change in American consciousness, it will be driven by the economic collapse, and I hope that it’s not driven by a charismatic leader, because we might not be so lucky with the next one….

…This is not the dawning of a new era. The correct emotion is not elation but relief. We put out a fire, and there are more coming.

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