Posts Tagged ‘Barack Obama’

After the champagne, the hangover

November 9th, 2008

Chicago

If you’ve been exercised by the trivial matter as to why U.S. president elect Barack Obama hasn’t yet called Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, then you don’t need google to find the answer. A number of explanations present themselves. That the Indian Prime Minister is away on an official visit, explains what Indians perceive as Obama’s tardiness, though not fully.

Obama found the time to call 15 other heads of state at the end of last week, including Pakistan’s Asif Zardari, which led Pakstan’s Daily Times to gloat about the U.S’s “no lift” stance towards India. It was pointed out, of course, that the countries Obama dialed were all “known U.S. allies” and that India, by inference, is not.

A better explanation is that Obama has just been swamped with work. The task ahead is enormous, and Obama was in a huddle with his transition team over the weekend to first make the key personnel decisions. There are hundreds of positions to be filled under the new regime, from Cabinet posts to the appointment of U.S attorneys in all states. Work on policy begins only after getting somewhere with settling these.

And when getting down to policy, his first three priorities are likely to be: economy, economy, economy. Telephone calls to India will probably be made only in case he’s having trouble with his bank account.

After a campaign full of prophecies and promises, it now comes down to priorities. Since Obama begins at minus $700 billion thanks to the bailout for financial institutions, there’s already a debate on whether to postpone meeting the (expensive) commitments he made on energy independence, healthcare, climate change and education, till after a plan for the economy is put in place.

With a middle-class that’s hurting, and a business community that suspects deep down that there is a small chance that the man could be the socialist the McCain campaign made him out to be, taxes will be very high on the agenda, however.

This isn’t the best news for India. At a time when at least a hundred thousand people are losing their jobs every month, Obama’s repeated promise of tax breaks to businesses that keep jobs in the U.S. would be a popular measure. Less off-shoring has obvious repercussions for India.

How soon such a measure will come into force, and to what extent, will decide how much Indian BPOs will suffer, but suffer they will.

The world, and India, probably celebrated Obama’s election after viewing it purely through a foreign policy prism. On that score too, India has a bit to think about.

The outline of Obama’s foreign policy can be found in a report published last year by a group of democrats called the Phoenix Initiative. Susan Rice, who is tipped to be Obama’s secretary of state, was part of this group. In brief, the report said that governments could not handle things like counter-terrorism and nuclear proliferation on their own and envisioned an interconnected world where (presumably) America held most of the “diffuse power”.

Obama has echoed that in speeches: “the threats we face.. can no longer be contained by borders and boundaries”, he said in his first major foreign policy speech last year. The threats are global, and need a global response.

In effect, this means, as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman puts it, “show us the money”. Obama’s America will expect nations to contribute in tangible terms (”money, police, aid workers, troops, diplomatic support”) to its efforts at making the world a “freer” and better place.

Till the time that Obama talks about winding down the war in Iraq, that seems alright. But what happens when he shifts the theatre to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to “crush Al Qaeda and kill Bin Laden” as he has said he will? Perhaps he will call Zardari to let him know that he should stand clear of dropping bombs. And then make the call to Delhi for support.

What happens to our already rough neighbourhood then?

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Meeting President Obama For The First Time

November 5th, 2008

Chicago

Just as promised, the world changed on Tuesday night. Barack Hussein Obama became president elect of the United States. Less than two years ago, he had the wrong middle name for the job, he was of the wrong colour, and recently, it was pointed out, he had the wrong associates.

On Tuesday night, however, he was undoubtedly the right man. America voted for its first black president in a way so unequivocal that the world celebrated as it watched him ascend the stage in Grant Park, at the heart of Chicago, to accept his prize.

On Michigan Avenue, at the entrance of the park, they lined up from the morning. Those with tickets to one side, looking slightly privileged, with deck chairs laid out on the street and sunglasses. Those without tickets, to the other with placards begging to be taken in as a ticket-holders guest since they were from Seattle.

On a November day so perfect that many were reading it as “a sign”, whether they had tickets or not, there were picnics to be had while waiting on the sidewalk. Crabby babies to be fed. T-shirts, and new age ‘high definition’ Obama buttons to be bought. The buttons were just like regular ones, except they were like Obama’s message in a way: sharper, clearer (and dearer).

Evening fell and the barricaded gates of Grant Park opened to let about a quarter of a million people in, others watched from behind the tinted glass of insulated condos or hotels. Everyone straining to find out from the big screen or a neighbour whether Ohio had been carried or if Florida had failed them. Within three hours of the gates opening at 8, it was over, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Pennyslvania, Obama had prevailed everywhere. The TV stations announced the winner.

People held their heads in disbelief. The audience, even those without the celebrity or the additional tear glands that Oprah Winfrey possesses, cried, hugged and whooped. The last, did not stop for hours after Barack had come, seen and conquered (yet again). Tears rolled down Jesse Jackson’s face. Jackson had wanted to be president once as well, but he couldn’t get the democratic nomination because the wisdom of the time was that whites wouldn’t vote for a black man.

Twenty years since that bid, Obama was delivering his victory speech, glorying in America’s colour-blindness. It came just after McCain made his classy concession. If Obama placed the credit of victory at the feet of the electorate, McCain said the burden of loss was his and no one else’s to bear. For a brief while, the power of the old man’s words, spoken from a lectern in Arizona to an audience that was in despair, quietened the crowd in Grant Park.

And then, Obama appeared. Presidential, even when his wife whispered ‘love you’ in his ear, he spoke with an awareness of both the scale and the nature of the event he was at the centre of: “This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations… he said, going into an anecdote about 106-year old black woman who had stood in line to vote for him. “Tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America — the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.”

He’d pressed the button. That creed, or variants like ‘yes we did’, kept resonating through the streets of Chicago. Interspersed with cathartic whoops (that were composed of joy and bewilderment, though you couldn’t tell in what proportion) from wave upon wave of supporters. It was no point trying to speak out a solicitation, so the figure crouched on the pavement across the park merely held a placard: “I’m just hungry and homeless.”

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Tomorrow has come

November 4th, 2008

Chicago

By the time you read this, the world would have changed. The last stretch of that process is on right now, as a record number of Americans line up to vote on Tuesday. They don’t want history to pass them by–again–so two third of those eligible are expected to turn up, the highest turnout since 1908.

As I write this a block away from Grant Park, where an Obama victory rally is planned in about 12 hours, Barack himself is voting, accompanied by his wife Michelle in a Chicago booth. This is a live event on all major news channels.

He had just one word for his audience at his last campaign rally in Manassas, Virginia late on Monday night: “Tomorrow.”

Tomorrow has come. He appears cool, smiling, talking to Michelle and his daughters, on a day his grandmother Madelyn Dunham (the woman who “poured everything she had” into Obama) would have loved to have seen. She died at 86 on Monday.

He was very close to her, but in an understated way, he’s moved on. He takes an incredibly long time to fill up the ballot. If everyone takes this long (about 10 minutes at the very least) then a lot of people will be left standing.

Joe Biden, who the democratic campaign made sure would vote in Delaware right after the Obamas finished in Chicago–just as a bit of airtime freed up–got the job done real quick. For those standing in queues in precincts around the country, this is more like it. Some of them came to vote as early as 5.30 in the morning–spending an acceptable hour and a half to complete voting. Already, there have been as many as 11,000 complaints of overcrowding and machine malfuctions, a notable complaint came in from veteran journalist Barbara Walters.

The polls all have Obama ahead: solid leads beyond margins of error that will lead to a resounding victory that no one thought was possible as he entered the race for the democratic nomination so many months ago.

He outlasted the Clintons. He also outspent them–which tells you what a strong idea he was selling. “Not a red America or a blue America, but a United States of America.” To the youth, on whom so much will depend today, he was the one they were waiting for.

When stood up to give speeches, he seemed to read poetry. When he sat down to listen–to opponents in a debate, for instance–he looked like a languid jazz musician who’s set his instrument down briefly, but is ready to pick it up and answer by hitting notes so precise they would have to be mathematical.

The economic crisis helped his cause. People became colourblind as their savings got wiped out and their houses foreclosed, they just wanted the right man for the job. Even by elimination, John McCain wasn’t the man: he blundered through the height of the crisis, at one point suspending his campaign to go to Washington.

This was inexplicable, because he said absolutely nothing there, and did even less. He also ensured that he hollowed out the experience argument against Obama by choosing Sarah Palin, who fumbled through the campaign like a B-list impostor trying to play vice-presidential candidate.

As if to confirm this (widely-held) view she told a reporter who asked her who she had voted for as she left a booth in Wassilla, Alaska, that she was excercising her right to privacy by keeping that information confidential.

That she may, perhaps by an act of God, still get to the White House is gives people the shivers even though halloween is over. It is much more likely that she will go back to shooting poor Alaskan animals from the air, in time to hoard meat for the winter, forcing the joke writers for the networks to go into hibernation.

This might change the world for the better. But there are far more profound changes in the offing. Should Obama get elected, the signal that the United States sends out to the world is that it has genuinely transformed. That it is not in denial about the financially destructive, militarily senseless and gravely injurious addiction of the Bush years, and is ready for rehab.

A large number of Americans don’t like the selfish, arrogant, consumptive, overweight–and now poor–person they see in the mirror the world holds up to them. They view this election as a chance to correct that.

Grant Park is getting ready. There’s an unprecedented number of cop cars. There are ribbons of roadblocks across orange stumps everywhere. Some say a million people will turn up. But it seems quiet in the morning, unless you listen hard to the sounds of the Chicago. The anthem of the election is playing out as traffic rolls down the streets and voters march to their booths, keeping time to ‘Yes we can, yes we can.’

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A ‘Front Row Seat To Witness History’ Contest

November 3rd, 2008

Chicago

I’ve been getting urgent mails from Barack Obama over the last few days. Me, and a couple of million other people, inviting us to join him at a rally in Chicago’s Grant Park on election night. National polls–even including the one conducted by Fox News–show Obama ahead by about 6 points overall and in unexpectedly opportune positions in States like Ohio, Virginina and Indiana. The rally has a victory theme to it–at the moment.

But there’s more to the mails than that. Obama’s ’signed’ mail a couple of days ago, was what you might call an initial offer: “This election will come down to what we do — or don’t do — in the next few days” he told me.

“John McCain and the Republican National Committee had $20 million more in the bank than our campaign and the DNC combined as of October 15th. They are pouring it into crucial battleground states, and we’re facing an onslaught of negative attacks.

“Your support will have a huge impact.

“Step up during this historic moment, and you could be there on Election Night.

“Will you donate $30 or more today?

As a bonus, we’ll send you a special edition Change the World T-shirt.”

$30 for a T-shirt? A second, improved, offer comes in, this time from Marianne Markowitz, Chief Financial Officer, Obama for America:

“This weekend the McCain campaign said they would outspend us by $10 million in the final days. This is on top of recent news that, as of October 15th, our opponents had $20 million more in the bank than our campaign and the DNC combined.

“We knew the McCain campaign was saving its resources for a last-minute blitz, and now we know just how much they’ll pour into it.

“No matter what, we need to match what our opponents are spending in the final stretch. We can’t slow down between now and Election Day.

“If you give today — any amount — you could be one of 5 first-time donors who will have a front row seat for the big Election Night event in Chicago with Barack.

“If you’re selected, we’ll fly you and a guest in and put you up in a hotel. You’ll go backstage at the big event and — no matter what happens — you’ll have a front row seat to history as we celebrate the supporters who got us over the finish line.”
Campaign manager David Plouffe, weighs in as well. But he doesn’t raise the offer any further.

The candidates have managed to make this the most well-funded campaign in history–well over a billion dollars have been spent already and–and in the final days it looks like they’re hosing the country down with dollar bills.

Obama, not limited to depending on party funding for his campaign (unlike McCain) had raised $640 million by mid-October. A quarter of this money coming from small donors with the allurement of a T-shirt or a front row rally seat, or, (why be cycnical) a promise of change.

There is no greater endorsement for a product than the fact that it sells $640 million worth. Also remember that the other three-fourths of Obama’s money is actually coming in from large donors/businesses. This is happening at a time when the mere mention of the phrase ‘distribution of wealth’ freaks people out.

But as people count down the hours to November 4, the Obama campaign is still counting its money. It’s never too late to get that extra $5. Besides, the ‘First time donor front row contest’ has added costs.

There’s a flight ticket, a hotel (they did not to mention a type, but let’s just assume it’ll be Motel Change, or similar.) And then there is expectation management: what if Motel Change is one of those common shower set ups with bugs between the sheets and no HBO?

You’ve been promised they’ll swap your room–even change the hotel. What you may not have been told is that it might take a few years.

Latest National Poll round-up:
Gallup: 51 Obama, 43 McCain. Up from 49-47 last week
Rasmussen daily tracking: 51 Obama, 46 McCain.
CBS: 54 Obama, 41 McCain.
CNN: 53 Obama, 46 McCain.
Fox News: Obama 47, McCain 44.

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American Images

November 1st, 2008

Dateline: Dinosaur, Colorado
The streets of Dinosaur
Town beautification, Dinosaur

A coffee menu, Dinosaur
Dinosaur by night
Freshly killed deer, Dinosaur CO

A close up of a dead deer
More deaths in Craig CO
Vail, a ski town in Colorado

Nobama in Rifle, Colorado
Nobama in Rifle, where they're "Raising McCain"
Harper's point, confluence of the Gree and Yama Rivers

The things people do for a living, promoting Crash TV in Denver
Happy to crash?

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Under suspicion in 9/11 school

November 1st, 2008

Sarasota, Florida

“We are what is called a school in need of improvement”, says Ms Marya Fairchild assistant principal of Emma E Booker Elementary in Sarasota, Florida, scene of a once famous video featuring George W. Bush.

This is where, on September 11, 2001, the president got the news that commercial planes had been flown into the Twin Towers. He was, as some people might recall, listening to second graders reading ‘My pet goat’ at the time. (There is controversy over whether he had his own copy of the book upside down, but let’s not digress.)

In the minutes before he heard the attacks had taken place, President Bush, heard the words “get ready” repeated over a dozen times. But it wasn’t Dick Cheney speaking into his earpiece it was a, teacher orchestrating a performance as the President promoted his recent ‘No Child Left Behind’ (NCLB) legislation.

Seven years on, it turns out that not just one child, the whole school has been ‘left behind’.

Booker Elementary remains a ‘C’ school, whereas every other school in the county is rated A. “Think of it like a trajectory”, says Fairchild, “we’re not on the path to meet requirements.”

How can it? It is a ‘neighbourhood’ school in the town’s roughest neigbourhood. “If you were to pull out a demographic report by this zip code, my guess is that this area would have the highest crime rate in Sarasota”, says Fairchild.

The school has 537 kids, 94% of them are from the (mostly black) minorities and 91% live below the poverty line. To get to it, you pass places that sell soulfood on the outside and drugs on the inside. You cross shacks and shanties and bums and cats. And, of course, a railway line. This is where most of Emma Booker kids live.

Here, you can find every reason why the Republicans trail in Florida. People are wary of four more years of the same. A lot of them blame the war for everything. For instance, couldn’t the poorly funded ‘no child left behind’ program benefit greatly from a fraction of the $10 billion monthly war bill?

Ms Fairchild taught history at the Booker middle school, to which a number of kids from the elementary school end up going, till 2005. I ask her whether she taught any of the kids who were there in the classroom when President Bush visited on September 11, 2001.

She says she doesn’t recall this having come up with any of her students. And then, quite suddenly, she doesn’t want to take any more questions. The interview is over. She tells me to get in touch with the school board for more information.

I step outside onto the parking lot and am in the middle of a call to Gary Leatherman at the board’s communications desk, when a police car pulls up next to me. It has been less than five minutes since I left the school building.

Deputy Perrin, from the Sheriff’s department asks me how I am doing–and what I am doing. He then tells me the reason why he asks: “Someone called saying a guy was roaming around the campus–with a bag.”

This is true. I tell him I have just been inside and spoken to the assistant principal. He says he’d better go and check.

A few minutes later, he finds me again at the head of the road. As he pulls up, another cop car arrives. Deputy Scott has been sent over as well. Perrin asks for my passport and is diligently entering its details onto the computer in his car. He tells Scott that I was asking about 911.

For a brief moment I don’t hear that right, I am about to say that I didn’t call 911 (the emergency number) when I realise that someone from the school did. Fantastic.

Scott, to me: “You don’t have any weapons or anything, do you?”

I laugh, somewhat nervously, and say: “Certainly not.”

Scott to Perrin: “You patted him down yet?”

As Perrin keeps working with my passport, Scott starts another round of questioning. Knowing that anything I might say may be held against me, I tell him the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I was there because George W. Bush was in one of the classrooms on the campus on September 11 2001, I say.

Scott’s badge said he’d served the department since 1994. He goes: “Oh, I was there that day. Spent anxious hours, traffic blocked all over the city. The president could have been a target. We had to get him out of here.”

I was thinking, well, the President was probably safest around here. The guys who executed 9/11 had been based closeby a few months ago, learning how to fly in flight schools in nearby Venice, but they’d reportedly left by August. On 9/11, President Bush was safer at Booker Elementary than he would have been at the White House, which was a definite target.

Deputy Perrin finally completed the data entry and said that his colleague required a photograph of me. I was, of course, the picture of cooperation. So right below the sign that said Booker Elementary, I posed for the snap.

I called a cab after the shoot was over and my passport was safely in my bag. Deputy Scott then asked me where I was headed next. I told him that I was bound for Orlando, then on to Alexadndria, Virginia, on to Toledo Ohio, to Chicago, Illinois, to Madison Wisconsin to parts of North Dakota…

“Man”, he said, “I wish I could travel like that. But I’m stuck here.” He is. On a patch across the street, till the time my cab arrives. Protecting the kids at Booker Elementary.

And I, with depressing visions of now being on a suspects’ database which says ‘must strip-search’ at every airport, head back to the familial warmth of the Sunshine Motel.

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Escaping from Sarah to Dinosaur, Colorado

October 25th, 2008

Dinosaur, Colorado.

Having heard that Sarah Palin was about to descend on Colorado after a week of poor ratings for the McCain Palin ticket, I decided I needed to run to a place where she would definitely not find me. Looking at the perfect rectangle that is Colorado, I chose the top left hand corner: a town called Dinosaur. (No, it is not named after John McCain.)

This town actually exists, I am serious. You can even have a ‘Cappasaurus’ (this town’s version of cappuccino) at the Bedrock Cafe on Brontosaurus boulevard. And one of the town’s 319 people should be there at the ‘welcome centre’ at the corner of Bronto and Stego to tell you about the attractions.

Local literature tells you that Dinosaur is an “excellent central location”. Right, as central as the middle of nowhere. This is why when they needed a mayor recently, they advertised the position in a paper in Grand Junction, which is four hours away. And why they stopped the bus service to here (from anywhere) about 10 years ago.

But with a little enterprise you can go down to nearby Vernal to look at dinosaur fossil bones found in the area; or visit the dinosaur national monument, a few miles east, where hidden in the folds of the Rockies is a magnificent canyon at the confluence of the Green and Yampa rivers.

What you cannot do, is escape Sarah Palin. I have chosen an unfortunate date for my attempted escape: her constituents are all over the place. Not because she’s in the area–but because it’s the beginning of the hunting season.

Their pick-up trucks whizz along Highway 40, the hoofs of some unfortunate elk or deer sticking out. At the gas stations or at drive by restaurants there’s the smell of coagulated blood. Big signs say: ‘Hunters welcome.’

A chunk of Colorado’s votes will be decided on who’s the better president for hunters, and they could be critical because it is a solidly republican state lurching leftwards.\

But here in Dinosaur, this is a no-contest, of course. It is a an area where the McCain-Palin ticket has all the experience, judgment and whatever ammunition is required. Palin likes shooting bears and wolves–specially from helicopters.

Two young men pull their truck into the lot of the Terrace Motel. A pair of beautiful horns stick out from the back of the truck and when it swings around you can see the animal. It’s blood, almost warm, leaching through its slashed stomach onto the floor.

The boys jump off beaming. Their names are Landon and Josh, from Craig (the elk-hunting capital of the world, a few hours east of Dinosaur). Landon’s the one who ‘got him’.

“We couldn’t find any elk, so we started coming down and we saw about 15 bucks. So we jumped out and shot him…(with his Roberts 257 at 250 yards).

“I shot him in the shoulder. He started moving, and we got up on a little cliff and we saw him lay down and we couldn’t shoot him again… he was too far away. And then he ran off and we tracked him down some more for about two miles… he wouldn;t go down.. and then shot him in the spine. Then we went up on him and he was still alive so we shot him one more time thinking that he was going to die. Then I shot him in the neck.

“And then, that was pretty much about it.

Landon has what is called a “resident youth deer tag”, which authorises a ‘discount hunt’ if you will. For $10.75, instead of the regular $45, you get to hunt a deer a season. The blue tag is now around the buck’s left ear. Josh, his hands blood-stained from hauling the thing, plays with it, and then turns his attention to fiddling around with the dead animals mouth, prizing it open with his fingers as if checking its dental health.

The meat, they will eat: about 75 pounds of steaks and burgers that should last the winter. Not bad for less than 11 bucks.

After severing the head (’just about there’ says Josh, pointing to the base of the neck) they will boil the skull and mount it. The fur will be given away to make rugs. The bones (’they’re no good”) will be thrown away.

Oh yes, one other thing, towns like Craig and Dinosaur will vote McCain-Palin. They think that the deer and elk population is getting out of hand, causing road accidents; they enjoy their cheap meat. They are patriotic Americans who love the legal, justifiable use of guns. (I am merely talking about hunting, not the war in Iraq). The candidates agree.

The buck is now driven off to the processing plant, perhaps in Maybell. Its wounds are drying up in the Colorado sun–it can’t feel them anyway. On its ear, is the fatal blue bling accessory of season. It’s eyes are open, though.

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Finding Obama on the mountain where the Ku Klux Klan was born …

October 19th, 2008
Stone Mountain, Georgia

Stone Mountain, Georgia

Stone Mountain, Georgia

As you take the cable car up to the top of Stone Mountain, Georgia, they tell you all about the rock’s volcanic origins. That it took about 120 million years to take the shape we see it now; that it is 825 feet tall and a 5-mile walk around the base. That a variety of lichens and mosses grow on the top of this apparently bald heap of granite, quartz, feldspar and mica. And that the massive carving on the side–of confederate heroes, who lost the civil war–took 60 years to complete.

What they don’t tell you, is that America saw its last recorded lynching 11 years after that, in 1981. Or that it was on top of this mountain that the Ku Klux Klan was reborn– what better place for a carving to honour those who fought for the right to own slaves?

What they also don’t tell you is that in the goose-bump inducing crescendo of Martin Luther King’s 1963 ‘I have a dream’ speech, he wanted ‘freedom to ring from Stone Mountain, Georgia’.

The View from Stone Mountain

The View from Stone Mountain

Stone Mountain park seems to offer lots of freedom and “some of the best facilities for hiking, golf tennis and biking in America”, according to park announcements. It is a place where families go to picnic and children go on excursions to marvel at the sight of the huge rock carving: a six foot man can fit inside the mouth of Robert. E. Lee’s horse. Wow.

Lee, Jefferson Davis (the president of the confederate states) and Stonewall Jackson, are considered heroes in the South, for their valiance during the American civil war. They lost, but some of the values (specifically, white supremacy) they fought for, survived for generations to come–and do so even now. Barack Obama still refers to places ‘where the confederate flag still flies’.

Stone Mountain is one of those places. In 1915, a man called William J. Simmons led a meeting on top of the mountain which saw the birth of the 20th century Klan. Shortly thereafter, the lynchings began.

Brian Bowers, 41 and black, says everyone knows what it stands for but no one talks about it: “In the actual town of Stone Mountain (closeby), there’s a city square, and every year the KKK have a march down city square.

“They still have that march?” I ask.

“Yeah. Every year. I don’t know if they do it under the name of KKK, but I know that’s who’s doing it. Because they have their confederate flags and everything. It still happens. Every year.” Then he shrugs his shoulders and says: “It’s freedom of speech, I guess”.

This is exactly the kind of place that black America looks back at to measure how far they have come in their journey towards King’s dream: “a dream deeply rooted in the American Dream.”

Mobile, Alabama, where Michael Donald a 19 year-old black was killed and hung from a tree by the KKK (in its signature style) in 1981, is another. That incident led to the prosecution and eventual bankruptcy of the United Klans of America: they had to surrender all their assets, including their headquarters in Tuscaloosa, Alabama to pay the $7 million awarded to Donald’s mother.

A quarter of a century has passed since those events, and it is fair to say that Ameirca has moved on. The Klan still exists, and reportedly has about 5,000 members who have now turned their hatred towards immigration and gay marriage. But lynchings by a hooded mob carrying flaming crosses are almost inconceivable, thankfully.

But just pure racism? Bowers and I talk on the train towards downtown Atlanta — whose outline you can see if you look west from the top of Stone Mountain. A majority of the passengers are people of colour.

“Our values are so screwed up…”, he says. “Let me give you an example that really bothered me. When Palin got nominated, her daughter’s pregnant, and she’s 17 years old. Let’s flip that around, let’s say that that was Barack Obama’s 17-year-old daughter. An African American girl pregnant, can you imagine the fallout? Can you imagine what would have been said about her?

“Our values are buried in so much hatred… This is not a free country. It’s not.”

We arrive at our destination, Five Points station as he leaves me with the thought that black America has still some distance to go before a “more perfect union”. Obama’s election will be a huge leap.

On Forsythe Street, dusk’s shift is just about ending. You can tell: the guy selling coke cans is winding up, the crack cocaine dealers are out.

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Looking for change in Chicago

October 15th, 2008

Chicago, Illinois

I haven’t made an appointment with him. But I meet him on the corner of Rush and Oake Streets in downtown Chicago because he’s seeking change. I get straight to the point.

“So who’s it going to be, man?”

“You mean, for Prezeedent?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, Obama, man. Obama. Do you have some change?”

There is that distinctive sound of metal-on-coffee cup-on-metal that you will only find in the disposable begging bowls of the West, as he shakes his chalice of change. And then, to someone else, he says: “Don’t be sad man.”

I have just got out of a jazz bar called the Back Room. (Don’t be fooled by the name. Not much politics here, just a cover charge and the ‘J.W. Williams Blues Band’–with ‘Patricia Scott’, but we missed her–playing stuff like ‘It’s a wonderful world.’)

“Don’t be sad, man”, says my man, smiling from his wheelchair, his folded jeans, thighs downward, swinging ever so slightly in the light autumn breeze, grazing the top of his footrest. There are no feet on it.

A man, a black man, in a good suit–the kind you saw on TV perhaps, walking out of Lehmann Brothers carrying a cardboard box a week or so ago, that kind of suit, but unattached to a box–strides by. He is forced, much the way many others are, to stop and stick out a fist. It doesn’t open to pour out change. It just meets the one that’s pointed in his direction from the wheelchair in polite acknowledgement.

I begin to think about the fuss that was created after just such a handshake a few months ago, when the fists that met belonged to Barack and Michelle Obama. I think this because the well-heeled black man reminds me of Obama.

He is made to look even better by the fact that he has the gait of a middle-weight boxer (most other men on Rush and Oake this midnight are oscillating between light swaying and staggering). The few words he says to my man, he says clearly. This is more than can be said of several people who articulate a response to “Don’t be sad, man.”

Even though the man in the suit didn’t offer any change, I ask my man if he reminded him of the future prezeedent.

“Who, that guy? No, man he’s two shades darker than me. And I’m ’bout three shades darker that Obama. Know what um sayin’?”

It was either the street lights, or it was just me. But I told him I didn’t understand: just on the basis of empirical evidence. I saw the man in the suit; I could see him in his wheelchair; and I had watched Barack Obama without adjusting my television set.

“He’s not so black. Know what um sayin’?”

Now if I got that right, what he meant was that his vote would go to a white black guy (visions of Michael Jackson invaded my already addled brain). I felt sorry for Obama. I mean, here’s a guy trying his damndest to knock a country semi-conscious about race and colour, and this is what he gets? Being called whitey by the brothers? But what the hell, he’s ahead in the polls so something must be working.

I change the subject to my man’s personal situation.

“Lost ma legs 31 years ago. Shootout, yesssir. Got 16 bullets in me. (Here, just to back this claim, he lifted his Tommy Hilfiger t-shirt to expose enough craters on his stomach and back for me to be embarrassed into saying: “I believe, you.”)

I ask what happened to the shooter: “Oh, he’d dead.”

“But I like to give back, you know what um saying… ‘How’ your night been baby, dont be sad (some change gets into the coffee cup)…’ know what um saying.

I do volunteer work with people who are in bad situations. At the hospital. (And now, he invents a beautiful word). I mean my situation was ‘uncopable’ man. I tell them, if I can make it…

More possible donors come our way…

‘How’ you’re night been baby? Had a good time? Don’t be sad…

And give it a pass…

‘Know what um sayin’?

“If you’ve coped, then why do you sit here every night? I ask. (I cannot get myself to be more direct: as in, so why are you begging?)

But he seems to know what I meant to ask. “I try and make people feel good, man. And get

some of their change–if possible. Heh, heh. Anything’s possible, know what um sayin’?

His soliciting style isn’t that different from Obama’s, actually. It differs only in the details. At a base level, both these guys try and make you feel good–and make a living off it. After that, one takes the styrofoam route and goes solo, with relatively low expectations. The other takes the internet way, with an army of faithfuls, and a set expected minimum.

I just got one of these in my mailbox a few days after I met my man.

avirook –

I’ve never asked you to make a donation before.

But I’m about to make some major decisions about deploying field staff and volunteers to key battleground states.

The resources we have on hand going into October will directly impact our voter registration and Get Out The Vote operations. And now that early voting has begun in eight states — including Ohio as of today — we need to move as quickly as possible.

Please donate $5 or more before the deadline to help register voters, get out the vote, and win this election.

We’re stretching every dollar and doing everything we can with what we have. But every day I see firsthand how much more we could do — and how far your donation will go.

Thanks for your support,

Jon

Jon Carson

National Field Director

Obama for America.

Everyone’s seeking change. Know what um sayin’?

A drunk white bum walks up, and without bothering anyone else, asks my man for an alm. He gets a cigarette still good for at least three puffs. He likes to give back, my man.

“But I got to sit here, man. I get $562 from welfare. I stay round here at the YMCA, that’s $390 in rent. Know what um sayin’?

‘But what changes for you if Obama is elected?’

Issues, I mean healthcare, man. Like right now, I could go to any of the fine hospitals in Chicago and they’d see me and all, but they wont admit me. Cos I dont have proper insurance.”

My man, and about 47 million people in the States have this in common: they can be diagnosed, but not treated in a hospital, because they don’t have insurance and 8.6 million are recent inductees to this unfortunate club. The Bush administration accounted for them.

Yes, universal healthcare is one of Obama’s issues. In theory, if you are an American citizen you will get treated no matter what under President Obama. I was about to ask my man what convinced him (beyond Barack’s oratory) that this would indeed happen, but he was gone.

I turned and saw a stationary cop car and an outbound wheelchair at top speed. The officer had evidently told my man that he should seek his change elsewhere in Chicago, if at all. And definitely not around the Magnificent Mile.

Here, on cool autumn evenings you don’t need to be told, ‘Don’t feel sad’. You can hear them sing ‘It’s a wonderful world’ instead. That should be good enough.

Know what um saying’?

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Wear a smilette, happy days are ahead… but when?

October 8th, 2008

Roanoke, Texas

There’s an uncanny similarity between the great depression and the present crisis, not just in the events but in Washington’s response. The republican president at the time, Herbert Hoover woke up late, as did the American people. They bought his line of ‘a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage’ (now they’re talking cycles!), electing him in 1928 only to quickly turn him into a universal hate figure (like Dubya, in the current polls).

But republicans carried on gamely at that time, trying to spread a message of hope and exhorting people to take responsibility. Much the way Sarah Palin did in the vice-presidential debate–even though she seems to know as much about the economy as she does about Alaska-Russia relations.

One of the better ripostes to this ‘hope; spend within your means’ line, appeared in a 1930s cartoon which said that prosperity was around the corner and if you cannot afford a smile, if you should wear a ’smilette’. This is precisely what kitchen table republicans are now advocating, though we are short of a good cartoon in response.

I met someone who lost his job last month. He would have been okay about wearing a ’smilette’. I suspect the disincentive is that if you wore it too long, you’d end up looking like a stewardess on a micro-light aircraft.

The ‘new direction’ that Washington is talking about has a word in common with FDR’s 1932 ‘new deal’ in the literal sense, but really, the steps being proposed are very much like the ones in the 30s. At a fundamental level will take taxpayers’ money. This is difficult to sell, politically, which is why the first attempt at getting the bill passed in the Congress failed.

FDR’s plans kicked in when unemployment was breaking America’s back and included things like soup kitchens, and (generally non-productive) government employment schemes. But he also set up the Home Owners Loan Corporation which lent money to about a million possible defaulters. This is very much on the table now, because apart from the from all the foreclosures, there are between 6 and 10 million people who have an incentive to walk away from their mortgage payments.

The most important response common to that time and now, however, is more regulation. The Securities Exchange Commission was set up in 1934 to prevent a repeat of 1929. One of the main changes it made was to stop margin buying. If you wanted a stock, you had to show about half the money.

In the present scenario, the financial markets will have to say goodbye to many of its unsupervised activities. The first in line will probably be the clandestine, and catastrophic, credit swaps (I lend you money, and then insure myself against a default with a third person, because i know you cannot repay; if, as i expect, you don’t pay me, he has to. this was the baby AIG was left holding.)

Regulation has been a bad word in America for the longest time, and the changes in the offing are likely to be profound: there’s a realisation that America has been a little too free and much too brave for its own good. Republican or democrat, this translates to ‘we always sort of knew that the market couldn’t take care of all our problems, but now we’re willing to admit it and do something about it’.

Deeper down, the crisis doesn’t just affect main street, or John McCain road. During the Great Depression, it entered people’s homes. in 1940, 14 years after the realty bubble burst in Florida and and pinged America into a downward spiral, a survey found that 1.5 million jobless, depressed, American men had abandoned their families.

The first reports of marriages breaking up over who’ll pay the mortgage bill are already coming in this year.

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