I’ve personally been involved with many statewide electoral campaigns in California throughout my life. In the 1990s I played a leadership role in the statewide effort to create a high-quality Canadian-style health care system that was affordable for everyone. I fought the anti-immigrant, anti-affirmative action and anti-bilingual education initiatives that hit one right after the other. I mobilized people to increase the minimum wage. In high school, I fought the LaRouche initiative that sought to quarantine people with AIDS.
The other weekend, my friends Nilka and Katie hosted a wonderful house party. There was the usual amazing food (mostly vegan) and great company. The twist was that this gathering was organized in concert with The Progressive Project. The purpose -- to move people to action to get Obama elected U.S. President and to defeat the Prop 8 initiative that seeks to dismantle the freedom for same-sex couples to marry.
The other Saturday morning, I attended the No on 8 Campaign Kick-Off in San Francisco’s Castro District. Talk about organization! The whole point of it was to inspire people and then to sign them up immediately for phone-banking voters and recruiting volunteers. Butcher paper lined the walls with a number of volunteer shifts to be filled (10,000 total thru the end of the campaign) and I couldn’t leave without having at least 10 people stopping me telling me to sign up.
The politicos were there en masse to inspire the crowd. San Francisco Mayor Newsom, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, Supervisor and soon to be Assemlymember Tom Ammiano, Supervisor Bevan Dufty, Assemblymember Mark Leno, Assemblymember Fiona Ma, Treasurer Jose Cisneros, City Attorney Dennis Herrera. And the media was in full force.
But Supervisor Ammiano said something that struck me. He commented that at dinner tables across California and across the country, most people aren’t talking about same-sex marriage. They’re talking about the rising gas prices, the mortgage crisis and the foreclosure of homes, the overall fear and anxiety about the U.S. economy.
But nonetheless same-sex marriage remains a central issue to the LGBT community and to those who don’t believe in creating a separate and unequal America where some people have rights and others don’t. Obama himself pushes the point that we aren’t two Americas, but one United States of America.
Since Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004, Obama has achieved rock star status. He has inspired and moved youth to engage in the political process. His candidacy has placed the issue of race at the forefront of people’s minds and he openly talks about how he was inspired by the racial struggles of the 1960s. He emphasizes the importance of community organizing and building power from the bottom up as one of the key ways to affect change. He has utilized web 2.0 strategies and sought smaller donations from a mass base to build a thriving campaign.
Obama’s campaign embraces the strengths of a conventional political campaign (without engaging its ugly divisive ways) and is testing unconventional community organizing strategies on a nationwide level to create a winnable campaign that is unprecedented in this country.
What I liked about this weekend party I attended was the emphasis to work on strategic winnable campaigns AND, at the same time, look to create a longer-term vision. I liked that it linked two campaigns together based on a hope and vision of what kind of society we want to see and live in.
It’s fitting that these elections follow one of the best Olympics I’ve ever watched. Despite whatever one might think about China, the Olympics and the athletes who participated presented hope and possibility from all corners of the world. Who would’ve thought so many World Records would be broken? Who would’ve thought that Michael Phelps would win 8 gold medals?
U.S. politics is usually portrayed as a circus. I think these two campaigns could be likened to the Olympics. The race to November 4th represent, in their own ways, going for the gold for a generation of new activists and for communities seeking to realize a vision long held in our hearts.
Who would’ve thought that a person of color or a woman would be viable presidential candidates in the United States? Who would’ve thought that same-sex marriage would become legal in the largest state of this country?
Let’s hold on to the vision and not engage in divisive politics. Let’s know that, like Michael Phelps, anything is possible. Let the games begin!
