barack. obama.

Nov.5. I got out of bed at 6:45am and immediately hustled upstairs to the rooftop cafe of our hostel in Arusha. About forty of us huddled around the TV, sippin' chai and biting down on some toast. On the screen there were a lot of colors, a lot of numbers, a lot of talking. Obama was dominating. About ten minutes later, Wolf Blitzer stood and announced our new President-elect. I started crying and feeling these strong emotions in me I didn't even know were there. The global symbolism. My parents and their generation, who, based on decades of experience, expect the cadidate who inspires them to lose, or to be killed. Just to imagine Obama's face next to all those old white guys in the back of our history textbook it a revolutionary act in itself. I definitely hold my fair share of cynicism about the whole thing, but for now, I want to appreciate the significance of this moment. An oppressive worldwide gloom has begun to be lifted, and a new sense of hope is pouring in. Obama`s most powerful message is that it is not about him. It's about everyone else. It's about us. It's about all the people who've dedicated their lives to facilitating a more just world, because now they might - might - have some allies in power. We elected him to serve us by running the executive branch of our government, but we still gotta call the shots.

I'd like to quote an excerpt from a Nov. 7th Democracy Now interview...

"AMY GOODMAN: What happened in those first 100 days? In fact, Roosevelt wasn’t Roosevelt at the very beginning, the Roosevelt we know of the New Deal. It took tremendous pressure from within his cabinet. Of course, they were people he appointed. Adam Cohen, the editorial writer for the New York Times, has a very important book coming out on exactly what happened in those hundred days. But, Bob Kuttner, you also write about it—

ROBERT KUTTNER: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: —how people struggled within the administration, like Frances Perkins, Henry Wallace, who became his vice president, Harry Hopkins, the social worker, and how they beat out the more conservative forces.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, and they had two things on their side. They had reality on their side. If Roosevelt didn’t become bolder, he would have been Hoover all over again. They also had social movements. And if you look at the great presidents—Lincoln, Roosevelt, the Johnson of the civil rights, not the Johnson of Vietnam—you had the abolitionist movement, you had the industrial labor movement, you had, of course, the civil rights movement.

And I think there’s going to be a tug-of-war inside the administration. And the really interesting question is, what is going happen to the youth movement that became an Obama movement that I think needs to become its own movement for social change, not simply Obama groupies. And I think there’s a lot to celebrate, obviously, in the election of Obama, but we need a social movement to stand on its own two feet and push Obama when he needs to be pushed, the same way Dr. King in the civil rights movement pushed Johnson, the same way the abolitionists pushed Lincoln, the same way the labor movement pushed Roosevelt. And the great presidents actually pushed the social movements to put pressure on themselves so that they could break logjams in Congress. It’s a very interesting dynamic, the way social movements interact with presidents."