The Birth of a Community Activist

This morning I made calls at an Obama house call center just like I’ve done the past few days. All ages, colors, ethnic groups, people I’ve never seen before sitting on living rooms couches, patio chairs, kitchen benches hunched over their cell phones and scripts. It was such a moving, spirited feeling to be surrounded by others committed to the same efforts as me. The conversations swirling around me spurred me on. All of us calling because we knew this was the moment to take our country back.

I learned that our district has made the most calls in California and that California has made the most in the nation for Obama. I am so proud of my state. We are not a bunch of nuts that have rolled to the coast. We are proud Americans working for what we believe in, a country that will return to the principles of democracy and opportunity that I was taught in school.

My daughter is in college in Germany for her junior year. She sent an email saying the university is putting on lectures today and tomorrow about the American political system. Virtually everyone she meets is for Obama. The whole world is watching.

I’ve been glued to the TV as I work as best as I can on a day like no other. I write an email pitch as I click back and forth from CNN to MSNBC. At the last minute I remember to join a client conference call. I mute the set and watch during the call, checking Huffington Post as I take notes. We’ll start hearing some results soon because it's now after 6pm in the East and Wolf Blitzer says some polls in Indiana have closed. At MSNBC, 30 Rockefeller Plaza is partying like it’s the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Can two years of kitchen table politics really be ending?

The long lines and energy for this election makes me hope that we will all work to undo the damage of the last 8 years, really since 1980, and repair our economy, our healthcare system, and our environment. No matter what happens I know that the seeds of community activism have been sown. For me and for others I’ve spoken with at meetings and driving to Nevada, there’s no going back.

My high school daughter told me she was proud of my efforts. I'm proud of me for walking the walk, not just talking the talk. I decided we should stay home with her to watch all the returns instead of going to a neighborhood election party. And we’ll Skype her sister at midnight to celebrate.

We are the change, the infrastructure, the community we have been waiting for. I just can't believe it. Where are the tissues?

News Flash - Report from the Trenches

My uncle and aunt live in South Florida. You know, Sarah Silverman Country, the Big Schlep, bubbie and zayda land. They called to tell me they got the Obama bumper stickers I picked up for them in Nevada. Not that they couldn't get some in Florida. I just wanted to make sure I did my part for getting the word out to the altercockers (look it up on Wikipedia!)

So the news from the front is that the early voting lines are so long that my family couldn't get into the library just to pick up a few books. That's what my uncle told me. So where was my aunt? At Obama headquarters picking up a few buttons. And the stickers? Well my uncle is putting his on his scooter! Is that too cool?! He's going to whiz around the senior citizen complex, to the bank, to the market, canvassing for Obama.

2008 won't be a replay of 2000 if my family hasn't anything to say about it!

The Economy is Fundamentally Sound

Local furniture store, national brand, that opened about 1 year ago along a road that's been designated as a 'home furnishings' destination. About five miles or so from the Countrywide national headquarters.

I don't have to read the papers, online or off, to know which way the wind blows. I just take a little drive around the neighborhood.

But if you need more convincing, check out the front page of today's LA Times, just above the fold - Long, dark tunnel seen for California's economy.

Great Depression II

I just came back from back-to-school night for our daughter who’s a high school junior. She’s taking, among other subjects, AP English and AP History – the American versions of both.

She doesn’t know how lucky she is. To be reading about our great country during the difficult times we’re going through. Of course, she’s only 16 and she isn’t aware of the problems.

I thought if I told her about the financial market debacle this week I could guilt her into cleaning up her room and getting more organized for what should be a most difficult year but I was being selfish and stopped myself before I dumped the problems of the adults on the shoulders of a 16 year old.

But I did want to sit in on her classes for sure, especially if this time around I could bring to it the knowledge and discipline of an adult. Instead, I went to the Internet to find Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s speech about the four freedoms and then I started surfing. I found his first inaugural address from March 4, 1933, the one about fear and read it all the way through. I was guessing that it would be as encouraging a message for our times as it was for my parents and grandparents going through the Great Depression. Damned if I wasn’t right.

Check out this site for the speech. Read through all of it. It will lift your spirits. After a week of financial disaster and head banging BS from the Republican candidates, I needed to know that if we got out of one hell of a pickle, we could once again. You will be amazed at how similar our times are to those of the First Great Depression.

Surely FDR’s America, listening around a radio, was no smarter than our America now. Yet Mr. Bush is seemingly AWOL once again. A bad case of senioritis I would say. And McCain/Palin, well, I’m beyond insulted at how stupid they must think I am. Once we had real leaders. I pray that one day we will again. Obama can inspire, but can he lead, can he pull together his own brain trust for the tough days ahead?

When economists throw around phrases like “worst financial disaster since the Great Depression” I can only assume that they know the full impact of what they are saying. I can only hope that they aren’t just reaching for another sound bite, that they actually stayed awake during their American history and English classes. Because I did and those words have resonated in my head all week.

My daughter has to read John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath this year. Perhaps I should offer to be her study buddy.

Tikkun Olam Friday - Repairing the World One Step at a Time

Another Friday, another post on tikkun olam – to repair the world. Remember, you don’t have to finish the job, but it is your responsibility to start.

The Flag of a Proud Democrat

After two weeks of political conventions, I must ask you to think about who best can repair our nation. Without change at home, I fear we won’t be able to repair the world.

In July my husband and I visited Vancouver and went wine tasting. At one winery we somehow got into a discussion of politics with the hostess. (Somehow? It’s all we talk about.) We assured her we hadn’t voted for Bush. The mess wasn’t our fault. Her compassionately spoken reply: I feel for you.

Just four words reminding me that Canada is a separate country, not America Adjacent, and that the US has problems to solve. Alone.

So this week, before I ask what you did to repair the world, let me ask if you watched the Republican National Convention. Did you like what you saw? Then stop reading now.

But if your heart soared last week as Barack Obama showed us who we can be once again only to break as you watched in horror at the world portrayed by McCain, let me suggest what you can do between now and November.

Donate to Obama's campaign and talk up the issues like energy, health care, the economy, the environment, education, the physical infrastructure and the food supply.

Then help get out the vote. And vote yourself as if your children’s and grandchildren’s lives depended on it. We cannot have another 4 years of the last 8 years.

Yes We Can!

Get out the vote. Talk to everyone you know. This race will be close, very close. Do you want 4 more years of McBush? Our country, our world can't afford it. Let's have something to celebrate come November. Get out the vote!