these small people

I remember two things about Mr. Jonas’s 12th grade American Government class: 1- Mr. Jonas loves tomato and mayonnaise biscuits. 2- The American Presidency can be best understood as seven roles tied into one. Mr. Jonas lectured about the job of President in a rather simplistic way.  He had a puppet of Bill Clinton who wore a variety of interchangable symbolic hats: Chief of State, Chief Executive, Chief Diplomat, Commander-In-Chief, Chief Legislator, Chief of Party, and Chief Guardian of the Economy.  

Many McCain supporters, and perhaps some Obama supporters, are concerned about the hats on Barack Obama’s hat rack.  Can he wear them properly?  I know the metaphor is a little facile, but people I love and respect are genuinely anxious about his ability to govern, a fair concern, I’d say, given the state of the American economy, our international reputation, the war we’ve been fighting for the past five years, a concern that I, in my enthusiasm, should stop to consider.  

While we can speculate all day long, I’d like to focus for just a moment on one hat: the Chief of State hat.

I woke up this morning to a thunderous rain storm and dark gray skies, eager not to linger in bed but to open my browser to BBC News to see what the world has to say about our new President Elect.  I was up late last night watching videos on cnn.com, thinking not about the eloquent speeches given from both sides, not about partisan politics, not about winners and losers, but about this very muddy but highly symbolic word “change.”  If any of my first year university students used the word “change” as liberally as either of the candidates, I’d draw a big circle around it and write “DEFINE” in all caps.  But I woke up this morning, optimistic with a kind of hope that I struggle to articulate, hope for change.

Four years ago, I spent the summer working for a hardworking and hopeful organization called FLY , an acronym for Facilitating Leadership in Youth.  FLY is a non-profit started for the families of the Barry Farms Housing Community in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, DC.  That summer juvenile homicide in the city was at an all-time high.  We spent two weeks training for a six week intensive summer camp, where neighborhood kids (95% from single-parent homes) would bus up to (the very white, very safe) American University to learn about drawing comics, writing spoken-word poetry, hip-hop dancing, and creating websites.  Working with thirteen year olds who all knew at least one person who’d been killed by gun violence was a jarring introduction to urban life for me. I felt so white, so sheltered, so wealthy, so lucky.

 

In our training, one of the things we were encouraged to do was to provide the kids with new ways to imagine their futures, black role models who were not athletes or music video stars.  I grew up in Southwestern Virginia, dreaming of being an artist or a chemical engineer, because I’d been told for as long as I can remember that I could.  And, because I knew people who looked like me who did these things, it was easy to imagine such a future for myself.  In our spoken word poetry class, we read and listened to people from Mos Def and Maya Angelou to Saul Williams, Rita Dove and Langston Hughes.  But not until I gave my students the assignment to write and produce their own music videos did the entire class get excited and involved in the day’s activities.  I felt like I was doing exactly what I was not supposed to do, relying on the obvious and largely unachievable career options as a way to pass the class period without discipline problems.  They all wanted to be video stars.

A few weeks ago, Michelle Obama famously said, ”For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.”  When I think about my friends at FLY, I feel the same way.  The blog donkelphant put it this way:

Today the American people showed that the child of an immigrant can, if he works and studies hard enough, become anything he wants within these borders. Come tomorrow morning millions of children, born with skin darker than my own, will wake to discover that anything is possible for them despite what they have been told their entire lives. Today our nation tore that final barrier down and in doing so proved to the world that The American Dream is alive and well.

That alone may do more good for this country than any policy either of the candidates involved in this election could have ever crafted.

I don’t know what kind of leader Barack Obama will be, how he will fill out the many roles awaiting him. But I’m excited, really really excited, about someone who is so apparently eager to tackle the role of Head of State, someone who can not only change the way the world sees our country, but, maybe more importantly, change the way many Americans look at ourselves.  Already, I am thinking differently about the place of my birth: 

 

Maybe these small people will, too.

(these are my neighbors on Capitol Hill, taken July 4, 2005)

of the pilgrims’ pride

very, very, very small thing: my vote

Last week I went back to the land of the free.  That’s right, the home of the brave, the shining beacon on a hill, the sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.  Not just to Seattle or Bellingham, to which I travel pretty regularly–though I visited both en route to my final destination.  No, last week I went home home.  To the rolling hills of Appalachia (which, of course, deserve their own post).

Observe: Smoky Mountains majesty; amber waves of tobacco

I went back for a number of reasons, one of them being to voice my–albeit small–say in who will become the next leader of our great nation.  To put things in perspective, note that while there are an estimated 301,139,947 people living in my country, only about 221,256,931 of those are eligible to vote, due to age and other legal restrictions.  (Already I’m feeling better!)  And only about 80% of those folks are registered to participate in our democratic process, and only about 55% are expected to turn out at the polls.  So when we get right down to it, my vote is actually 1/122,294,978.  Not half bad!

Actually, while my math is quite impressive, this is all misleading, because I’d love it if more people voted, if only for the brief but noteworthy post-vote high.  Really, it felt so good to vote.  Here’s how it went down:

My dad and I drove up to the DMV (which is also the county voter registrar).  We headed in to the office, where I checked a box on a form stating why I couldn’t cast my vote on election day (I reside outside of the limits of the United States of America), they ushered me behind the counter to a touch screen where I cast three votes: Congressional Representative, Senator, and President.  It was that easy.

Here my dad and I are about to enter:

And here I am, in a state of post-vote elation:

let’s see that instant replay:

 

 

ps–not to be a downer, but I must acknowledge the only low moment in my journey toward democracy, which is to say the moment in which I had to acknowledge that those with whom I am united in vote I am not necessarily united in vision.  All democracies rely, in very large part, on very obscure rhetoric.  It is good to be reminded that phrases like “got hope?” are as flimsy as “the war on terror.”