Category — All About Polymer Clay

This was sent to me by Greg Heacock.  I suggest you open your heart, re-read it several times and then consider.  It moved me a great deal and I like to think of it as the Buddhist perspective.

The Movement that Drives this Campaign

A storm of controversy arising over Barack Obama’s support of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is testing the unity of our campaign. Many in the campaign are threatening to jump ship. While some accuse him of being a centrist, and others defend him as a pragmatist, the angriest among us are calling him a traitor. I do not wish to deny the importance of this issue, but I remember being told in my Camp Obama training that the issues can distract us from the true narrative of this campaign.

What we have in common is that we are all free spirits born into history. The race, gender, economic circumstances, and family context–the time and place into which we are born–give us different perspectives that divide us. Still, words that signify our values provide a common ground that unites us. That narrative of differences and values that unite us is “the wind” Barack says “is sweeping across this great land” calling for change.

Imagine, then, that the campaign is a ship, moving toward the horizon, with the captain adjusting the sails to manage the ship through rough currents to get us to a new land. We are the wind that fills the sails and the crew that manages the ship. As the wind, we are free to blow whichever way our intention takes us. As the crew, we need to secure the ship and give respect to the person who leads us. In short, argument is healthy for without wind we are dead in the water. But, we need not to confuse this with working for the campaign. Still, it would be a lax crew that lacked concern for the judgment of its commander.

George Lakoff, in his latest book The Political Mind, shows Democrats how to frame issues so they connect with the electorate. I was thinking of the terms “movement” and “campaign” when I attended a Unite for Change party, last weekend, in Santa Monica. I realized from the speeches made by those in attendance who had campaigned for Hillary, Kucinich, Biden, and Dodd that, while I had seen them as parts of separate campaigns, we were all part of the movement for change.

But, Obama has abandoned “movement” in favor of “campaign.” When Barack spoke in favor of public campaign financing, he was supporting the notion that public moneys should be available to help all parties engage effectively in political dialog. Who can’t appreciate the irony of Libertarians accepting public funding for their campaign? Naturally, when Barack said he would not accept public funding, Republicans and their minions, known as pundits, accused him of flip-flopping. How much easier it would have been to say that he was at the head of a “movement”! Most people would see the sense of freeing a movement from the confines of public funding. After all, a movement is a mandate for change. It isn’t like a campaign that seeks money from lobbyists and special interests. It is funded by common folk who are so motivated that their cause becomes infectious, spreading through every state of the union. Obama, as a leader of that movement, would march beside the likes of King and Chavez, who rose above t he petty pandering of pundits. Yet, Obama chose not to take the high ground.

Instead, he chose to accept the role in which most Americans would be comfortable seeing him. He is a candidate. That means he is in a campaign. That means be is subject to the slings and arrows of outrageous political fortune. Though I had hoped to avoid such a fight, Barack has chosen to take it on. By committing himself to the language of a “campaign” rather than the language of a “movement,” Obama made a choice that is emblematic of all the choices he has made since.

We see a similar decision in Barack’s using the term “war” rather than “occupation” when seeking to withdraw our troops from Iraq. If we presume our troops are fighting a war in that country, are we not obliged to try to win it? If, however, we see this as an “occupation,” withdrawing troops would be our natural goal. Yet, even as the army in its official report on the Iraq War defines our current situation as an “occupation,” Barack has chosen to stick with the term “war.” Despite my frustration with this, I see that, again, he has chosen the term that Americans have already accepted. Why?

As a community organizer, Obama has learned that to make change, he must, first, acknowledge the value of the positions people have taken. It is only when people feel accepted that they see they don’t need to defend themselves. That is when they are able to look at a situation from a different perspective.

I think that we who oppose the FISA legislation wish our candidate would give us the same acknowledgment. We want to know that he values our point of view. The more we are not acknowledged, the more we (dare I say?) “cling” to our position. But, I want to point out something that we may have not seen. Our discussion of this issue has been conducted, undisrupted, on the MyBarackObama.com website.

Just as King envisioned a table where the grandchildren of slaves and the grandchildren of slave owners would sit together as brothers and sisters, Obama has spoken of bringing people together who, before, have not recognized how much they have in common. Consider how many people do not see that the threat of “Big Brother” spying on us outweighs the benefit of preventing a terrorist attack by monitoring communications. Imagine that we are sitting at the same table, crafting legislation. What negotiations wou ld we be willing to make? For all that some believe Barack has given away in his support for this legislation, he has ensured his administration the right to review what happened under the Bush administration so that the truth comes out. He has also reserved the right to hold people accountable for their actions by charging as criminals those who have broken the law.

We need to recognize the leadership Obama is showing as he moves this campaign forward. As free spirits, we may know no bounds other than the values that drive us forward. But, as free spirits born into history, we are must recognize and honor the views of those who see things from a different perspec tive. We must have a foot in both worlds.

I do not find this easy. It certainly isn’t comforting. We must discipline ourselves as did those “veterans of creative suffering” that King honored with his praise. Such discipline demands that we allow “what is” to be in order for it to change. It demands that we are ever mindful of our goal as we submit to the process required to lead others to that higher place. We cannot stand on the mountaintop and beckon others to come forth. We have to hold each other by the hand and, with empathy, negotiate a path that we can travel together.

At that Unite for Change gathering in Santa Monica, a fifteen-year-old campaigner, Jackson Hille, spoke of his experience going to rural Texas to bring people to the polls. He said that he traveled to the outskirts of a community to knock on the doors of houses he never imagined would exist in this country during this time. A black man in his eighties came to the door and smiled. This man said he never imagined that someone would come to him to invite him to be part of a change he believed never would occur in his lifetime. When this man expressed his gratitude, young Jackson broke down in tears. And, when the man said he was too crippled with arthritis to make it to the polls, Jackson organized transportation that took a number of people to the polls , after which they were fed before heading for the caucuses to vote again.

This story would not be chronicled in any traditional campaign we have seen before. It is the result of a movement. We are that movement that is campaigning to change America. In these trying times, when post-primary depression is likely to set in, we must remember our commitment to transform America. As it took a Civil War to bring the states together as one nation, so it will take a mighty struggle to unite us as one people.
It is a struggle we already know. It will involve calling people on our cell phones, traveling to other states and communities to offer our hands to strangers. As we prepare for the task before us, it is good that we announce and acknowledge our own grievances. It is good that we question the campaign just as we are about to meet people who will question us. As we move beyond the horizon of what is comfortable, of what is given, we must recognize our shared vulnerability in going forward. Our comfort, now, must be in going forward together.

We are the wind; we are the sail; we are the ship; we are the destination. We are eternal; we are now. And, we are not alone.