Dear Claire,
Dear Claire, I got some news for you, something I don’t think we get to say too often, “We won!”
People who know me well know that I’m over the top. They know that I can get into things way too much and go too far with them and lose all perspective in wild excitement and enthusiasm. Not manic, but close. And Obama fever hit me like a tidal wave and for the last year it’s been pretty much a major focus of my daily life. I’ve been taking at least an hour every day on the web checking things out, watching things, reading things, emailing things, and then calling people up to talk about them. It’s been a long time coming, this jubilant morning.
Why have I been so obsessed? Just to see a change from the Bush dread that slips and drips the world over like the Exxon Valdez? Did I just want to be blindly inspired by someone who was just a nice fancy public speaker? I think I can tell you, that being a person that learns primarily in visual terms, who’s mind works things out in visual terms, I’m always hit hardest my symbols. Policy, politics, democrat candidate, fresh ideas, new direction, a human environmental focus of dialogue and introspection in leadership - all of that is the starting point, but what follows under that is symbol. Take a look at this one, this is what I’m talking about:
This is the symbol I’m talking about. This symbol is tattooed in my mind and heart. I know, I’m sounding kind of nuts here, but hear me out on this.
Obama - It’s Yours To Give
Yesterday, the afternoon of the election day, I was sitting in a restaurant eating my lunch and reading a book. Behind me I heard some ladies talking about Obama and one lady said she wished she had an Obama t-shirt. I turned to see what they looked like. Three old ladies having an afternoon tea and jab session. I went back to my book and thought how cool it was that Obama is affecting older white women in Canada who can’t vote for him but believe in him. “Neat”, I thought, and finished my meal.
Then on my way out I was putting on my jacket and I remembered that I had a Obama button on it. My thought was “I should walk over and give that lady this button.” The simple “Obama for President in 2008” button was actually given to me from a new friend I made in Washington DC a few days ago when she heard me going on about not finding an Obama t-shirt to my liking. But as much as I wanted to give it this elderly lady the button, I was also kind of nervous nilly Canadian about it - did I really want to bother these nice ladies having lunch and interrupt them? “Naw,”, I thought, why bother? But then as I was almost out the door I just couldn’t help thinking that this simple button was mine to give and I should or I’ll regret not doing this, and even though I might forget the details in hours or weeks or years to come, it’ll still be one more small regret to pile on the internal heap of them. So, I turned around and went back to their table, “Excuse me”, I said a few times until these nice elderly Canadian women were aware that a stranger was standing in front of their table addressing them, “Did you say you wanted an Obama t-shirt?” The lady looked up at me, “Yes. Yes I did. We’re all for Obama here”. She waved her hand around to indicate her two friends sitting with her, “Are you?” She asked. “Yes, I am. Here.”
I handed her the button, the nothing fancy button. She took it, looking at it. “Are you giving this to me?” I told her I was and pretty much wanted to bolt out of there now, mostly because I didn’t want to make a big deal about it, and maybe even more so because I get weird about emotions at times and then just want to run and I’m a very emotional guy I just bury it and hide from it. Well, she took my hand under the guise of shaking my hand and then wanted to ask a few questions about the button like where I got it, was I American, was I going to watch the election that night, etc. She took the button and immediately put it on her jacket’s lapel - everyone would see it there, the white button on a deep green jacket. She then said to me, “I just came from church. I said a prayer for him, that he wins. I prayed out loud for him.” She smiled. She was beautiful. I smiled. We said goodbye and I walked away.
What I couldn’t help thinking is that THIS is what Barack Obama stands for, this generosity of spirit and coming together as one collective people. Barrier breaking in many ways. For me, with Obama on my mind and conscious I just had to give and not take or keep, I had to give. Could I cheer for this guy and not give? Yeah, it’s a stupid little button that costs a dollar or whatever, but that’s not the point. The point is that we connect and intersect as people on the planet at one time and we should do right by each other and be willing to give and listen. That’s about it. And Barack is the symbol for that. There are others, many guru’s and leaders and beyond, that serve as that symbol of human hope, appealing to our better angels, and in our time right now Obama is that symbol.
My Personal Riel-Life Connection Mr. Obama
But why do I really care about this whole Obama thing? I think of the ending of Spike Lee’s Malcolm X film in which everyone looks directly into camera saying, “I am Malcolm X. I am Malcolm X. I am Malcolm X ...” That Hindu saying of “thou are that.” And with Obama, like Riel, I say that. Not that I am half the human beings of consciousness that they are, but that I see myself IN them. I place all my better thoughts and voices in them - even though we know they are merely human beings with faults and errors, but they come to symbolize something within ourselves all along, but something we need an outter talisman for us with self-shame to hold on to.
This is the thing about Riel that I don’t know if everyone knows or talks about - yeah, sure, he was the Métis people’s chosen son, but he spoke and fought for more. See, when North America wasn’t what it is now, these two countries, back in Riel’s time it was just the land of the new (for some). Yes, there were negative currents running through those times, things Aboriginal people have come to see as genocide now and horrendous unimaginable violence at that time, to many families. But it was also a time of grand human consciousness in the respect that America, North America, was supposed to be the New World. And for the intellects of that time, the early forming of North America, the New World meant letting the shackles of “us against them” stuff, conflicts carrying over from Europe, the divisions of nationality and religion, should fall away and people should live under one God, one country, one free new world. THIS is the world view that Riel had/has. Not that we would melt into one homogenous thing (just look at the Manitoba Act and its inclusion of both English and French language for an example of this), but that we could be one thing collectively together comprised of many things. The New World as a new beginning, respect for all, harmonious with the new arrivals and the original inhabitants and the natural world around everyone. My point is that it wasn’t just land rights and negotiation into Canada or the US that were the stakes that Riel considered and was in constant contemplation about, it was a constant concern about just what kind of New World can North America become?
Riel is a symbol to do right, to think beyond the obvious, and to allow for the spirit world to have its say in your being. And oh yeah, he was also a book reading nilly-willy skinny guy of mixed ancestry - Métis. Obama is a lot of things to a lot of people, but he also speaks to me the way Riel does: a person of mixed ancestry. You’re not one thing, even though you are one person. It’s confusing as hell at times, but it is also something that you are, something my daughter is, something my wife is, some my niece is, something that is not one cultural thing, but comprised of many. And like Riel, it’s a symbol of duality, of flat out having to be empathetic to more than one side, of seeing the world in more than social-political worldview. And I guess for college students in the 60’s, free-thinking liberals could point to a Kennedy or Trudeau and think, “that guy’s like me.” Well, I look to Obama in think just like that.
Hope Realized
And so it comes to a close, the daily, hourly at times, obsession of the US election and the hopes that I had for an Obama win. Last night I was jubilant, I was all smiles and shaking my head in joyful laughter. This morning, in watching the clips again on the web I’m all tears, tears of joy, tears of hope realized. And not to sound macho I do not cry often, if at all - something I’m not proud of, but something I keep fighting I guess. But this morning I cried. I did. I’m still always on the verge of it today for some reason. See, the ending and the possibility changed. There is in fact not hope realized, but new wider more profound hope, hope beyond Obama himself or his presidency to come.
Look, (to use an Obama-ism to start a thought, “look”) I think in general we all want things to be easy and immediate. When I called to ask my now wife out on a date I was dying in my boots, I wanted to just jump to the part where she finds a way to like me and lets me give her a kiss - we all want things to be neat, nice, and easy ... and they aren’t. Not everything is answered and taken care of with this historic Obama win. But still, everything is different. I think about watching a movie like Malcolm X or Mississippi Burning and thinking, this may be the end of the movie here, but this isn’t the way this story ends, there is Obama. When I left the theatre after seeing those kinds of films I was angry and vengeful and frustrated and heartbroken, and I still will be. But now those movies can end on a sad note but thinking about Obama, an African American as president, that is in itself not a new ending but a new beginning. Hope. Unreal but real indeed. Hope. “okay, that happened, but there is Obama now.”
There are MANY many many instances throughout the world where people of colour are in leadership positions with whites and non-whites working underneath their stewardship. But this gives it a whole new context. Basically its something that is already there, already prevalent in our communities, but this is perhaps one of the greatest symbols of that leadership, the President of the United States, and so for anyone or any situation yet to come where a non-white person takes the reigns on anything it’ll be something completely normal. Am I talking about this new perception coming into everyone’s consciousness and world view right this instant or even after Obama is sworn into office come this January? Maybe, but I don’t think things happen that quickly, it’ll take time, generations.
And that is the thing about this that hits me the hardest, that makes me cry the most, the idea of seeing this in terms of generations. That is where it just about kills me in the best way ever. This is not only a reversal of generations before, but it points to new possibility for the generations ahead. As an Aboriginal person, like an Irish person, or a Jewish person, or Black person, as just about any person from a marginalized group, you KNOW the effects of violence on generations. You understand the concept of generational effect, that what happened way back then still has repercussions on how we live now, generations later. How does the history of my father being beaten for speaking his Aboriginal language on a school yard effect the way I see and act in the world? Many ways I wont get into here, but I can assure you that it brought pain in suffering not only to him at that time, but to our family as those seeds played out and repeated themselves in new ways as he was an adult and a father and the shame-game always made him out to be the loser in this life, this world. (something I should add that he eventually rose above). So, when I think of this multi-generational effect of a negative history, a violence upon people, and how it plays out from generation to generation, shaping their world view and their view of themselves in the world, this is what kills me the most ... in the best way now.
Spike Lee was interviewed on TV this morning and he had a funny little bit, but he’s right to say it. “There’s a BB and an AB. Time Before Barack and a time After Barack.” Is he being over the top? Am I? No, I don’t think so. If violence had a multi-generational effect of struggle and sadness, how will Barack Obama’s win play out in the generations to come? I would argue, in one word: hope. Okay, maybe two: “Hope Realized.” Or three: “Yes We Can” THIS is what I’m so excited about. This is lightning striking and splitting the tree anew. One “ending” was re-written: An African American could never be the president of the united states. This “ending” from slavery is no longer true. There is a new more hopeful ending. How many other “endings” can be changed now? Can we here in Canada have an Aboriginal Prime Minister? Can my daughter be one of the next Prime Ministers in this country that will surprise us? Can a Metis-Jew-White woman be anything? Yes she can ... and when I say it to her it wont just be hopeful thinking, it’ll be based on hope realized. I lived to see it. I was there. It was the first big new thing, a thing to say okay, without forgetting the past, immediate or ancient, but let’s start really thinking from this moment FORWARD. That’s pretty exciting. And it’s filled with hope.
And when you have a kid, like I do now, you come to realize just how goddamn important hope is. Its THE thing, the entire fucking world that makes me Me: hope. That despite it all, despite my Mom’s hard life growing up, despite my fathers, despite all that they have seen and lived through, that their worldview handed down to me is without question, end of day, hopeful. No matter what, hopeful. And so, you add Obama as the next president of the United States into shaping that worldview, my good God, Gitchi Manitou, migwitch for these kinds of words, that are merely something spell-able to what is merely what we feel inside, what we want to feel inside ourselves forever, every day, a joyful, and for me today a tearful: yes we can. If they didn’t elect him what would that have meant I don’t know. Thing is, they did, it came to be, a concrete collective moment on a grand symbolic scale of hope realized. Of hope realizing itself in us.
So, this is day one of AB - After Barack. And this feels pretty good. Pretty goddman hopeful to be honest.
Shane
PS - I should let the cat out of the bag to my neighbors to the south, that I LOVE your national anthem. Sure, the last 8 years I haven’t really been too interested in hearing it, but now? And in that regard here it is sung maybe the best ever of you were to ask me.
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