Oh, what a joy it is to watch the future president of the United States meet with world leaders, meet with soldiers overseas, talk and listen and be willing to learn. What a joy it is to imagine a day when we will be represented by someone who represents the best of us instead of our mediocrity.
It is easy, even for those who care deeply about the political process, about our history, about what we will leave behind, to grow tired of seeing the same politicians’ faces on the TV screen, to get sick of talking heads talking about things that don’t matter but are supposedly connected in some way to the candidates, to think, “Screw it—I won’t give you any more of my money because you voted for X.” It is easy to think that way. But easy is not the answer. The answer is to read more and watch less TV. The answer is to pay attention to the things that matter, not the fluff. The answer is to look at the big picture, not individual issues or individual votes.
We are at a fork in the road. We can’t afford to get distracted. We can’t afford to not care.
I’ve heard Allison V. Smith’s name in the blogosphere here or there, and I finally spent some time on her blog and ordered her zine, and I am officially a huge fan. She’s seriously good. I had some questions for her, and she was kind enough to let me post our conversation here.
Liz: So, looking over your résumé, it seems like you had your start in journalism, and you’re now working as an editorial photographer and doing your personal projects, too. What’s your background? What’s your story? Where’d you go to school? How did you get where you are today?
Allison: I’ve known I wanted to be a photographer since I was fifteen. I’m the youngest of five and it wasn’t very easy finding my voice within my large, active family. As soon as I discovered photography, I had my own way to communicate. My tenth-grade photo teacher exposed us to Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman, Lee Friedlander, Walker Evans. She would give us assignments specifically based on photographers—“Go shoot a Cindy Sherman portrait,” etc. I could not get enough of photography.
Frustrated with college, I took a year off and studied at the Maine Photographic Workshops in the fall and then interned at the now-defunct Dallas Times Herald in the spring. It was a very important year for my photography. It was that year that I knew I wanted to make pictures for a living. Newspaper photography seemed to be the answer. It would feed my need to photograph daily and to be published. I finished college at SMU in Dallas and immediately started working for newspapers. I worked as an intern and full-time at seven newspapers over fifteen years. It was an amazing time to be a newspaper photojournalist—experience and knowledge that I will never forget! But I knew I wanted more.
In 2004, I quit to pursue freelance photography and my own personal artwork. Today my freelance work for magazines and newspapers supports me as a fine-art photographer. I’m represented in Dallas at the Barry Whistler Gallery, known for showing contemporary Texas artists. The Dallas Museum of Art and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, both purchased two images from my last show at the Barry Whistler Gallery in 2006.
L: Do you find that living in Dallas (i.e., anywhere outside New York), it’s harder or easier to get work? Does location even matter?
A: I am a half-breed. I am half-Texan, half-Maine. I hope to live both places someday. For now, Dallas is a wonderful place to live and work. I’m a laid-back Texan, and it definitely suits my personality—not to mention that the artists’ scene in Texas and especially Dallas is very supportive and a great place to be.
L: Do you shoot medium-format? Digital? Strictly film? Whatever works? Does that kind of stuff interest you, or is the equipment kind of ancillary? (I read an interview with Eggleston where he said he just picked up whichever camera was around when he walked out the door. Seemed really random.)
A: I shoot it all. I have digital for mostly freelance jobs. I shoot Hasselblad and Lomo and Widelux for myself. Occasionally, a client will ask me to shoot with one of my film cameras for an assignment.
L: I’ve been working a lot lately (in my mind, on my blog) on developing my vision (for lack of a better word), my style, my whatever you want to call it. I think this all relates to knowing what matters to me, figuring out what I want to photograph. It’s all tied together. Part of what I love about your zine is how cohesive it is. It includes a wide variety of photos, but they all hang together really well and seem to be talking the same language. Did that just happen for you, or did you work at it? Either way, how?
A: I think it is for sure something that has developed over time. I work hard at improving all the time. My ninety-six-year-old grandfather taught me that you never stop growing and evolving as a person or an artist. Part of my zine was an effort to loosen up my style, not worry so much about making the composition perfect. It has been a great exercise for me.
L: Do you feel like you get pigeonholed in a particular genre? I mean, are you known as an editorial photographer, or a fine-art photographer, or both? Do you feel like people are open to blurring boundaries? Maybe I’ve just been watching too much CNN, but I heard James Carville the other day talking about how if a politician doesn’t define himself, someone else will define him, so you need to control the message. I hate the way that sounds (Carville’s voice is ringing in my ears), but I think there’s something to be said for the fact that people do like to categorize and define each other. Is there a way to avoid that as a photographer? Or do you just say, “Fuck it,” and do what you want and screw what people think you are (or aren’t)?
A: I think about this all the time. You know people in the art world don’t quite appreciate newspaper photographers the way I think they should be respected. There are some amazing photographers out there—Damon Winter, Mona Reeder, David Leeson—all of whom I consider some of the best photographers in the country. Yet, you never see their names outside the newspaper worlds. Damon is hands down one of the finest portrait photographers there is, and besides seeing his credit in The New York Times, you never see his name. So this makes me mad and it kind of gives me the attitude of, “Fuck it.” I am just going to be who I am. I am going to continue working for clients who are wonderful to work for, who hire me for my vision rather than tell me how to shoot something. I am going to continue to shoot for myself, and I hope for more beautiful exhibits in the future. I am going to continue to make zines and postcards. I am going to continue to shoot for myself as often as I possibly can because, in the end, I love photography. I love photographers and photo books. It’s who I am, what I am.
I have spent the latter part of the morning in front of CNN, watching with increasing sadness the news of Ted Kennedy’s brain cancer. It doesn’t look good.
If you’re like me, and you turn to history for answers and for hope, you may want to revisit Senator Kennedy’s inspiring eulogy to his brother Robert. The following video contains a brief clip from the end. To listen to the eulogy in its entirety, click here.
Or do both. This is why I voted for and am campaigning for this man. Because he talks to me as an adult. Because he recognizes that we are complex citizens of a complex nation. Because he has substance and intelligence and dignity. Because if he were my president, I would be proud to have him represent me and my nation to the world.
Enough already, people. We have the president we need; now we just need to elect him.
Remarks of Senator Barack Obama: “A More Perfect Union”
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania March 18, 2008 As Prepared for Delivery
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution—a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part—through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk—to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign—to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together—unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction—towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners—an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles, and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts—that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely—just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country—a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems—two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health-care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth—by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day-care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters. . . . And in that single note—hope!—I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories—of survival, and freedom, and hope—became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about . . . memories that all people might study and cherish—and with which we could start to rebuild.
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety—the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gangbanger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming, and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and, yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions—the good and the bad—of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother—a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America—to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through—a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
Legalized discrimination—where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments—meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families—a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods—parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pickup, and building-code enforcement—all helped create a cycle of violence, blight, and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it—those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations—those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white coworkers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience—as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero-sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk-show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle-class squeeze—a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns—this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy—particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction—a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people—that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that, in fact, we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances—for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs—to the larger aspirations of all Americans—the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who’s been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for our own lives—by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American—and yes, conservative—notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country—a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old—is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know—what we have seen—is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope—the audacity to hope—for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination—and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past, are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds—by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil-rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal-justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand—that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle, as we did in the O. J. trial, or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina, or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a twenty-first-century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the emergency room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for president if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation—the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today—a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three-year-old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents, too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the 221 years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
I’m moody. Just in general, I mean: I’m a moody person. The past week or two, a funk has been on the horizon, and I think it made landfall today.
Do you ever feel a cold coming on for days or even weeks, and you get so tired of feeling like you’re on the verge of getting sick that when you wake up one morning with a full-on sore throat, you’re actually a little bit happy, because you don’t have to wait around anymore, and you’re that much closer to actually feeling better?
I thought the funk was because I was working on an especially awful project in my day job, the kind of project that I dragged out over many days instead of just getting it over with, because just getting it over with meant actually working on it, and I couldn’t bear to do that. I finally did, though, yesterday. Work on it, that is. So much that I actually finished it, and I was in a good mood for much of the afternoon.
Quiet before the storm.
Today, I’m tired and bored and looking at every glass as though it’s broken—forget half-empty. I forced myself to go out and photograph a little today, and for the forty-five minutes or so that I was out there, it was good. (One night recently, in the midst of this building funk, I actually pulled out my camera and just sat there watching TV with my camera in my lap. I felt better.)
They’re obvious, the reasons for all this: I’m so sick of my day job that the woman in line in front of me at the 7-Eleven today who was buying an insane number of lottery tickets actually seemed smart. Hatred is not too strong a word for the feeling I have about my job right now. And to top it all off, I’m actually pretty good at my job. (Being good at something you hate, now there’s misery for you.) This feeling about work is draining me of all energy. So when I do have some free time, time to do with what I please, I don’t feel like doing anything. Plus, I know it sounds crazy, but I’m really worried about the campaign, and I care so much about it that it weighs on me. (I know I’m not alone: S. said he got up three times in the middle of the night thinking about it himself.)
FYI: Michael Clayton, though a really good movie, is not something to watch with the blinds drawn on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I watched George Clooney riding in that cab while the credits rolled, watched the thoughts on his face, and all I could think was how futile it all is.
If you knew me, you’d know how funny this is: futility and I in the same sentence. I’m like the most industrious person you’ll ever meet. (That “like” in there . . . that’s because I NetflixedMy So-Called Life and have been watching that for the past few weeks. There’s another thing: Sure, there are scenes where I relate to the forty-year-old parents. But at thirty-four, I still get Angela Chase better than I get Graham and Patty. How am I thirty-four when I still feel fifteen?)
I think feeling all dark and depressed serves a purpose in my life. I need periods like this to figure things out. And the thing is, these moods, they do pass. When I was fifteen, I didn’t know that. So, I guess, I’m not exactly the same as I was then. But still.
So you’re sitting at home or killing time at work, and you’re thinking, “Wow, Liz sure seems up on Barack Obama—maybe she’s on to something there. But I have, like, zero free time and I’m completely broke . . . what can I do to help?”
I’m glad you asked, because I’ve got the answer: You can go to http://www.barackobama.com and click on Make Calls. If you haven’t already registered at the site, you’ll have to do that (it’s quick and easy), and then, if you’re at the site between the hours of 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. in the time zone you’re calling, you’ll be given a list of people’s first names. Click on the first name on the list, a phone number appears, and make the call. You’re given a script to read, and you click on the person’s response to move on to the next bit of the script. Kind of like Choose Your Own Adventure, except the person you’re calling is doing the choosing and the stakes are much higher.
I made a handful of calls today, and it took me just a few minutes. You can literally make just one call if you want. It couldn’t be easier.
I couldn’t seem to work today. Spent several hours making iTunes playlists and sorting through my music. I hadn’t realized it before, but when I was in my teens and twenties, everything was all about escape for me. I played music and daydreamed about the future. Somewhere around the time I moved to Los Angeles, in my late twenties, the future arrived, and music wasn’t about daydreaming anymore. There used to be another universe going on in my mind. Make-believe or fairy tales. I like reality better now, even with Bush in the White House.
This video, by Larry Lessig, perfectly sums up why I voted for Barack Obama and why I urge everyone—those who’ve already voted, those who’ve not yet had that chance, and those of you around the world (hey, you can lobby your American friends, can’t you?)—to support his candidacy.
I’ve always thought those memes that tend to circulate the blogosphere like chain letters did my elementary school were kind of silly, but when I read S.’s comparison of it to a game of tag and the Internet as one big playground, I figured what the hell. Apparently, I, too, have been tagged, and because tag requires the buy-in of all the kids on the playground—besides, I’ve never been one to let a good game die—here goes.
The Rules
Link to the blog of the person who tagged you. [I’ve already linked the hell out of S., but for good measure, click here to go to his blog.]
Post these rules on your blog. [Done.]
List seven random and/or weird facts about yourself. [See below.]
Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs. [S. put a question mark after random, because, I’m sure he was thinking, “What the hell is a random person?” I’ll let the wording slide. But here’s my list of tagged people: Lane Collins, Shawn Gust, Ben Huff, Shannon Kuhns, Jennifer Loeber, Susana Raab, Amy Stein.]
Let each person know that he has been tagged by posting a comment on his blog. [That’s where I’m drawing the line. I believe in an all-volunteer tag game; I’m not into drafting people who don’t want to be drafted. I’ll distribute the propaganda and try to get them to enlist, but that’s as far as I’ll go.]
I turned down a job offer to teach in my hometown because, when I used my illegal copy of the master key to the school district (long story) to get into the classroom where I would be teaching, the key broke off in the lock. The broken-off key has been on my keychain ever since.
My standard order at Neptune’s Net on the Pacific Coast Highway, known for its fresh seafood, is a grilled-cheese sandwich.
I sat in the same row as Senator Edward Kennedy at a performance of The Producers, and all I could think to say when I had to climb over him to get into my seat was, “Senator Kennedy, I’ve always admired you and your brothers.” How frickin’ unoriginal could I be? Plus, what about Eunice?
On a Sunday afternoon, I was on my way out of Big 5 Sporting Goods on Wilshire Boulevard. When I was about 15 feet from the door, Jon Voight walked in. He was incredibly tall, wore a long coat, and was lit from behind by the bright sunlight outside. When I saw him, I gasped, stopped dead in my tracks, and said, under my breath, “Midnight cowboy.”
I’ve had enough of this PC world. Blue screens of death. Three-month-old hard drives that crash and have to be replaced. That damn hourglass.
I’ve finally done it: I’ve gone Mac. My new MacBook is on order and should arrive later this week. A little credit-card hocus-pocus—balance transfers and such—and I have 0 percent financing for four months, just long enough for me to pay it off interest-free.
Now if only getting rid of the current president were as easy as getting rid of my PC.
For reasons that I honestly can’t seem to recall, this morning I found myself thinking of Bloomington, Indiana, the small town where I went to college, a place I haven’t been back to since graduating in 1995. Indiana University is big—no bigger than many of its Big Ten counterparts, but still really big for a kid who grew up in a town of fifteen thousand and could walk into the local grocery store and say, “Charge it to my dad’s account,” without having to tell them who her dad was, because they just knew.
I’ve since lived in places much bigger, but when I got to Bloomington, full of expectations for what my college years would be, it felt huge and fell short. There are myriad reasons for this. I don’t think I really knew, as a senior in high school, what I wanted in a college. And I went into it passively: I assumed it would teach me, but I didn’t realize I would have to work so hard to learn, and I hadn’t yet learned how to work hard.
I.U. is a good school, and Bloomington is a great town, but I had trouble finding my place in both. Again, myriad reasons. If I knew then what I know now, it would be different, and I might even love it there. But I didn’t, and I couldn’t, and so much of my time was spent counting down the years, months, weeks, and days until graduation.
So would I choose a different school if I had it to do over again? No. Because I met three teachers there who changed the way I look at the world.
One was Barry Kroll, whose Vietnam literature course (with texts like Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried) formed the basis for the political beliefs I hold today. We knew, throughout the semester, that Professor Kroll had served in Vietnam, and we all speculated things like, “Hey, do you think he ever killed anyone?” (What else would a bunch of eighteen-year-olds wonder about?) But when he stood up on the last day of class and put on a green military jacket, we cried, and I have tears in my eyes just thinking of it today. I didn’t think much about war before I took that class, and I haven’t seen war the same way since.
Another was James Madison, who taught American history, and who made it come alive for me in ways it never had before. I still have a clipping in my file cabinet of a letter he wrote to the editor of the Indiana Daily Student, in response to an article about rewriting history, in which he said, in part, “The past is up for grabs—always. It’s not static, it’s not dead, it’s not even past, as one pretty smart American once said. Rather than one and only one way of seeing it, we are free to see it as we see, struggling through reading, thinking, observing and talking to understand in our own way. That we all will differ in what we see is what causes such confusion and what scares those who perhaps haven’t yet looked hard enough at the past.” Madison was it, you know?
The third was Scott Russell Sanders, who taught an English class called “A Sense of Place,” and who once, on a beautiful afternoon walked out of the classroom and asked us to join him, as he led us on a walk through Dunn’s Woods, silent all the way. Some of my classmates were whispering to each other, asking what the point was, whether this would be on a test, where we were going. I was first in line behind Sanders, and I was willing to follow him wherever he led me. And where he led me, where he led all of us, was to that sense of place that he cared so deeply about. I don’t think I fully grasped it when I was 18. But I think of him often, and I’ve come, over the years, to understand. (If you’re interested in reading an article by Sanders about Bloomington, and his devotion to and care for that place, click here.)
Can you imagine anyone who makes a greater impact on the world than a teacher?
I’ve been printing today, which means I’ve been swearing and smiling, loud and then silent. Pretty much like every other day, now that I think about it. I started printing partly because I’ll be attending a workshop later this month during which a portfolio review will occur, and partly because I couldn’t devote one more minute to my day job without doing more swearing than smiling, and the latter is preferable to the former.
Ben Huff’s post tonight mentioned wanting to “call in dead” to his day job and head up north with his camera. Someone asked me last night what my plan was, how I would ever do more photography and less other stuff if I didn’t have a plan. This is also the same person who takes pleasure in finding the one thing that will piss me off, and then doing that one thing every time she sees me. But she did make me think: What exactly is my plan?
I’ve been operating under the assumption that if I do the things that interest me, the rest will fall into place. But what exactly is “the rest” and into what “place” do I want it to fall? Do I have to know the answer to this question? If I were ten years younger, I’d say no. But I’m thirty-four and I have a boyfriend who likes to quote Andrew Marvell and talk of “time’s winged chariot.” I watched George Clooney on The Facts of Life; I can still sing all the words to the theme song (plus the theme songs to Diff’rent Strokes, Silver Spoons, and Good Times). I got spam from someone claiming to represent AARP the other day. I also get e-mails about how to enlarge my penis, so it’s possible the spammers don’t really know me. But somehow, though I delete the penis e-mails without any thought, the AARP one made me worry. I suppose that means I’m more confident that I don’t have a penis than that I’m not old.
Which brings me back to the question of a plan. All the candidates I care about are rolling out their health-care plans. “I have a plan” seems a common refrain; maybe Dr. King would’ve made an entirely different speech were he at the Lincoln Memorial in 2007. The thing is, I’ll take dreamers to planners any day. And so maybe that’s my answer. I plan every other thing in my life, from flights to finances to freelance work. Maybe photography, and whatever will or won’t happen with my future, should be left to dreams instead. Not the kind of dreams that never happen (i.e., “only in your dreams”), but the kind of dreams that do (i.e., “dreams realized”). Only time—and that goddamned winged chariot—will tell.
Meanwhile, I’ve ordered The Facts of Life from Netflix.
I recently (finally) saw the documentary Why We Fight (2005).
I feel as though my entire sense of who we are as a nation has been altered. And it’s not as though I’ve been burying my head in the sand. I’ve believed for years that the Bush Administration is corrupt; but I’ve also believed that, as a people, Americans are basically good. Now, having seen that film, I have to wonder. In a democracy, how can you separate the people from the government? The corruption isn’t about political party, it’s everywhere, and our government is not “them,” it’s us.
Even the Bush Administration is us. Oh god, the horror.
You can see why, having realized this, I’ve been a bit quiet the past few days.
Yes, I vote. Yes, I sign petitions. Yes, I occasionally e-mail my elected representatives in Washington. But what exactly is the point of all this? What can I do to put an end to the military-industrial(-congressional) complex that Eisenhower warned us about more than a decade before I was born?
Powerless is how I’m feeling today. And if I feel powerless, sitting in the richest nation on Earth, imagine how the people whose countries we’re bombing the hell out of feel.
A starting point: Register to vote, and exercise your rights, inside and outside the voting booth.
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the Peo
