[Reader-list] Congratulations America

[Paul D. Miller]

It's 6am and I'm transferring at Sciphol Airport on my way to Vienna. I have truly never seen such an outpouring of emotion around an American election in my life. Everyone at the airport - the passport control agents, security, bag check people - EVERYONE, is full of hope for a different America. Obama's image is everywhere in Europe. It's truly strange, but beutiful.

Paul

Nagraj Adve <nagraj.adve at gmail.com> wrote:

>Dear Gautam,
>Nice piece of writing (as usual) but since I have in recent times
>acquired a somewhat bleak view of larger political change, I was
>throughout today thinking of the 2004 elections in India and what
>heppened thereafter. Manmohan Singh came to power on the back of a
>emphatic rejection of economic reforms (and the BJP variant of
>communal politics). He then proceeded to anoint Montek Ahluwalia and
>Chidambaram (he of the Dow Chemicals fame) in key positions. His first
>trip outside Delhi was to Bombay where he expressed a wish that Bombay
>become Shanghai, after which about 3 lakh people were forcibly thrown
>out of their jhopad pattis.
>I don't know how to say what I will without sounding arrogant. I too
>am deeply glad that Obama is President and not McCain (and also that
>Sarah Palin is not VP); Obama's vote if nothing else means too much
>for black Americans, others in America (as your mail says) and for so
>many others the world over. But for me he more so reflects change that
>has already happened in the US and elsewhere, which his administration
>will try their best to blunt. On foreign policy it is now old hat that
>Democrats have been little different from Republicans since Vietnam,
>including Clinton. On this too, Obama will reflect some change but
>only slightly if I were to believe statements he has made on Pakistan,
>Iraq and particularly his vice president's views on Iraq.
>The key difference would perhaps be on domestic policy in the US,
>particularly on the nature of intervention in the massive economic
>crisis t faces. One hopes rather than lend money to banks alone, his
>administration might push welfare, public spending, etc. Quite likely.
>Without letting this mail run on for too long, he is President because
>people are emphatically demanding more. So let's see how we can demand
>even more (and also change things more fuindamentally) rather than be
>easily satisfied. I can say that without being one iota less happy
>that Obama has won.
>Naga
>
>On 05/11/2008, gautam bhan <gautam.bhan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Dear All,
>>
>>  I dont usually post on the list, but thought I'd share a piece I
>> wrote for elsewhere.
>>
>> - gautam
>>
>> Cross-posted from Kafila.org
>>
>> A Letter from America
>>
>> I was out all night in Oakland, California, last night. One of the
>> most "dangerous" cities in the country, crime statistics say. Usually,
>> that's always code for historic black neighborhoods. This one is no
>> different. Close to us are some of the districts and towns worst hit
>> by the foreclosure crisis: one in three homes in parts of California
>> are now owned by banks and not people. A generation of voters in this
>> district remember what it was like not being able to vote because they
>> were black. This is part of the America that has elected Obama.
>>
>> My students are predominantly white. This is Berkeley, California,
>> with some of the most progressive affirmative action [what in India we
>> call reservation] policies, and so many, many of them are also Asian
>> American and Latino. There are still preciously few African America
>> students at the college level, even at subsidized public universities.
>> My students are mostly about twenty. They have the freedom not to
>> remember Reagan and Thatcher. They use the word "past" rarely and look
>> only in one direction. They are a generation long described as the
>> apathetic children of technology. They are an America that has not
>> easily inherited the arrogance that so easily slips in with power.
>> This is another part of America that has elected Obama.
>>
>> I saw the election results come in with community organisers,
>> activists, people who work in everyday America. Their tears are tears
>> I recognize from the defeat of the Hindutva and India Shining. They
>> are tears of relief and of belief. Tears that remind you that the
>> slow, thankless, everyday work of social change has a horizon that is
>> bigger than our individual lives. This is another part of America that
>> has elected Obama.
>>
>>
>> There was a different America on the streets last night - in ten years
>> of going in and out of this country, I have never seen it like this.
>> Cars were honking, people walking the streets openly crying and
>> celebrating with strangers, spontaneous gatherings of people at every
>> corner, public buses lit up, hope and joy were in abundance. America
>> doesn't do public displays of politics or affection - it doesn't rush
>> out on streets for much other than sports. It hasn't, in any case, for
>> a very long time. Jesse Jackson, one of the most famous black
>> Americans other than Martin Luther King, openly crying amidst millions
>> in Grant Park in Chicago is a sight I wont lightly forget.
>>
>> Not everything will change with Obama, but change they will. Race will
>> not disappear, but it will never be the same again. Structural
>> inclusion and inequality might not vanish tomorrow, but its pipes and
>> planks will be made visible. America might not change all that angers
>> much of the world towards it, but it will not be able to so easily be
>> so naked in its power. To think of Obama is not to judge whether this
>> hope will turn out to be real or false — the point is that it is hope
>> at all. This hope, even if all its promises fail after a time, will
>> have unintended consequences. Unintended consequences that, in stories
>> of the everyday, are in the end what help people change their lives.
>> Leaders come and go, but it is the unintended consequences of hope
>> that leave lasting, if infinitesimal, change.
>>
>> After eight years of Bush, Sept 11, a financial crisis, two divisive
>> wars, deepening poverty, and horrid clashes on moral values, this
>> landslide victory is the story of a scarred, hurt, and scared nation,
>> shaken from its arrogance by a series of blows, trying to slowly look
>> inside and heal itself. No matter what we think of America, its
>> imperialism, its role in global successes and tragedies alike, that is
>> a process all of us, in every country who have ever tried to think of
>> change can understand and support.
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