Afro-Netizen

Upload Real Change: What Activists Must Learn From the Obama Campaign

By Roberto Lovato
Courtesy of ColorLines Magazine

WHILE CRISSCROSSING CRACKED STREETS to knock on the rickety doors of rundown row houses in Philadelphia’s 14th Ward, Liza Sabater also found herself crossing the overlapping lines of political and technological history late last spring as she canvassed for Barack Obama’s campaign.

“I got to spend some time with these Puerto Rican mechanics—guys most people wouldn’t expect to have Internet access,” said Sabater, an Afro-Puerto Rican technologist who blogs at culturekitchen and The Daily Gotham. “But there—among the wrenches and jacks—were their cell phones and handheld devices they use to surf the Web.”

Sabater, who helps nonprofits use technology to further their missions, canvassed in Philadelphia with her two sons and coordinated work in the 14th Ward with three Latino volunteers from the Obama campaign. She saw in the mechanics’ mobile devices proof of her belief that “the ‘digital divide’ is a crock when we realize that laptops and desktops aren’t the only ways to access the Web.” But was the Obama campaign reaching these mechanics on their cells?

As they write future narratives of Obama’s astounding rise, historians will likely foreground how skillfully the “change” candidate maneuvered around the racial, geopolitical and economic terrain of our crises-ridden time. Lost in the background of most of these narratives will be how Obama, the former community organizer, took what he learned about mobilizing working- and middle-class residents on Chicago’s South Side and combined it with the stuff that actually wins elections: money, organizing and technology.

Obama’s campaign for the White House deployed in unparalleled ways Web. 2.0 tools—the set of technological developments that turned the World Wide Web into the ubiquitous, mobile, wireless and interactive Web we use today. As this issue of ColorLines went to production in late August, Obama’s Web site, Mybarackobama.com, was as interactive as any online social networking site. More than 10 million people had signed up at the site, and the campaign had raised millions of dollars. The Web site was the centerpiece of an online and offline political strategy that defeated the Clintons—one of the most powerful Democratic political dynasties—and, in the process, Obama took community organizing to new territory as he redefined the practice of electoral politics in the United States. Whatever the election results, Obama’s campaign demonstrated that it’s possible—and necessary—to go online and move people to action offline.

Sabater, who was born in New York’s El Barrio neighborhood and raised in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, was one of the many who responded to the campaign’s appeal. She is still fascinated by how Obama’s team fused state-of-the-art media and technology with the community organizing that the candidate learned in poor communities. Yet while she thinks community-based organizations can learn from the online organizing methods innovated by the Obama campaign, she also sees reason for concern in the cracked streets of Philadelphia.

Sabater noted, for example, that although her fellow Obama campaign volunteers were by definition “Latinos,” it was a poor decision on the part of the campaign to send three middle-class Chicanos from the west coast to a predominantly working-class, Spanish-speaking, Puerto Rican neighborhood.
“When my colleagues told me ‘we don’t speak Spanish’ and couldn’t interact with the people, I saw the interface problem,” said Sabater, adding, “I saw the disconnect between the online and offline strategies, both of which are focused on middle-class people. Nobody’s reaching out and targeting these working-class communities of color with technology. They don’t think that the mechanics and maids use technology or vote.” The Obama campaign fell through the cultural cracks in the street, while members in the community fell through the technological cracks of the campaign’s Web strategy.

They weren’t the first to use the media in this way, but he came along at that precise moment when the technology had matured, when the audience of media users had reached critical mass.“The (Obama) campaign created a fantastic interface for people to join the campaign,” Sabater said. “But it didn’t do as well in reaching people who don’t have laptops and whose technology is primarily their cell phones. There’s an age and class and race gap.”

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Roberto Lovato is a writer with New America Media based in New York City.

Obama and the Politics of Race and Religion in America

The Ground Didn't Shift

By M. Shahid Alam
CounterPunch

It is perhaps a bit late in the day, nearly two weeks after November 4, to be writing about Barack Obama’s electoral victory. This want of alacrity, however, is intentional.

I thought it would be cruel to write any sooner, when whites and blacks alike were so effusively celebrating Obama’s victory. It would be unseemly to strike a discordant note when a clear majority of Americans was savoring this putative post-racial moment in their history.

Did this victory signal a shift in America's racial tectonic plates?

Memories are so short. In the weeks following his choice of Sarah Palin on August 29, John McCain began closing the gap behind Obama.  The election got closer after Palin electrified the Republican Convention with her line about how “We grow good people in our small towns…”  The message to blacks, Hispanics and Asians in America’s cities was clear: they are not “good people.”

In the absence of the financial meltdown that began in early September, the election could have easily gone the other way. Sarah Palin too may have helped Obama a bit when she began displaying the breathless scope of her ignorance.

Who should we thank for Obama’s victory?

The answer is sobering. We can thank the financial meltdown and, in some measure, the threat of an Armageddon – likely to follow Palin’s succession to a geriatric McCain – for Obama’s victory. There was no shifting of tectonic plates on this continent.

If anything, America’s unquestioning identification of Obama as a ‘black’ candidate is deeply problematic. It demonstrates that the United States remains firmly rooted in ideas of race that go back to the era of slavery and Jim Crow Laws.  

Obama’s mother was white and, apparently, so were all her forebears; while his father was a black African and, apparently, so were all his forebears. Obama is biracial – half-black and half-white. Why did that, automatically, make him black? If being half-black makes Obama black, by the same logic we could identify him as white.

Why didn’t we?

Read more to find out here.

Obama's victory spurs race crimes nationwide

Jesse Washington
AP National Writer

Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting "Assassinate Obama." Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.

Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the post-election glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America.

From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders.

There have been "hundreds" of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.

One was in Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: "I hope Obama gets assassinated." That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door, Millner said.

She described her emotions as a combination of anger and fear.

"I can't say that every white person in Snellville is evil and anti-Obama and willing to desecrate my property because one or two idiots did it," said Millner, who is black. "But it definitely makes you look a little different at the people who you live with, and makes you wonder what they're capable of and what they're really thinking."

Potok, who is white, said he believes there is "a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them."

Grant Griffin, a 46-year-old white Georgia native, expressed similar sentiments: "I believe our nation is ruined and has been for several decades and the election of Obama is merely the culmination of the change.

"If you had real change it would involve all the members of (Obama's) church being deported," he said.
Change in whatever form does not come easy, and a black president is "the most profound change in the field of race this country has experienced since the Civil War," said William Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina. "It's shaking the foundations on which the country has existed for centuries."

"Someone once said racism is like cancer," Ferris said. "It's never totally wiped out, it's in remission."
If so, America's remission lasted until the morning of Nov. 5.

The day after the vote hailed as a sign of a nation changed, black high school student Barbara Tyler of Marietta, Ga., said she heard hateful Obama comments from white students, and that teachers cut off discussion about Obama's victory.

Tyler spoke at a press conference by the Georgia chapter of the NAACP calling for a town hall meeting to address complaints from across the state about hostility and resentment. Another student, from a Covington middle school, said he was suspended for wearing an Obama shirt to school Nov. 5 after the principal told students not to wear political paraphernalia.

The student's mother, Eshe Riviears, said the principal told her: "Whether you like it or not, we're in the South, and there are a lot of people who are not happy with this decision."
Other incidents include:

Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression, including one that said: "Let's shoot that (N-word) in the head." Obama has received more threats than any other president-elect, authorities say.

At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written "Let's hope someone wins."

Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.

Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.

University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur. "It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork," Houston said.

Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported. The president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas said a rope found hanging from a campus tree was apparently an abandoned swing and not a noose.

Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.

A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted 'Obama.'

In the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying "now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house."
Emotions are often raw after a hard-fought political campaign, but now those on the losing side have an easy target for their anger.

"The principle is very simple," said BJ Gallagher, a sociologist and co-author of the diversity book, "A Peacock in the Land of Penguins." "If I can't hurt the person I'm angry at, then I'll vent my anger on a substitute, i.e., someone of the same race."

"We saw the same thing happen after the 9-11 attacks, as a wave of anti-Muslim violence swept the country. We saw it happen after the Rodney King verdict, when Los Angeles blacks erupted in rage at the injustice perpetrated by 'the white man.'"

"It's as stupid and ineffectual as kicking your dog when you've had a bad day at the office," Gallagher said. "But it happens a lot."

Associated Press writers Errin Haines, Jerry Harkavy, Jay Reeves, Johnny Clark and researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed to this report.

Shoulders to the Wheel of Change

By Rob Okun
Guest Contributor

Barack Obama’s decisive election as the nation’s 44th president sent a jolt of clean, renewable energy around the world. Forty years after the nation was parched in a desert of despair following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., an African American has been elected president. Stunning. Electrifying.

As he did in his remarks in Chicago’s Grant Park on election night, President-elect Obama’s campaign message has consistently encouraged citizens to open the door of “possibility and change.” Now is the time for more Americans to enter, to join in the daunting but rewarding work of recasting America away from bullying and fear and toward cooperation and love. It’s time to begin spreading around the wealth of new ideas and bold programs needed to confront the crush of pressing issues facing our nation and fragile planet.

Make no mistake. President Obama cannot single-handedly create the just new world so many are hungering for; he cannot do so no matter how talented and committed a team he assembles to serve in his administration. It’s up to put our shoulders to the wheel of change, to help turn the American ship of state in a new direction.

We’ll need the same level of commitment, the same blend of idealism and pragmatism, and the same kind of community organizing key to electing Barack Obama president. The legions of dedicated citizen-activists—from rural pockets around the nation to dense neighborhoods in our largest cities—making phone calls, canvassing streets, apartments, and country homesteads, who entering data, making food, offering lodging to out-of-state activists, we’re all still here. We still care. Sure we’re tired, but we’re also “fired up and ready to go.”

This is our moment; this is our time. From graying sixties activists to our age-equivalent peers involved for the first time in a political campaign; from formerly disenchanted (and disenfranchised) citizens of color now engaged; to first-time voters of all ages; from high school and college students to 20- and 30-somethings; to zesty older folks moved to join the campaign. I met scores of them campaigning in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania throughout the fall.

One was a Connecticut man named Gene Black, a retiree in his sixties who for the final month of the campaign moved into a rooming house in Quakertown, PA, volunteering in a swing community in a swing state, working 14 hour days all over Bucks County. Like so many other citizen-campaigners, Gene is back home now resuming his “regular” life but ready to do more for the country. The change America experienced on November 4th was more than just a special moment to savor before returning to business as usual. Barack Obama’s election calls on us to ask ourselves: What else are we willing to sacrifice? What else will we volunteer to do?

Yes, it's a new day in America. And yes, tens of millions of people in the United States and around the world are still abuzz, still savoring for the first time in eight years the sweet honey of victory and its kissin’ cousins, hope and change. But after the celebrating there's always the cleaning up, the morning after.

Between now and the inauguration is a great time to reconnect with the people you canvassed or phone banked with. It's a two month window to develop an action plan for change in your community, in your neighborhood, in your home. Social change movements are living, breathing embodiments of collective energy that thrive on momentum and deteriorate when static. Remember eighth grade science? A body in motion tends to stay in motion; a body at rest tends to stay at rest. Citizen-activists, let's stay in motion.

Joseph Campbell, who used myth to explain the human experience, said if you want to change the world, change the metaphor. The election of Barack Hussein Obama has unalterably changed the American metaphor.

Although we may have crossed the color line, we have yet to reach the finish line. Our new president has inspired millions with a compelling vision of social change. It is up to us now to summon the courage and the stamina for the next leg of the generational relay race some call the American experiment in democracy.

Rob Okun is editor of Voice Male magazine. For more than 20 yeas op-eds and commentaries on the social transformation of masculinity have appeared in newspapers, in online publications and been broadcast on public radio. His essay, “Confessions of a Premature Profeminist” appears in Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex and Power. He can be reached at raokun at verizon dot

Obama victory opens door to new black identity

Obama's victory shifts black identity - `to be seen simply as Americans'

By JESSE WASHINGTON
AP National Writer

(WASHINGTON) Shortly after leaving the voting booth, 70-year-old community activist Donald E. Robinson had a thought: "Why do I have to be listed as African-American? Why can't I just be American?"

The answer used to be simple: because a race-obsessed society made the decision for him. But after Barack Obama's mind-bending presidential victory, there are rumblings of change in the nature of black identity and the path to economic equality for black Americans.

Before Tuesday, black identity and community were largely rooted in the shared experience of the struggle — real or perceived — against a hostile white majority. Even as late as Election Day, many blacks still harbored deep doubts about whether whites would vote for Obama.

Obama's overwhelming triumph cast America in a different light. There was no sign of the "Bradley Effect," when whites mislead pollsters about their intent to vote for black candidates. Nationwide, Obama collected 44 percent of the white vote, more than John Kerry, Al Gore or even Bill Clinton, exit polls show.

In Ohio, domain of the fabled working-class white swing voter, where journalists unearthed multitudes of racist quotes during the campaign, 46 percent of white voters backed Obama's bid to become the first black president, more than the three previous Democratic candidates.

Obama did not define himself as a black candidate. So Robinson now feels free to define himself as something more than a black community activist.

Read more

This Week in Blackness celebrates Obama's historic win

[Big H/T to comedian Elon James White and the whole TWiB crew! Y'all gonna be real busy over the next four to eight years!]

Barack Obama's Election Brings Us Into Dawn's Early Light

A moment hundreds of years in the making, brought about by millions of engaged citizens

By Benjamin Todd Jealous

It was 11:30 p.m. the Friday before the presidential elections. Nikita Dawson had persevered in line for hours, vacillating between light banter with other waiting voters and serious talk about why they had to hang in there until they reached the voting machine.

Finally, Nikita marched up to a voting booth at that Clayton County, Ga., precinct to participate in one of democracy's most sacred acts. She would be the last early voter in Georgia to cast her ballot in the presidential race.

No drumrolls ushered Dawson to the voting booth. But as I glanced at the flag hanging in that polling place, I could almost hear "The Star-Spangled Banner." The perilous fight our nation has endured crystallized with images of valiant patriots jailed, beaten, even lynched in their attempts to cast a ballot.

In the long march to this day, I reflect on the role of the unsung heroes captured in sepia tones in history books.

During an election season punctuated with historic firsts, millions of voters around the country braved lines that stretched for hours. In Virginia, where we challenged the antiquated election system and pushed for extended voting hours and paper ballots, even the judge denying our motion confessed that he had waited in line for over two hours to cast an absentee ballot.

In Craven, N.C., there was a failed blatant attempt at voter intimidation when a casket with a likeness of Barack Obama was placed inside a polling place.

We also confronted scores of other voter suppression tactics, including misinformation about the date of the election and polling locations and claims that people could vote by phone, that students voting in their college towns could lose financial aid, or voters with unpaid child support or parking tickets could be subject to arrest.

Thankfully, such despicable measures could not stem the righteous tide of change. And here we are at this astoundingly triumphant moment with the election of Obama, America's first African-American president.

A moment 232 years in the making—from the end of chattel slavery to today—we are witness to the most inclusive election enjoyed by the largest, best-informed, motivated electorate in our nation's history.

Consider that some African-American precincts saw the number of registered voters swell to 95 percent of those eligible. In some locations, more than 90 percent of those registered actually voted, many for the first time and others for the first time in years. They turned out because it finally mattered.

These stunning statistics represent engagement in the political process on a colossal scale. It is proof through the night that democracy is here.

It is fitting to remember race riots in Springfield, Ill., in 1908 that killed scores of black people and drove thousands more from the city. The atrocity moved labor activist William English Walling to take up the cause of the victims, penning an article that demanded: What large and powerful body of citizens is ready to come to their aid? The birth of the NAACP the following year was the response.

It is equally fitting that the man who has desegregated the highest office in the land and transformed the reality for millions of black and brown children by affirming that color need not be a barrier to high pinnacles launched his candidacy for president of the United States in Springfield.

As we bask in the glow of Obama's stunning victory, the battles are still many. Racial and gender-based discrimination continue to warp our housing, employment, and credit markets. Nearly 50 million Americans are without health insurance. Foreclosures spiral upward. Racial profiling persists. No Child Left Behind has abandoned hundreds of thousands of children in underfunded schools. Wars rage on two fronts.

Still, we have proof through the night that an engaged, inspired nation can come together across racial, cultural, and generational boundaries to bring about change.

Real change can happen as we harness the energy that enables us to achieve the extraordinary, even as we fight for simple justice and basic opportunities. These things can propel us forward as we step out into the dawn's early light.

Benjamin Todd Jealous is president and CEO of the NAACP.

A not-so-typical election day in Mt. Airy, Philadelphia

In the deepest of blue dots in the state of Pennsylvania (and Philadelphia), there has been record turn-out in terms of how many people have voted before noon.

As of 10:50amET, over 50% of voters in this division (i.e., precinct) have already voted. And in what is already one of the most active polling places in the entire city, I am confident we will surpass the 90% mark by 8pm.

For some odd reason, the local Fox Channel affiliate has been camped out at our polling place in front of the church here since 4:30am. They have not interviewed anyone -- just kinda sitting in their broadcast truck. I spoke to the on-air guy a couple times to brag at how awesome our 3 divisions are that share this polling place, and he just politely nods his head.

Today has been an amazing day so far, which is saying a lot, given that I have worked every election here for the past 2 1/2 years and voted without fail for the 6 1/2 years I've lived in Philadelphia as Chicago expatriate who grew up in the neighborhood where Barack Obama served as state senator.

After the groundswell of early voters, the polling place became a ghost town by 8:30am, and the only folks left were the election officials, the church staff, the Democratic committeepeople, the older Black man who was the token Republican in this Obama-lovin' sea of nervous excitement and the dozen or so Obama volunteers shipped in from Brooklyn and Vermont. In fact, there were more Obama volunteers at our polling place who had nothing to do than there were actual voters once the tide had ebbed from the morning rush.

I pointed out that sending Obama volunteers to my polling place was like sending sand to the beach. My neighborhood is so Obamalicious, there are more White lesbian couples with Black children than registered Republicans. In fact, there were probably more McCain-Palin lawn signs (2) on the church's lawn than actual McCain voters.

But enough about my wonderfully economically, racially and culturally diverse neighborhood.

The simple fact is that this morning I saw faces of new young voters, first-time elderly voters, Blackfolk coming out so overcome with emotion and recognition of today's import that they could not keep from crying; Whitefolk smiling giddily as though they were keeping a secret they were trying so hard to let out.

I saw children of all ages -- some as young as two who could say with pride, "Rockobama!". Busloads full of students headed to school yelling out of their windows, "Obama, Obama!"

A feeling is in the air that was not there in 2004.

And in under two hours, I will be sharing this moment when my wife and I bring our 5- and 2-year old sons to push the big green VOTE button when we cast our ballots for Obama this afternoon.

They know it's election day. But what they will not know for years to come is just how much their lives will change -- all of our lives -- no matter how subtlely --  just by the very fact that Barack Hussein Obama may be our next president no matter how imperfect the candidate or the political system that has thrust him to this auspicious moment in time.

Dawn approaches on Election Day

I always get emotional on election day.

Today will be my sixth presidential election that I will be voting in, and the most important.

This will also be the first presidential election without grandparents or my father.

Today, I will not be voting alone though. I will be bringing my ancestors with me and my two young sons.

In a few moments I will be getting ready to leave my home and walk a half block to my polling place and meeting my fellow Democratic Committeeperson to set up for what will most certainly be a long day.

My job in this capacity is simple: to make sure my division's (what other cities call a precinct) Democratic voters are informed and assisted as needed towards voting as smoothly and quickly as possible.

My 21-year old first cousin, Houston, has been with us since Sunday, up from Virginia. This is his first presidential election and the first time he has volunteered for a political campaign. He has been working and with incredible enthusiasm.

Houston will be shadowing me today between GOTV runs for the Obama campaign here. I will be teaching him about "machine politics" 101 and letting him see first-hand how grassroots party electioneering works in quite possibly the bluest neighborhood in the entire state of Pennsylvania.

Our late grandmother, an ardent community organizer in Baltimore and my most influential mentor, ran for office several times unsuccessfully. She died a year or so after I was elected as a committeeperson.

She would be so heartened to know that her grandchildren were actively involved in such a historic election.

We will not be alone in the voting booth.

In light of the passing of Obama's dear grandmother, no doubt, he knows this, too.

Obama camp fights the prospect of voter complacency with viral humor

Subtle, it's not. That said, this kitchy, unpolished web video is in fact produced by the Obama campaign to remind complacent voters to avoid doing what lurks in the battered, collective psyche of Democrats who are still licking their wounds from Al Gore's (electoral) "loss" in 2000.

So, enjoy this cringe-inducing video and think of it on November 5th with a dismissive smirk or an incredulous gape.