Early on in primary season I got on the train home to Oakland after a long day in the city.
The BART subway car wasn't that crowded. I sat in the box of seats where passengers sit facing each other 2x2 with some, like me, facing the opposite direction of the train. There's this long tunnel on the ride from San Francisco to the West Oakland station called the Transbay Tube. Basically, people ride underground in a kind of uninterrupted silence as the BART train speeds for ten minutes or so underneath the San Francisco Bay. That's how we get home to Oakland.
On that night I sat facing a young African-American woman, a teenager. She was calm and very inward looking, and wore a pink puffy winter coat with white fringes. There's this weird effect on BART were the window glass serves as a mirror when you are riding underground.
So, basically, I was looking at this young woman looking at herself...
That moment got me thinking about so many things. About hope, about unity, about what it means to be an American in 2008.
In this diary, I want try to explain the thoughts and feelings that arose in me on that train ride across the Bay thinking about Barack Obama and what his candidacy might mean for that young woman and for all of us.
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There was this awkward moment at a recent campaign appearance where Senator Clinton used humor to mock the idea of Obama's campaign allowing Americans to somehow "get unified." I think that represents an unfortunate turn of phrase that Senator Clinton, upon reflection, will regret, because, to be real, the Obama campaign is precisely about what unity means to the American people in 2008 in a direct and simple way.
That young woman in the pink puffy jacket looking at her reflection in the glass of the BART train that night is not alone. Far from it. What Obama's campaign tells us is that she's interconnected with all of us, her future, her hopes, her dreams are a part of our hopes and dreams. We are right there with her no matter where we live or what we look like. As Americans, our futures are intertwined with hers.
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One of the things that Barack Obama's campaign has meant on a visceral, direct, and pragmatic level is that this wide panoply of Americans who support him have literally come together around his candidacy. We attend the same rallies, we go to volunteer at the same offices and, to say something that's apparent to anyone who's volunteered for Barack...we look like what America looks like in the 21st Century. It's not perfect, it's different from state to state, but it is truly diverse. His campaign reflects who we are, as Americans.
That's a core part of the reason people support Barack.
We want that kind of change, that kind of unity. We want to see our nation reflected in its President and in his or her campaign. And one of the things we've learned in the process of getting out and working on the Obama campaign is exactly what it means to work together again. Not perfectly, not without tensions, but in this grassroots effort, we, like that young woman on the BART train looking at her reflection, can also see ourselves. We can also see the power of something pretty basic: what it means to be involved and believe in an effort that we all know embodies something at the root of our national identity: that all of us are created equal and are equally invested in our great nation.
That's the essential American message. That's what the United States of America means.
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One of the ironies of 9/11 is that we never got a chance to answer this gnawing question about that terrible day. Why did some people hate us so much that they killed over 3,000 of us in buildings as we worked? Didn't they know who we are? White and Black, Asian and Latino, wealthy and working class, immigrant and native born? Didn't they know we draw our heritage from all over the world? That we are one people, not perfect, no, but a free and liberal people willing to give everyone a chance?
How did the message of America, a message we all know and love, one of opportunity and equality, of brotherhood and sisterhood, e pluribus unum...how did that message get lost to the minds of those who senselessly killed so many of our brothers and sisters on September 11th, 2001?
Clearly, there was a malicious mindset at work. We all know that. That much is clear.
But what's also clear is that our message to the rest of the world, what's essential about our nation, has somehow gotten lost in our national response to 9/11. Our essential response seems to be simply that we are at war. And that war is a war without end or purpose in Iraq and a war with purpose but little planning or resolution in Afghanistan.
More and more Americans die and are injured every day in those two conflicts fighting on our behalf. And that has been our essential response to the tragedy that befell our nation on 9/11.
Somehow, we all know that more is required of us, that our message must be more than that, our task is greater and more profound. We seek new leadership in a troubled world.
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No one person can heal that wound. No one person can bear the symbolism inherent in taking up the mantle of America post-9/11 and post-Bush. Politicians, after all, have to be politicians; they are leaders and law makers and that has inherent limitations, and, yes, they are also men and women with real, imperfect lives, just like us.
But what I see in the crowds gathered in support of Barack Obama is something more powerful than that. I see America rising. I see America coming together. I see the shoulders of strong citizens ready to bear the weight of a new generation of leadership and to curry from our nation a new birth of freedom and responsibility embodied in new self-reliant leaders young and old.
I see in that public our answer to the questions posed to us by an at times hostile and angry world. We are one people and we want to send a message of hope and unity about who we truly are that transcends borders and identity and war. Now, we are a strong people, ready to defend ourselves, but we are also more than ready to offer a hand in peace and a hand to help.
We are, to use the language of my political teachers, Paul Wellstone and Jesse Jackson, a multi-hued quilt, woven of stories from all over the this nation and through its citizens, from all over the world.
We must fashion of that diversity our greatest strength.
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When Senator Clinton talks about the American Eagle with its Arrows in one claw and Laurels in the other, she is right that we are a strong, but peaceful people. What she neglects to mention is that Eagle represents us, in all our thriving diversity, as American citizens.
We are one. And we are on each other's side in our moments of triumph and in our moments of need.
What that young woman was looking at in the window of that train was no different than what her counterpart, a suburban teenage girl from a wealthy suburb with her head pressed against the window of a minivan sees on the way home or what the senior citizen looking out through the window of his high rise apartment sees, or the long distance trucker sees turning his rig onto the open road: all of them are looking at our future, together, as one people, as Americans united in our desire for peace and prosperity and our willingness to stand strong together in the face of the challenges ahead.
That is what the promise of Barack Obama's campaign for President represents, a return to something essential about our democracy, out of many, we are one.
When we stand together, there is little we can't do and there is nothing we must fear.
We are one and we are hopeful. In 2008, that is the message we want to send across our nation and, resolutely, with one voice, out to the rest of the world.
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