Echo: Editorial: Change We Can Believe In? ~ By Anjali Kamat

http://www.samarmagazine.org/archive/article.php?id=273

Editorial: Change We Can Believe In?

Obama's landslide victory marks the beginning of a new era, a moment of enormous possibility and for those of us fed up from the past eight years, long overdue prospect of change. But the change needs our continued efforts and work, unless we are willing to settle for another version of the Clinton years.

By Anjali Kamat

This piece originally appeared in Samar 30, published online November 10th, 2008.

It has been less than a week since Barack Hussein Obama's remarkable victory at the polls. Despite a vicious Republican campaign built on hate, ignorance, McCarthyite fear-mongering, and voter disenfranchisement efforts, the junior senator from Illinois won the election by more than 7.5 million votes. He overturned months of speculation about the "Bradley effect" and the projected disapproval of white working-class voters by winning swing states and turning even reliably red states like Indiana, Virginia, Colorado, and North Carolina blue for the first time in decades.

People across the country took to the streets in droves to celebrate President-elect Obama's victory on November 4th. The thousands of volunteers who devoted time and energy to promote his campaign and the millions who donated, many less than $200, are ecstatic. To all those for whom America has represented generations of racial injustice—slavery, lynching, the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow, Emmett Till, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, and the Jena Six—the election of America's first Black president marks the beginning of a new era. It's a moment of enormous possibility and the realization of a long-awaited dream that seemed unimaginable just a few years ago. And everyone fed up with the past eight years of the Bush-Cheney nightmare (and two elections stolen from under the noses of Gore and Kerry) is overjoyed at the long-overdue prospect of change.

But is this really "change we can believe in?" That depends on whether we're willing to settle for another version of the Clinton years or demand something more. Obama won the election primarily on economic issues but unless his millions-strong grassroots constituency holds his feet to the fire, the banks and the corporations will be the only remaining believers in this brand of change. Obama's support of the Treasury's bailout plan, his failure to call for a complete moratorium on foreclosures until just last month, and the fact that Clinton-era champions of deregulation (like Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin) are among those getting the President-elect's ear on economic issues are not encouraging signs. Nor are Vice-President elect Joe Biden's close ties to the credit card industry.

Obama secured the support many progressives because he was the only Democratic Presidential candidate (besides Dennis Kucinich) who did not vote for the war in Iraq. But his ideas on how to end this trillion-dollar war remain ambiguous at best and his stated commitment to pursuing the "war on terror" in Afghanistan and extending it into Pakistan should be alarming to many. He has repeatedly called for increasing US troops inside Afghanistan and said he supports unilateral attacks on "Al Qaeda targets" inside Pakistan—with or without Pakistan's permission. On Iran, to his credit, he has said he would talk to the leadership but has also argued for increased pressure and tightened sanctions to halt Iran's nuclear program, "before Israel feels like its back is to the wall."

Israel may well be the Achilles heel of Obama's progressive pretensions. It's particularly disheartening given the respect he once held for reputed Palestinian intellectuals like Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi. A day after winning the Democratic nomination, Obama told AIPAC that Jerusalem should be Israel's undivided capital. Now, just two days after being elected President, he named the hawkish pro-Israeli Rahm Emmanuel as his chief of staff, crushing any hopes that the coming administration might have a fairer policy on the Palestinian question. In another questionable appointment, Obama just named Sonal Shah to his transition team. A co-founder of Indicorps, Shah was also, until 2001, the National Coordinator of the deeply sectarian Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, tied to the Sangh Parivar in India.

On domestic issues of criminal justice and civil liberties, the Obama-Biden record is not very inspiring either. They both support the death penalty and Joe Biden is infamous for sponsoring some of the most punitive legislation in the war on drugs. Biden voted for the PATRIOT Act and Obama voted to reauthorize it. Equally shameful is the fact that Obama voted this July to cover up the Bush administration's illegal surveillance program. He supported Bush's expansion of warrantless wiretapping as well as retroactive immunity for telecom companies involved in the eavesdropping.

For eight years, people in the U.S. have endured an administration that has blatantly undermined the Constitution, rejected multilateralism and international law, launched illegal and inhumane wars, refused to believe in global warming, and engaged in unmatched lying, scheming, and corporate thieving. An Obama presidency will indeed be an improvement in many respects. But unless the inspired millions who brought him to power continue to believe their demands matter and insist on holding him accountable each step of the way, it will be Obama's corporate and hawkish friends who determine the domestic and foreign policies of the coming administration and our collective future.

"We will not be silent" became a popular slogan during the Bush years, signaling opposition to everything the Bush administration stood for. It is perhaps tempting to remain silent now, during this immediate after-glow of Obama's victory, to allow ourselves a moment of relief. While on the campaign trail Obama often quoted Dr. Martin Luther King to explain why he was running for President: because, he said, of the "fierce urgency of now," because "there is such a thing as being too late." Those words are from MLK's 1967 "Beyond Vietnam" speech, where Dr. King, unlike Obama, called for an unequivocal end to all American war-making and solidarity with people's struggles against injustice around the world. If we're serious about realizing the kind of change we actually do believe in, then it's worthwhile to remember the letter and spirit of MLK's words and speak up before its too late.

Anjali Kamat is a producer at Democracy Now!
<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>
Liberation Now!
http://liberation-now.blogspot.com/

Humane-Rights-Agenda Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>