Dear President-elect Barack Obama,
Please indulge me, a hopeful skeptic, for a minute. It is not that I find you or your politics (most of them, anyways) disagreeable, quite the contrary. I appreciate and find myself inspired by much of your call for change and hope. Your honesty with the difficulties ahead and your willingness to listen are, also, a mark of character. Rather, I am skeptical of the powers and principalities of this world and how, to recall Dorothy Day’s diagnosis, “our problems stem from the acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.”
President-elect Obama, you ran a campaign based on hope and change, and rightly so; this country is in desperate need of a change of leadership, direction, and values. You spent nearly $650 million getting yourself elected. That is almost 44% of the $1.5 billion spent by all the presidential candidates. That is a lot of money. Of course, it is worth noting that campaign finances are but mere pennies compared to the $700 billion financial bailout shelled out to the irresponsible and manipulative giants of Wall Street or the cost of $720 million per day to continue the Iraq war. How is this campaign money spent anyway? There are staff salaries, travel expenditures and energy costs, consultant fees, polls and campaign events, but the bulk of the budget is spent in media. Media is the marketing of a candidate, the development of the logo, creation of print, broadcast, and Internet advertising—it is the buying and selling of, in a word, the vote.
What is the folly in all of this? Has the voter finally sold out and been reduced to something we consume? Are billions of dollars spent just to manipulate image and opinion? Do battleground states trump the common good? What would the late Studs Terkel say if he were here today—does hope still die last even after the last vote has been bought for a $3 button asking for change? Can the center hold? Is it so the President can shed his clothes for the vote or is there still redemption?
Please, President-elect Obama, let us see your true colors. You played the electoral game and played it like you belonged. You took our votes and gave us hopes and dreams...could they be true or was it just another electoral gimmick for fools? The John McCain campaign prided itself on “Country First,” asking America “not to hope, but to vote.” Your adversary gave you a run for your money but in the end offered little in exchange for his vote—unlike you, who offered hope. Now what does it mean? Where does hope stop being dream and become something real? What about the economy? What about the poor? What about the strangers and the immigrants? Will the good Dr. King’s radical revolution of values from racism, materialism and militarism find a home among princes and presidents?
While you were out campaigning and promising support from the top, the bottom, the grass roots—churches, teachers, community leaders and organizers—kept the work going on. Now that you will be our president, we are asking you: Will you join us? Will you help us shut down Guantanamo? Will you help us end these mad, mad wars? Will you help us with healthcare and prison reform? Will you help us with sustainable agriculture? Will you help us with comprehensive immigration changes that are humane? Will you help us reform the insanity of campaign finances, economic subsidies and military spending—in order to, as you said, “restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace?”
Hope still dies last, President-elect Obama, but for many, you are the last hope for many Americans that justice can rain down from the White House. The shakers and movers from below are ready—in fact, they’ve been at it for decades!—to change this country by ending homelessness and combating institutional racism, rebuilding our schools and improving teachers, fixing our roads and funding public transit, restructuring power so that transparency and humility are real values and politically viable, starting organic farms and constructing renewable sources of energy, and finding alternatives to violence at home and abroad for solving conflict. The grassroots communities that helped elect you are waiting for you to listen. Change cannot wait four more years, because if it does not start now, President-elect Obama, American hope might just well have died.
You’ve said it well along: “Yes, we can.” Don’t forget us...because we are the ones who can. We are talking about changing culture, changing society, and creating the beloved community. You are right that it will not be easy, so please don’t lend unnecessary support to political structures that make it harder. I do not doubt your goodwill or your commitment. But there are forces in this world—forces like rampant consumerism and the military-industrial complex—that push humanity to live unblinkingly amidst severe poverty and expensive nuclear weapons, and this makes it harder for us, all of us, to be good. Do not fear these forces; do not be afraid. Rather, be overcome with love. For love, and a politics of love—forgiveness, the works of mercy, nonviolence, social responsibility, the common good—can bring even the most hardened of enemies together as friends. Congratulations on your election, blessings and safety on you and your family, and may you be reminded of the simple words Micah spoke to the kings of Judah: “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Sincerely,
Jake Olzen
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