Ahh, hope fills the air that I breathe, as I move, light and easy, like a river dancer on a cloud that’s floating in a gentle wind, as Bob Filner becomes my mayor and Barack Obama my president, again.
It’s a nice high I’m in, hallucinogenic, with music, Sam Cooke singing, “It’s been a long, a long time coming, but I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will.”
Oh, it feels so good having a couple of guys in high places who view what people have worked towards for years as earned “benefits” not “entitlements,” and see unions as who they are, “We the People!” Not “bandits.”
But my city’s major rag, the U-T, is feeling just the opposite of me. They supported Carl DeMaio for mayor and Mitt Romney for the presidency, two men who seem to have absolutely no ties with the world in which I reside.
They live in luxury surrounded by a whole lot of people who, like them, think conservatively, an approach to life that works out splendidly for them and I hang out in a reality that’s so rich in diversity I can’t help but think idealistically with my soul and heart wide open. I mean there’s a little of everybody surrounding me. What’s sad is these fat cats ignore my world and its pursuit of the American Dream with an uncanny kind of ease.
I never got to know their nominee, DeMaio, and I’m a man on the go. But, Bob Filner, he’s my friend, my bro. I’ve highfived and bear hugged that dude for about three decades or so. He’s everywhere I go: at marches in the streets, at rallies in our parks, at the border and at our universities in behalf of the homeless, people of color, women’s rights, and the LGBT community. If there’s a gathering around issues of justice and peace, you’re likely to find both him and me.
So much of my joy springs from seeing my city finally evolving into what, for fifty years, I’ve wanted it to become, a city run by someone who I can relate to politically. Fifty years! Please excuse my tears of ecstasy.
And that Mitt Romney they wanted to send to DC? He calls me a deadbeat. So he could never serve me. Or anyone like me.
But, in this rapture that has a hold on me, I see a smiling Sam Cooke smiling down on us and again he reminds us: “It’s been a long, a long time coming, but I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will.”
It’s like I’m sitting on a perch on a hill and everything is still while a candle light shines on the dark places in our society, a little glow, struggling to stay lit as if it’s in the path of a hearty breeze, so we, collectively, can see our way to better ways of being.
And the change comes to us through a new generation that is rising, lifting itself high above the thinking of any previous era America has ever been witness to.
Barack Obama was chosen in part by young people of a wide range of colors and creeds; people whose brunch with friends isn’t threatened by a man marrying a man or a woman a woman; people who know the news before it makes the news; people who see the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump for the pompous and hateful lumps of humanity they happen to be; people who recently started asking “Why?” carrying signs signifying “Occupy!”; people who have Asked Jeeves and googled and observed and learned the intricacies of their world through gadgets and technologies that have taken the concept of questioning to unimaginable degrees; people who know now, more so than any of the people who came before them on their family tree, how co-opted our democracy is by a category of the rich and powerful that represents a menace to our human fraternity – the greedy.
Some of the change has already come because no matter how hard the media of San Diego tried to sway them otherwise, voters went to the polls and rejected a mayoral candidate’s coldhearted attempt to bring unions to its knees, and turned a deaf ear to a presidential candidate’s lies and philosophical inconsistencies. And since learning begats learning who knows what they will eventually come to do and see.
We can now help the president do what’s needed to make our country a beacon in a world of unreason. We can help him keep habeus corpus alive as the Bill of Rights prescribes. We can help him revise our nation’s drone war policies. We can help him focus on the sins that plague our inner cities. We can help him cease the tortures, the wars, the ignoring of international laws, generally. We can call on our collective ingenuity to create J-O-B’s beyond Mickey D’s and stimulate the economy.
I know more changes are gonna come and it would be nice if the San Diego Union-Tribune came along and joined the fun of helping our new mayor and our president define the change that Sam sang of. They could play a pivotal role as we ponder more and more how our nation can contribute to the making of a better world in a spirit of love.
But it’s up to them if they want to keep on trucking. The change is irreversible. Oh, it makes me giggily.
Ernie McCray
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Ernie- I’m dancing with you! I loved the lines “I hang out in a reality that’s so rich in diversity I can’t help but think idealistically with my soul and heart wide open. I mean there’s a little of everybody surrounding me.” That’s how I feel too. That’s how many of us feel. & that’s a very good thing.
Truly a very good thing.
It truly is a “very good thing” to have a “little of everybody surrounding me.” Those Fat Cats not only dismiss the rest of us, but in many cases are afraid of the modern world.
You’re right that the younger voters (and some of us oldsters) “know the news before it makes the news.” Great observation. Great article.
Thank you, amiga.
And, I wish Nancy could have been here to see how far we’ve come as a nation beyond Obama being voted in back in 2008.
She knows, Ernie. Nancy knows, as does Bob.
Ernie, thanks!
My pleasure.
I believe the change will come. I also believe we owe an individual responsibilty to make that change happen. I too live in an exteremly diverse environment. Sometimes i felt overwhelmed by the biggotry and hate from my very own” piers. “How can they be so narrow minded in this day and age. I’m so sick of people claiming to be republican and wanting less government when it is only as long as it suits them.The banks screwed us yes, but how many of us screwed ourselves by overborrowing when we knew it was too much? Took a lot of crap for being a woman for Obama. Don’t care! I’m elated we have a president that was elected mostly from grassroots action. Hope congress can learn to get along. Can’t wait to see what comes!
Yeah, if Congress learned to get along we’d be writing a nice song.
i was so happy the day after election day. i sang all the way to work. everyone on the bus was happy and said what a great day it was. my family was happy and exchanged texts and emails of joy! and then i got to work and it was quiet time because a lot of the people i work with are republicans. didn’t want to gloat. then home again and on the phone with friends and emails with friends and the joy reigned unconfined again.
o happy day when barack won! and de maio lost! o happy day.
Twas joyful.
I’m still grinning… not just Obama and Filner, but Elizabeth Warren, Alan Grayson, Tammy Baldwin, Tammy Duckworth, Sherrod Brown, Sheldon Whitehouse, Bernie Sanders, Chris Murphy, Maizie Hirono, Debbie Stabenow, Amy Klobuchar, Claire McCaskill, Kirsten Gillibrand, Ann Kuster, Louise Slaughter, Dianne Feinstein… and it looks like Scott Peters, too!
Louise Slaughter keeps her seat in NY
So much to celebrate!
ERNIE … YOU – R – D – MAN!: A genius like no other. But always remember, it takes one to know one (yuk-yuk-yuk). When I grow up … I want to be just like U! While I have been in the State of Arkansas over the past seven years, I still (and will forever) see San Diego and the world from the same perspective as you. While I have refered President Obama’s rival as a greasy headed snake oil salsesperson, someon recently topped me by calling him a: “Brylecream (sp?) Maniac.” A recap of the arrogant and ignorant blunders made by the Elephant Party’s cast of millions would make a best selling comic book!!!! I leave you with the words of a very popular R & B tune from our younger days: “And that’s what happens when the gett’n gets good!”
So good, so good, so good, so good… I remember the teachers didn’t want to play it at school functions because it was “sinful” and that’s what we liked.
My friend, Ernie Mccray puts well a forecast of the changes to come!
Thanks Ernie. You are the best.
Thank you, my friend.