I'm not asking anyone to change their minds or to take a certain path or other or to do any action at all other than ...
... IMAGINE.
Just take a moment here and imagine:
Hillary and Edwards and Obama have a joint press conference and say:
"We are all Democrats and we believe that the issues of race, gender and class must not divide us in this election year. We have instructed each of our staffs to refrain from any public statements that would paint any of us as other than inclusive and fully acknowledging that the civil rights and essential human dignity of too many Americans in this country have not been fulfilled as promised in our Constitution and in our own hearts as Americans, and all of us pledge, if elected, to work hard to forward the cause of equality in this country. If anyone who is supporting any of us uses these issues to divide the voters we will each loudly and clearly reject that kind of speech. We believe that your vote as Americans should be based on what you feel are important issues for this country and which of us you think will deal best with those issues."
Imagine the three leading candidates taking this national discussion of race and gender as an opportunity to show that the Democratic Party is more reflective of America than the all white man slate of Republicans now running for President. Imagine them showing leadership in this area and cracking down hard on anyone who tries to use division to promote them as candidates.
Just imagine.
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Anyone who has been following post-Katrina recovery in New Orleans is aware of the privatization of rebuilding, huge contracts going towards demolition because that's where the federal dollars are, not enough transparency in who is getting those federal, state and local dollars, and too many good citizens being shut out of the decision making process when it comes to public planning, civic planning.
Imagine if this idea by Melissa Harris-Lacewell became a reality (emphasis mine):
Well, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King already told us that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And that is true in this case. That the people of New Orleans and of the Gulf Coast, the survivors of Katrina are the miners' canaries of our nation, right? That we know that the miners took the canaries down into the mine because canaries have sensitive respiratory systems. So if a noxious gas was released into the mine, the canary would die first. And this was an indication that the miners should get out. So, when the vulnerable people of New Orleans are-- and-- and of the Gulf Coast and all of the survivors of Katrina are treated as tools to enrich the powerful, this is a miners' canary for the rest of us. Be clear, you are not safe anywhere from corruption. You are not safe anywhere from this kind of profiteering. You are not safe anywhere if we don't look at the very simple sort of policy choices that we could have made.
For example, a huge communal land grab of the lower ninth ward. In other words, set up a CDC. Excuse me. A community development corporation, so that instead of each individual homeowner somehow trying to rebuild their houses, you set up a community based development that allows of the block to be built all together at once, instead of one house at a time, right? And then, you allow this community development corporation, a non-profit, to hold the interest of the homeowners and sell back to the homeowners. Instead, what we did was we wrote checks to poor and working people most of whom had mortgages on their destroyed homes. So you're standing there and you've got a mortgage and your home is destroyed. You can't rebuild with that check. You pay off your mortgage with it. Now, you're standing there with nothing. These were simple things. We could have made a community development corporation. We could have forgiven, in a mass way. We could have done what we did with the S&L bail outs. And we could have bailed out mortgage holders, simply wiping away their mortgages because of this. So, we had very clear tools. And instead, we decided to make this an opportunity for profit. An opportunity for profit driven real estate speculators to come in and make money from this.
Imagine public service replacing private profit as a driving force in America. Just imagine it.
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Imagine all of our Democratic candidates clearly and simply explaining the Progressive view on comprehensive immigration reform and unanimously showing leadership on this issue.
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Imagine the progressive blogs focusing only on the issues and coming up with innovative ways to help solve the terrible problems we face as a nation and as a world. It's not as if we don't have some pretty brilliant folks in the blogosphere. Imagine all of us coming together, the big blogs and the small ones, the local blogs and the single interest blogs, the diversosphere and the whitosphere, and pooling our efforts to help promote change and get the word out to this whole country about what is really happening as opposed to what we are being sold by the mainstream media as "news."
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What takes no imagination at all is to know that we have solutions, we have the tools to implement those solutions, and we all know what the obstacles are to being able to use those tools to create real change and progress in the United States of America (including the obstacles in our own hearts).
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For too long we have had consultants and handlers obscuring our view of the real human beings who are running for office in this country, whether it be on the federal, state or local level. Imagine our being able to see these candidates as human beings who succeed or fail on the merits of their ideas. Imagine that.
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For now, distraction is the name of the game, distraction for the purpose of dividing and conquering the body politic so that the powers that be can continue to rob us of real choices and instead shower us with bread and circuses.
Imagine pulling back the curtain and seeing the Wizard as just another flawed human being.
Imagine.