This Tuesday, I was in Northwest Indiana, helping coordinate a massive GOTV canvass for Obama's campaign.
When I came into the office in the wee hours of the morning, some friends of mine in the office showed me an internet news article, accompanied by this picture:
By seabrook at 2008-05-07
This image momentarily put me on edge. But, soon after seeing it, I forgot all about it, as I re-immersed myself in the world of "turfs," "tiering," "canvass training," and the rest.
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Then, after spending half of the day "underwater" in the canvassing world, our canvass coordinator approached me with a stern face. He told me that our office manager was on the phone with the campaign, and that when he got off, some of us needed to attend a closed-door meeting with him. A few minutes later, a handful of us crammed into the "turf printing" room. Our office manager looked shaken. He told us that some offices within the state had received bomb threats.
He told us not to worry, that it was almost certainly a "hoax." That someone was trying to throw us off our game. None of us looked too confident, though.
My mind ran.
I thought about my friends, old SDS-ers, who sometimes tell me stories about having been threatened by the Klan when they set up offices in southern states back in the 1960s. I thought about bricks through windows. About the epithet "faggots" that is etched in the window of a gay bar around the corner from my house. I remembered the picture of Obama's vandalized office. My mind went other places as well.
I realized that the fear I felt in that moment is, and has always been, part-and-parcel of the experience of progressive activists. I knew I wasn't alone in my fear.
But fear wasn't the only emotion I was feeling in that office, in Northwest Indiana.
I was also feeling determined. Steeled. Passionate. I wasn't going to be thrown off my game. I knew my fellow canvass coordinators weren't either. Our eyes were on the prize, and this only encouraged us to redouble our efforts. Whoever called in those bomb threats wanted us to get nervous, distracted. I sure as hell wasn't going to let that happen.
And you should have seen us work this past Tuesday afternoon. We were on top of our game. You would have been proud.
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To a certain extent, I believe that the politics of any movement can be judged by the emotions that it activates in its participants. Does it foster an openness to novelty? Does it pull its members down into the muck of resentment, defensiveness, suspiciousness, fear and hatred? Does it encourage aggressiveness, assertiveness or passivity? In short, you can judge a political movement in part by how it makes you feel, and how it encourages you to act.
Politics is not simply lived in our heads. It is also lived in our hearts, our guts, and our pores. Politics can make our eyes well up, or our shoulders tense up. It can make us shout, scream, and groan; inspire us to great acts of generosity, or horrific acts of brutality. It can encourage us to nurse grudges, or heal old wounds.
This past Tuesday, I felt myself to be part of a politics that is about standing one's ground in the face of hate, and standing up for progress, change, justice and equality.
This past Tuesday, in an Obama field office in Northwest Indiana, I felt proud to be a part of this movement........
Our movement.... Your movement.