Senator Barack Obama supporters are very passionate about his words and phrases, quoting them back to us to try to convince us that we should vote for him, things like "the fierce urgency of now" and "I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington.....I'm asking you to believe in yours."
It makes me feel very uneasy because he seems so out of touch with the last decade of our lives; as if he is unaware that we are the hardened veterans of many battles over the past 7 years; the survivors of the many marches, protests, arrests, and "free speech zones" that we have endured trying to bring that "fierce urgency" of change about long before Senator Obama was elected to the Senate in 2005. It makes you wonder where he was and what was occupying his mind that he speaks as if we have been waiting, and waiting, and waiting for someone to arrive to save us instead of fighting these urgent battles to save our country pretty much on our own. It flirts with condescension and it makes me wary; we know that we hear him but I’m not so sure he hears us.
Because we have voices just as eloquent. What could be more eloquent than a mother sitting in a hot Texas ditch outside Crawford asking year after year why her son, and thousands of our sons and daughters, were dead? What is more eloquent than a group of grandmothers confronting military recruiters and asking to take their grandchildren’s places in far off Iraq? What is more heroic and eloquent than an injured soldier being used for propaganda saying, "that isn’t the way it happened" and then telling her story? How can we believe that change will come now if we just believe when the passionate eloquency of our Iraqi veterans did not persuade our government representatives to believe them?
And after all our united voices failed to bring any change, how can any politician ask us to just believe that real change will miraculously occur when he enters Our White House? Once, we did believed that we could change our world and we believed that we had the power to change our government with our eloquence, with reason, and with our vote - yet in spite of our best efforts, our sacrifices and our suffering we have been proven wrong over and over again these past 7 years.
Why didn’t our combined efforts succeed in bringing change in our government? The answer lies not with our lack of passion or lack of action, but in the hallowed halls of the Senate and the House, in the roll call of their votes. Make no mistake, our belief in the infallibility of our Constitution fell on the sword of those votes that muffled our voices and criminalized our actions, and handed unprecedented Power to the very person we demanded it be taken away from.
A few still fighting for Change and needing some help from their peers
And if you believe this coming election has put fear into the Bush administration and the Republican party, you should look closely at this exchange between our newly appointed Attorney General Michael Mukasey and one of the few representatives who dares to challenge the government status quo, Robert Wexler. During a February 8 Judiciary Committee meeting, Congressman Wexler bluntly asked Mukasey if he would enforce a contempt of Congress citation against Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten for refusing to testify before Congress. In spite of the Republican party facing almost certain defeat in November, this man so recently confirmed by the Senate, said NO.
But Congressman Wexler, named one of the "50 Most Effective Legislators in Congress" by the Congressional Quarterly, did not back down when faced with this defiant "No". "Watch his reply to the Attorney General’s refusaland read his written statement
We can debate the need for Impeachment hearings. We can argue its effects on the election or our agenda. But one thing is abundantly clear
...If Congress' right to require testimony is undermined, then our country's leaders - Democrat, Republican, or Independent - will be immune from accountability...To have it effectively discarded - by virtue of the President instructing Administration officials to ignore a congressional subpoenas and not even appear before Congress - is unprecedented. The idea that the Attorney General would willingly defend this position - despite Congress' constitutional right to call such witnesses, is outrageous.
This is something that doesn’t require faith and belief from We the People; this is something that requires action and Senator Obama can use his speaking skills and his position as a Senator and a presidential candidate to help change this "No" issued by our Judicial Branch of government. According to his biography, Senator Obama is a teacher of the Constitution. He should know the slippery slope this puts us on. If he becomes president, these unprecedented executive powers become his and without the checks and balances of our Constitution that he once taught. The day for Senator Obama’s "fierce urgency of now" has come for him. If he intends to keep his promises and leave a better world that our combined efforts could not, then he must join Congressman Wexler in his quest to keep the Constitutional checks and balances viable; there is no alternative, he can not abstain from this fight.
Congressman Wexler has been waging a lonely battle to make changes in our government since 2000 when his Congressional district was embroiled in the Florida fiasco which resulted in the Supreme Court confirming George W. Bush as president. He was one of three Congressmen (John Conyers, D-MI, Jerrold Nadler, D-NY ) requesting that the General Accountability Office investigate the 2004 election.
In December, he launched a petition drive to force Congress to put impeachment for Dick Cheney back "on the table" and received over 100,000 responses from We the People in five days. As his petition drive spread across the net the numbers increased and on January 15, 2008 Congressman Wexler delivered his petition containing almost 200,000 (now 225,977 and still rising) names to Congress asking that Judiciary Chairman Conyers take up former presidential candidate and Congressman Dennis Kuchinch’s impeachment articles against Vice President Cheney. To date 16 members of Congress have joined him. Only 17 members from the 435 members of Congress.
Baldwin, Tammy, WI, 2nd *
Capuano, Michael E., MA, 8th
Clarke, Yvette D., NY, 11th
Clay, Wm. Lacy, MO, 1st
Cohen, Steve, TN, 9th *
Farr, Sam, CA, 17th
Grijalva, Raúl M., AZ, 7th
Gutierrez, Luis V., IL, 4th *
Kucinich, Dennis J., OH, 10th
Lee, Barbara, CA, 9th
Moore, Gwen, WI, 4th
Moran, James P., VA, 8th
Thompson, Mike, CA, 1st
Towns, Edolphus, NY, 10th
Woolsey, Lynn, CA, 6th
Wexler, Robert, FL, 19th *
Wynn, Albert Russell, MD, 4th
If we are to really change our government, there should be many more adding their voices in support - if they truly want change. Actions speak more loudly than words; especially words spoken on the campaign trail; but it does not appear that losing our vote is striking fear into the hearts of incumbent Congressmen or Senators.
The division in the Senate over Senator Chris Dodd’s opposition to the FISA bill also lends credence to the belief that there isn’t much focus on changing the present agenda. Senator Dodd left his presidential campaign many times to trek back to speak out and take actions on his beliefs. Did it cost him votes? Did we really deviate from our path of demanding action that would change things and follow people with the least amount of service working for real change in the Senate? Although, to be fair, Senator Clinton not only returned to the Senate to cast her vote with Senator Dodd but also spoke out eloquently on the Senate floor. We voters who are demanding change will not forget that; she was there to support Senator Dodd in his efforts to prevent passage of the FISA bill and we will remember.
And there are more like these two men and we know their names and we want to add more of them to our Legislative Branch of government because we do believe we can begin to take back our country but it will take more than just believing there is a Knight in shinning armor riding in to save us.
Once this strange and divisive process of electing a leader is done the winner will be faced with those same voices of We the People that have never shut up over the last 7 years because it will remain a long and dirty process, an arduous battle with the same Senators and Representatives who have not "addressed our Grievances" over the last 7 years. It will take all of those elected to protect us from "government that is destructive" sticking their necks out and taking the risk right along with us instead of making us feel we have done too little, too late.
So many of our politicians said the right words and negated their words with their votes. But we weren’t standing around just watching and waiting for Change in 2009. We began working for change after the 2000 Florida election while the Protectors of Our Constitution (Supreme Court) were deciding the Florida election. Millions of we voters marched to change Bush’s march to war in Iraq in 2003. And we "surged" to the polls in 2004 and 2006 to change the political ideology of our Legislators.
But it’s 2008 and the Senators and Congressmen we elected to change our government seem to have no more power to do so than we did. They should already have been on board the Change Train, not waiting for us to clear the tracks for them in November because, unfortunately for them, that train left the station long ago and they need to hustle if they want to catch up. So, to all you politicians asking for our vote to give you unprecedented power over our lives for the next four years either lead our war against authoritarian power, follow our lead, or get out of our way; because this train of dissatisfied voters continues to gather steam rather than waiting for someone to start the engine.
Many of us are tired of the insider bickering and motivational speeches; it’s time for all of you to ask not what you can do to further your ambitions, but what you can do to help us save Our Country. Believe a martyred president being invoked this election year once said something similar...