This diary was going to be different. But then I read rexymeteorite's touching Daily Kos diary "On Being Poor" and decided that I would take a slightly different tack, using a bit more personal story and a bit less quoted material and statistics.
This is my first diary on Daily Kos. As I have told others since I joined around a week ago, though I am a new registered user here, I have been around, lurking, for years. I suffered through Lamont/LieberFraud, watched the Primary Wars (when I supported Obama) and have been here since. Reading and watching.
I signed up a week ago after I learned about the proposed tax "compromise" by Barack Obama. That was my breaking point, so to speak. I realized I had to start speaking out against what I was seeing.
I am a very poor person of ethnic minority status. I live in the projects and am unemployed. I have been unemployed well beyond the 99'ers and probably won't be employed again anytime soon. I live day to day, week to week, check to check.
I have never owned a car, or any other means of transportation save a bicycle. I live in a region of the United States where winter is bitter. I have to take the bus pretty much anywhere, and that includes to Wal-Mart (I hate it, but it's the cheapest) to buy groceries. I often have to do just this in the dead of winter and navigate a considerable walk back to my apartment building while watching I dont fall on ice in the street and sidewalks.
My apartment is around 575 square feet or so. I have lived here around a decade. I've seen the rats, dealt with the unending drafts that come from living in a high-rise and have endured the looks that come when I tell people I live in "one of those places." You know, the ghetto.
I know poverty, and have known it my entire adult life. I am not bitter, though. I am thankful for what I have and hopeful for what I can do in and with my life.
I am a Progressive, and have been for as long as I was politically conscious. What this means, for me, is that I value reason over ignorance, community over individual and principles over personality.
I am willing to sacrifice my own wishes, even sometimes my own needs, so that justice is done and progress is served.
And that's what I thought I was getting in my president when I voted for him in 2008. And when I did all I could do (admittedly not as much as many given my circumstances) to help him get elected.
I believed he shared my principles. I believed he felt as I do. I was proud that FINALLY a person of color would be the President Of The United States. Had I had the money, I would have gone to the historic Inauguration.
My how 2 years can change things.
When President Barack Obama told me he would rather be a really good one term president than a mediocre two-term president, I both believed and admired him for it. I thought that was a courageous, bold attitude to take. Particularly for a person who was in a position of such power and acclaim.
I rolled with the public option going down. I accepted the disappointment of Bush Co. being allowed to be, in my opinion, above the law. I cringed at the Teabaggers.
I stood by my president, though all of that.
Now, though, I have come to a fork in the road. I want to continue to walk in one direction and President Obama wants to walk in another direction. A different direction than I thought he wanted to walk in when I voted for him in 2008. A direction Republicans are cheering for and crowing about and a direction that is demoralizing many progressives and presidential allies.
I now question whether President Obama's statement about wanting to be a great one-term President versus a mediocre two-term president meant anything and wonder if it was just the words of another ambitious politician who cares more about his own power than he does about his policies. Or whether his opposition to the Bush Tax Cuts in 2008 meant anything, either.
I hear murmurs from Democratic consultants that Obama believes that campaigns and governing are two different things, and it makes me feel as though I was a naive fool to believe what he said on the campaign trail. Did he only care about getting elected? It's a difficult question I find myself and many other good Democrats asking now.
One of the most personally hurtful developments I have seen since the announcement of the tax cut "compromise" is what appears to me as a base, almost unfathomable turn to what I view as tribalism among some of Obama's supporters. And, I must add, what I view as the turning to tribalism by Obama's allies in a cynical, calculated way to try to quash dissent among justifiably shocked and outraged liberals and progressives throughout the country.
I think most here know what I'm talking about. We have, unfortunately, seen these thoughts spring up all over the place in the last week or so. Threats. Bullying. Distractions lined with a racial bent. All with the same intent, in my opinion: Shut the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party up. You know, the Privileged White Trust Fund People. The Whiners. The Stupid.
The people who actually believed what they heard in 2008 and thought they were getting a progressive president.
Those people.
Chicago is known for many things, as is David Axelrod. One of those things, good or bad, that Chicago is known for is racial politics. One of the things that David Axelrod is known for is his working with black candidates and helping them do well with white voters.
Another thing David Axelrod is well-known for is being the supposed Father Of Astroturfing.
Barack Obama, of course, was a community organizer. And God bless him for that. Corporations and businesses need to be held accountable for their crimes against working people.
A common and effective technique for community organizing is the usage of pressure tactics to achieve a goal. And this has been done many times to achieve just and good ends, like when Color Of Change helped organize a petition drive against Fox News' racist reporting.
Here's the problem though: What happens if and when pressure tactics are used against allies? What happens if liberals and progressives -- good people who supported a candidate or a party -- become targets of a cynical political strategy that might include calling any dissenters, no matter how well-intentioned, "racists?"
Chaos happens. Shattered alliances happen. Destroyed trust happens.
Saying goodbye to once-proud supporters and their votes happens.
Do you think David Axelrod, a man who has apparently specialized in working with black candidates, and a man who hails from a city that is known for its racial politics, understands the political utility of the White Guilt concept?
Do you think that the purported master of AstroTurfing would understand the value in sending out people to various sites on the internet to "rein-in" those damned progressives -- many of them white -- who are incredibly upset that the man he advises, President Obama, wants to give $700 billion to the rich when people like me have nothing?
Do you think Barack Obama, the community organizer, would know if his team/supporters were using pressure tactics against supposed allies?
Do you think Team Obama -- the group that seemed to feel that Bill Clinton was race-baiting during the 2008 primary season but has since made up with Clinton -- stands on principle when it comes to matters of race? If they do, then why is Obama weakening himself by having "racist" Bill Clinton take over for him as a press conference/briefing?
These are questions to consider.
It is my contention that Team Obama is playing a very disturbing game of racial politics at the moment, in an effort to quell dissent to their obscene tax "deal." I see what I feel are instances of crude but systematized propaganda on this and many other sites. Don't ask me to name names, I have already made my feelings known in previous comments.
A common method of these efforts, I feel, is an appeal to tribalism and/or White Guilt. The short version of these appeals, in my opinion, goes something like this:
Blacks still love Obama, and will continue to, even if his tax deal or other future legislation he supports/brokers sucks
Minorities, in general, love Obama and will continue to even if the tax deal or other future legislation he supports/brokers sucks
If you are white and don't like the tax compromise or other future legislation Obama supports/brokers, you might be rich, racist, privileged, oblivious to Minority America, etc
For any true progressive or liberal, in my opinion, an emotional appeal (or retreat) to tribalism is an affront. We are the party of reason, of intellect, of justice.
You want to see what tribalism looks like, in its ugly reality? Like this.
That's right. The stupid, ignorant white Teabaggers belittling and marginalizing The Black Guy in some ugly, stereotyped way. And it's all good to them, because they're white and he's black. Defend the whites from the scary, caricatured Black Guy.
Here's a sad truth that those such as Colbert King and others going down the tribalist route need to think hard about: If you reflexively defend a black president, even when he makes unconscionable deals, you're acting just like the racist Teabaggers who make signs like the one linked to above. You are part of the problem, in my mind, and thus a hindrance to a just and progressive solution. You are rejecting reason for emotion, you are choosing to follow the "Lizard Brain" instead of the higher mental functions.
And I do not, and will not, stand with you. Ever. Just as I will never stand with the Teabaggers.
Barack Obama is an educated, intelligent man. He beat the Clinton machine. He routed the Republicans at that lunch he attended, whatever it was (televised).
He doesn't need my pity or condescension. He doesn't need my retreat, or yours, to tribalism in order to defend him.
He stands on his own two feet. He is my president, and that means that I will praise him when he does well and dissent against him when he does poorly.
Same as anyone else.
He earned that right. EARNED it. And I will not belittle him by pretending to treat him any differently.
I suggest others do the same, before you lose your entire base to such tactical blundering.
I am poor. I am a minority. I am a progressive.
And I am gone if this tax deal passes as it stands. President Obama will have lost my vote and I will be seeking alternatives in 2012.
I don't want a pat on the head while the rich wheelbarrow away $700 billion dollars. I will sacrifice, if need be, from my meager income to help ensure fairness and equality.
I don't want my "friends" attacking me because I point out that the emperor has no clothes.
I want justice. That's what I voted for in 2008.
Call your congressmen and congresswomen. And your senators. This tax compromise bill is wrong, and it should be stopped.
Stopping it could just save a presidency.
joanneleon has a great diary about how to take action (numbers to call, sites to go to) to stop this tax cut "deal" disaster that will help the rich and hurt the poor.
This fight is not over. But in order to aid progress, we must take action now. Obama asked us to help him make the right decisions. Let's do our part at this critical time.
