Change in America, if you can keep it

November 6th, 2008 by yaman | Posted in Journal |

As soon as Obama finished giving his acceptance speech, crowds of students began to gather in the streets of Berkeley. By the time I melded myself into the march somewhere on Durant Avenue, hundreds of students had already amassed. We ran down Durant feeling that a huge weight was off our shoulders, that there were only better days ahead. As we rejoiced, preparing to say goodbye forever to those familiar faces of the Bush regime, it dawned on me that we had no idea where we were going. Where was this march headed?

No one really knew, but we kept going, cheering the whole way. Eventually someone yelled, “to the library,” so there we went, our high spirits annoying those who were trying to study for midterms. Whenever the banality of our pit stop struck us, we simply started marching again. Soon we headed down to Shattuck where we paused somewhere around the BART station. We stood there again roaring in ecstasy about the win. When we got bored again, we kept moving until we found another similarly neutral, meaningless location to rest at until we yet again became restless. There was no organization to the march, no one there to tell us what the win would mean for us, no stops at locations with any political significance. It was more of a happiness movement, than a political one. At least we’d been delivered from the Bush years.

As we wandered randomly from one stop to another, anywhere so long as we kept moving and rejoicing, it became obvious that our mutual excitement about a Barack Obama win was accompanied by little else. “Obama, Obama, Obama,” and “yes, we can,” were our chants of choice. When one would fall to a whimper, the other would start again. When those became repetitive, we knew little else to sing about. Eventually it was only about the glory as someone started the Cal Fight Song, irrelevant as it was to the election. Then we heard the Star Spangled Banner, as if we were voting for a country to adopt and America had won the contest. We might as well have been celebrating a football game. You could say maybe that it was an ineffable moment., but beyond words is not a good place for a movement to be.

The cheers reflected a huge disconnect between the national scene and the local one for students. Despite the humongous march, and the many stops, and even the muffled and occasional calls for speeches, there was not a single person amongst us who dared try to give one, or even who we could expect to rise to the occasion. We needed someone to tell us what this election meant, what would happen next. We wanted a speech, but nobody knew what to say. When the lack of response became embarrassing, we simply started rooting for Obama again.

Our festive group had little idea what it wanted. Change, which we got. Obama, which we got. Yes we can, which we can, yes, get. But not once did we chant on any specific policies. Nothing about no more wars; nothing about the environment; nothing about affirmative action; nothing about homophobia, sexism, and racism (a few isolated “no on 8″ chants notwithstanding); nothing about health care or billion-dollar bailouts. Nothing on student loans, nothing on higher education, nothing on freedom of speech. They all seemed to be second to Obama. We knew we wanted change, but we didn’t care to say the words that would allow us to hold the Democratic party accountable for our specific demands, should it fail to deliver. Did we want those things, or did we only want Obama? Did Obama even mean those things to us? Did we care if he didn’t?

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I went through high school and most of college under the Bush administration. Every social issue I ever learned about, fixing it was always a matter for “the long haul.” In these times of never-ending wars, arrogant, disrespectful, and unresponsive government, we always had to fight for everything in “the long term.” Well, Obama now has a long term ahead of him in which he can try to deliver on all these demands for change. We can’t take it for granted, though, that a win for Obama is a win for progressive policies, even if–maybe–it will inaugurate a progressive mood. One hopes that the Democratic party and the Obama administration have a little more direction than our happy crowd did, or we will have to remind them that we did not support them for the sake of supporting Democrats, but because we wanted them to do what we want them to do. We can hope, now, that these won’t be four more years of the same violent Bush rhetoric and policies; but surely, they will be four years of holding Obama and the Democratic party accountable for what they’ve promised and what we’ve asked for, rather than letting the mesmerizing aura stilt our principles and expectations.

Tags: barack obama, berkeley