It has been several presidential elections since I conceded to vote for evil, the lesser of two evils that is, a capitulation in the face of fear. I just decided one day that that was an absurd notion.  My grandmother after all was one who would say to someone who proclaimed that they were “only playing the devil’s advocate” that the devil didn’t need an advocate.  I was clear that I wanted people who were, presumably, serving me in the practice of democracy, to not only be intelligent but also to share more of my vision for the planet and it’s many peoples.  The recent presidential election has really made me think and rethink why I vote and who I vote for.  There was no candidate who was quite as progressive as I feel is needed to really forward the causes of world peace through creating societies which as a minimum thermometer of their greatness feed all their people, see that all their citizens have access to quality education, health care, and housing, made sure that every person who wanted to work could work in jobs where their labors were respected and acknowledged with a living wage.  Cynthia McKinney certainly came closest and she is certainly no kind of evil, but then neither, I believe, is Barak Obama. But both his rhetoric and his political voting track record show a troubling acceptance of the military-industrial complex that seems to be calling to many of the world’s shots, be it in Europe or America, China or Russia, Israel or Iraq. His strategies still seem too close to imperialism with all of its demonic propensities.

    But when election night came, after cheering with (most of) my night Tuesday night poetry class when the electoral vote passed 270 and then 300 I let them out early to rush to my daughter’s home to share a bottle of champagne with her and her husband and watch the acceptance speech. The world destroying, humanity denying, conservative forces in this country were put at bay at least for the moment.  There were many reasons for us to celebrate.

    Now many pundits think that black people voted for Obama in such large numbers because well, he was black. That he was seen by us as the far better candidate seemed barely relevant.  But race did play a role in the vote. As a friend says, “We voted for him not because he is Black, but because we are Black.”  That is we voted in such huge numbers for his election  because we understood that we, and thus the nation and the world, would be better off if he was in office.  As the canaries in America’s  coal mine we know that our quality of life is the meter that shows how much air is left for others to take in.  The recession that has recently hit middle America is already a depression for Black Americans.   And then there is this- I live in a neighborhood where I see youth in my neighborhood slinging drugs at thirteen and fourteen years old, younger brothers and sister sometimes hanging out in the doorway with them, though it is far past their the time when they should have been put to bed. I have been to juvenile halls and read poetry and had young women write poems about loving themselves had young men craft verse about what it really means to be a man. With Obama at the helm, all of these young people can aim higher, understand a life potential that they might not have held onto as solidly, if at all. I know that having Obama as president will be good for all of them in ways we can’t measure. It has changed their mindset.  Things they believed impossible have come to pass which calls into question what else is possible.

    I cannot unravel the political hype from the truths of Obama’s soul, but I know that since Obama began his run I have seen far more visions of thoughtful, eloquent, conscious black men in the media than I have see in a long time.  Not television soap operas but real, thinking doing men.  This is good for all of us, and by that I mean all people, not just all Black people. Still, post election,  a South Bay city police chief saw no harm in telling her police officers to stop each and every Black men they saw and “congenially” talk to them to see if they were part of a recent crime spree. (She has since apologized, but that was a forced reaction.)  Also in California Black people seem to be taking the brunt of the blame for the passage of Proposition 8 despite our relative small numbers in the state electorate.  Some white gays have publically proclaimed their right to call black people niggers because a majority of   black people supported Proposition 8 passage. (As did a majority of European-Americans, a majority of Asians and a majority of Latinos.) My father and I laugh about the fact that we personally don’t know any Black people who voted for it.  We don’t doubt that Black religious conservatives, misled and stuck on dogma did weigh in more often than those of us who resisted, but not in enough numbers to have defined the election results. What I am trying to say is that it is beyond ridiculous to think that the election of Obama is a panacea for racism and that we will all be singing kumba ya my lord and link arms and work together without rancor from here on out..  But still there are at least other visions besides the absentee fathers, the dope addicted brothers, the foul talking thuggish youth that fill our televisions.  There are broader ideals of Black manhood being projected around the world, and that is good.

    My friends and family received international phone calls and emails cheering us on.  People, they always said, were dancing in the streets.  After years there is a leader who thinks, who reads, who reasons, and who has a vision that is not rooted in death and dominion. But we are far from out of the woods. The problem now is not now a problem of leadership, it is a problem of resolve.  If it was we, the people, who put Obama in office, it must be we, the people, who demand that he fulfill the promise of his candidacy.  We can not stand quietly and allow a conservative leaning cabinet be put into place.  We must press that the table that discusses the economy include unions, progressive economists and not simply Clinton era retreads. We must demand that the conversation which speaks of taxing the upper class and bringing relief to the middle class be enlarged until it also includes  the needs of the working class, the underclass, yes the usually unmentioned, and almost always ignored poor.  We must take the time to write, petition and demonstrate our demand that the United States retool itself as a force for peace and insist that an expanded war in Afghanistan is not the answer.  We must pragmatically continue to call into question his position on Palestine and ask him to listen not only to us but to the significant Israeli peace movement for solutions that honor Palestine, it’s people and their right to a viable state while allowing for the existence of Israel.  We must make him reconsider his stand on capital punishment.  In short our work was not simply to elect Obama our work was to turn the country in a better direction.  And that urgent work continues.