Glory’s Neighborhood

I am still trying to find things that inspire me & post for my vox hood..but lately I have been drawn into the political fray over the upcoming US election.  With the latest depressing news about US unemployment on the rise & mortgage company failures, it has become very difficult for me to hold back my opinions on this election race.

My attention was drawn to a particular comment made at the RNC by "she-who-must-not-be-named"; it has not been sitting well with me for the past few days, this poking jab at Obama's time as a community organizer (which apparently is an unworthy, mockable waste of time according to the McCain campaign).

So I set out on a brief journey to discover what I could about community organizers, to form my own opinion of their role & value:

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Definition: Community organizing is a process by which disempowered people—most often low- and moderate-income people—are brought together to act in their common self-interest. Community organizers act as area-wide coordinators of programs for different agencies in an attempt to meet community needs for health and welfare services. They also facilitate self-help programs initiated by local common-interest groups, for example, by training local leaders to analyze and solve the problems of a community. Community organizers work actively, as do other types of social workers, in community councils of social agencies and in community-action groups.

The American Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movements, the Chicano movement, the feminist movement, and the gay rights movement all influenced and were influenced by ideas of neighborhood organizing.

Many of the most notable leaders in community organizing today emerged from the National Welfare Rights Organization. John Calkins of DART, Ernesto Cortes of the Industrial Areas Foundation, Wade Rathke of ACORN, John Dodds of Philadelphia Unemployment Project and Mark Splain of the AFL-CIO, among others.

Other famous community organizers include: Jane Addams, César Chávez, Samuel Gompers, Martin Luther King, Jr., John L. Lewis, Ralph Nader, Barack Obama, Pat Robertson, and Paul Wellstone.

Source:  Wikipedia

ACORN: “ACORN members, leaders and staff are extremely disappointed that Republican leaders would make such condescending remarks on the great work community organizers accomplish in cities throughout this country. The fact that they marginalize our success in empowering low- and moderate-income people to improve their communities further illustrates their out-of-touch with ordinary people. Through community organizing, people are empowered to take action to solve their own problems, develop leadership skills and make decisions that improve their lives and their communities.

ACORN has been building organizations and developing leadership among low- and moderate- income residents in neighborhoods throughout the United States  for 38 years. During that time, ACORN chapters have worked individually and collectively to organize innovative grassroots campaigns on a number of critical issues. As the nation’s largest grassroots community organization with more than 400,000 member families, ACORN employs 400 organizers that carry a huge responsibility of helping disenfranchised people in their communities.

In the past 10 years, ACORN has helped more than 30 million American families through our various organizing campaigns: better schools, financial justice, living wages, community improvement, immigration, healthcare, predatory lending, voter engagement and utilities.

Source: ACORN website

DART: The Direct Action and Research Training (DART) Center is committed to building powerful, diverse, congregation-based, and democratically run organizations capable of winning justice on issues facing the community. Since 1982, DART has built and strengthened over twenty local affiliated organizations in six states and trained over 10,000 community leaders and 150 professional community organizers.

Using DART's approach of congregation-based community organizing, local DART affiliates have won victories on a broad set of issues including reading instruction and fair school suspension policies in public schools, new pre-school programming for children from at-risk families, clean-up of drugs and crime, multi-million dollar investments in an affordable housing, reinvestment by banks in previously redlined communities, expansion of effective community-oriented policing, massive multi-million dollar expansions of public transportation, accessible health care reform in several major metropolitan cities, investment in job training for those coming off public assistance, fair immigration policies, and dozens of other issues important to low-income communities.

Source: DART website

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And I found many other organizations led by community organizers, that drive programs for local folks on topics ranging from managing healthcare, finding employment, minimizing violent crime, creating educational programs for children at risk..basically empowering people to take control of their lives.  Based on my research, I think community organizers are pretty dedicated people, who deserve our respect and admiration for taking on causes that support folks in need.

According to the NY Times, it could all be true.  That the McCain campaign did not vet Palin enough and that her experience is severely lacking.  And that this is a window into McCain's soul and his decision making ability.

This is a roll of the dice beyond even Bill Clinton’s imagination. “Often my haste is a mistake,” McCain conceded in his 2002 memoir, “but I live with the consequences without complaint.” Well, maybe it’s fine if he wants to live with the consequences, but what about his country? Should the unexamined Palin prove unfit to serve at the pinnacle of American power, it will be too late for the rest of us to complain.

So does this mean in the end that Palin is truly unfit to be Vice President?  Only time will tell if the voters put them in office.

But one thing is for sure.  Previous "experience" that other politicians had prior to serving in office has not stopped the media elite from criticism of mistakes those individuals made serving the people.  If experience was the end all be all of political success -- then history must show us that career politicians just don't screw up?  They must do everything right!?

Ask Richard Nixon or Harry Truman if their political experience prior to being President helped shield them from the objections they received over the mistakes they made?  Or even George W. Bush?

As for McCain... How come when it is people like the Clintons, there is this awe from the media elite regarding their political prowess and instinct, yet with McCain it is this negativity about his political sixth sense?  Oh yeah, it isn't about having instinct, it is about having instinct on the side of the political aisle you agree with...  too bad that isn't something they will admit...

How about this for a political olfactory sensation?  Hillary running in 2012.

Or how about this one...  People like Obama because he represents fresh blood and a new generation in office.  To me that says why they may like Palin as well and why this inexperience talk may just amount to why people want a fresh breeze in politics.  Because, obviously, those career, experienced politicians in Washington are doing such a bang up job right now...

La fenêtre est rectangulaire. Tout en longueur. les deux panneaux sont grand ouverts. Je suis assise, les bras croisés au repos sur le bord de la petite balustrade en fer forgé. Il est tard dans la nuit. Devant moi, la ville, l'obscurité, et les voies ferrées se mêlent: celles de la gare d'Austerlitz avec celles du RER C. Mais les voies sont au repos. Aucun train ou presque ne vient troubler la nuit. Je laisse mes yeux passer d'un lampadaire à un autre. La douce lumière orange atténue l'encre noire du ciel. Les arbres soigneusement alignés émettent un doux bruissement continu face aux attaques répétées du vent. Mais je n'ai pas froid. Je ne suis pas là. Mon esprit est libre, et vagabonde de rail en rail, le lampadaire en lampadaire, d'arbre en arbre, de néon en néon. Au loin, les lumières rouges du MK2 cassent la monotonie bichrome noir orangée. Une camionnette s'aventure à vive allure sous ma fenêtre. Les pompiers. Mon regard se pose quelques instants sur les barrières le long de la voie. Le grillage longe le trottoir. Un grillage haut, dressé comme un mur infranchissable. Qui est séparé de qui? Qui est enfermé, et qui est libre? Question de point vue. Aucune réponse ne détient la vérité. Je distingue une silhouette au loin sur l'Avenue de France. Le pas est pressé. Je m'attarde quelques secondes à essayer de deviner d'où cet homme vient, et où il va. Mais mon esprit n'arrive pas à rester concentré très longtemps, il passe d'un point à un autre, librement, je ne le retiens pas. Je veux rêver à nouveau. Je veux être capable de ne "rien" faire. C'est un premier exercice, assise ici  en pleine nuit. Une voiture descend la rue en sens inverse et m'arrache à mes pensées. Je me laisse happer par une pensée négative, la déception. La pensée de déception est un jugement qui ne fait souffrir qu'une seule personne, celle qui la décide. Halte. Je n'irai pas plus loin. Doucement, je donne du leste à mon esprit, je le détache, et le laisse partir au loin. Cette fois ci, là haut, vers les étoiles. Le ciel est dégagé. Je me perd dans l'immensité obscure et constellée. Le temps passe mais ne compte plus. Avoir les yeux rivés vers les profondeurs célestes me donne un léger vertige. Une ivresse de l'infini. Je me laisse doucement bercer par le tourbillon du vide. Un groupe bruyant de jeunes me rappelle sur terre. Pareil, que font-ils dans ma petite rue, à cette heure ci? Les filles sont toutes pimpantes et souriantes, ivres de leur jeunesse à peine entamée. Les garçons arrogants et fêtards, insouciants et légers. En les regardant s'éloigner je ne peux m'empêcher de penser à ces vers de Ronsard: "cueillez cueillez votre jeunesse, comme à cette fleur la vieillesse fera ternir votre beauté." Et la vie fera ternir votre insouciance. Un train de marchandises passe. Le bruit et les vibrations sont une provocation au silence apaisant de la nuit. Je me lève. Et je referme la fenêtre. Tout disparait, les lumières, la brise, l'immensité du ciel, les lumières, les rails. Restent les quatre murs. Et le lit.   

It is almost cliché that I am reading E.J. Dionne's Souled Out after enduring two weeks of political convention coverage. It’s hard to believe that I did not plan it like this. I received this book after patiently waiting nearly six months after Minnesota Public Radio promised it as a free gift for my membership. 

I often read Dionne’s articles in the Washington Post and agree with what he writes most of the time. In Souled Out, Dionne attempts to explain why “the era of the Religious Right—and the crude exploitation of faith for political advantage—is over.” Judging by the speeches of last week’s Republican National Convention (Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee, to name a few), I am not so sure I agree with Dionne. 

Souled Out does a marvelous job at showing off Dionne’s knowledge of the political world, especially when it comes to the dynamics of how religion, liberalism, and conservatism clash. As a left-center Roman Catholic, Dionne uses his religious experience (both personal and as a correspondent in the Vatican) to help the reader see how religion influences both politicians and voters. 

While Dionne’s Catholicism offers an in for a secular reader to understand the role of religion in politics, it also throws off the religious balance of his book. Dionne spends a great deal of time in this book showing how Catholicism intersects with politics (offering two chapters on the Catholic angle) while putting forth very little from a Protestant perspective. This also holds true where atheism is concerned. 

With this being said, Dionne is balanced when it comes to the liberal-conservative continuum. Dionne is fair in both his compliments and criticisms of both sides. Using abortion as an example, Dionne exposes the conservatives for using abortion as a single, non-negotiable issue while he criticizes liberals for allowing it to happen. 

As a fellow left-center Catholic, I felt like I was in agreement with many of Dionne’s conclusions, the most important being a statement that liberals are finally taking religion back from the conservatives and not letting them continue to hold a monopoly on religious identification. Dionne remembered the success of a forum on CNN between Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards, where the three discussed the role of religion in their lives. I believe religious liberals need to continue to do this to ward off the right’s many attempts to monopolize religion.

There is a blogger out there named Charles Martin.  He has done us all a favor and put together a comprehensive list of all the Sarah Palin rumors.  Additionally...their debunking.  Some of the best:

3. Yes, she did push for and approve the Wasilla Sports Center. Yes, it did cost a lot of money. (People keep saying $20 million, that article says $14.5 million, but then they also added a $1.2 million dollar food service/kitchen piece. This year, since Palin was out of office as Mayor.) Yes, the city went into debt to do it (how did you buy your house, bunkie?) and raised the city sales tax from 2 percent to 2.5 percent to pay for it. Yes, the city is paying it off early.

5. No, the Downs baby (Trig) isn’t Bristol’s kid, and no, the kid wasn’t born with Downs because (a) Palin flew on an airplane (b) went home to have the baby after an amniotic leak (c) because he was the result of incest between Todd Palin and Bristol.

That last is telling because to even address it highlights the disgusting nature of many of the Palin accusations.

7. No, she’s never been in any porn as far as anyone can find (and God knows I get enough google hits on those very topics.)
8. No, no one seems to be able to even find swimsuit pictures of her from her beauty queen days; God knows I looked. The bikini pictures that are around are photoshopped, just like the Vogue cover I have up.

Sexism?  Anybody on the left want to call sexism?  Anybody? 

10. No, neither the (Canadian) National Post, nor Marc Armbinder at the Atlantic have troubled themselves to issue a correction. Yes, the New York Times did finally correct their story of September 1 — on September 5. This was after Elizabeth Bumiller was quoted by Howard Kurtz as saying she was “completely confident about the story.” Yes, that was after the New York Times’s source retracted the story. Yes, this should embarrass the Times, Bumiller, and Howard Kurtz. No, there have been no signs of embarrassment.

Also the "abuse of power" issue:

21. yes, she did fire the public safety guy — but he said in the Anchorage paper that, for the record, she never, and no one else in her administration ever, tried to make him fire her ex-brother-in-law
22. and yes, the state trooper (her sister’s ex-husband) she was worried about did: tase her 10 year old nephew; drive his state patrol car while drinking or drunk; did threaten to “bring her down”; and did threaten to murder her father and sister if they dared to get an attorney to help with the divorce.
23. yes, the state trooper was suspended when he was put under a court protective order
24. no, the trooper wasn’t fired

There are 50 of these things so far.  That many, and it's been a week and a half.  Obama supporters, please make a trip using the very first link in this post and look at them all.  Criticize her and McCain, but please make it count.

Had to chuckle on this one.

This morning, Republicans tell me that a worker at Invesco Field in Denver saved thousands of unused flags from the Democratic National Convention that were headed for the garbage. Guerrilla campaigning. They will use these flags at their own event today in Colorado Springs with John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Ouch.  Don't you know that flags mean more planted in lawns then in landfills?  <wink>

Show us your favorite person.

Jusqu'en 2005, ma vie était plutôt un long fleuve tranquille...

Depuis Juin 2005, c'est une succession d'épreuves.

Tous les jours, ou presque, une nouvelle épreuve. Parfois super dure, parfois plus facile.

Parfois j'ai un courage aveugle à les surmonter, souvent les plus grosses d'ailleurs.

Parfois, je suis à genoux en pleurs, devant les plus simples souvent.

A chaque fois, je me demande quand ça va s'arrêter.

A chaque fois, je me dis que c'est la vie, et que ça continuera comme ça de toutes les façons.

Et après tout, qu'un évènement n'est ni bon ni mauvais en soi, et que ce n'est que ce que l'on en pense qui nous affecte.

Alors je me remet debout, je rajoute une nouvelle couche à ma carapace, et je continue.

Voilà encore un post pas cool, mais faut que ça sorte, hein....

Et puis la bonne nouvelle, c'est que tout ce qui ne me tue pas.... ne me tue pas^^.