Posted on 03/19/2004 6:50:50 PM PST by Kuksool
Let this victory mean death to the Machine. Let the chains snap, the wheels fly off, the motor explode with a resounding boom heard throughout the city, suburbs, collar counties and Downstate Illinois.
Let men and women wake up free of poverty pimps, hustlers, hangers-on, wannabes and self-anointed agents who suck the life out of a community and leave its people without hope. Let those who operate the Machines wander around like the Israelites did in the wilderness.
Let us, who believe in the power of the ballot, begin anew.
"Sixteen months ago we started this campaign in a room at the Allegro Hotel . . . and the conventional wisdom was that we could not win. No way could a city guy, from the South Side, with a funny name win a statewide election," state Sen. Barack Obama told his screaming supporters. "Now 16 months later we are here to say that we did it."
We, black people, were once like children dependent on others to lead us out of the ghettos and into seats of power. That time is past. The Machine can no longer hear the voices of the People. That is why old-school politicians like Cook County Board President John Stroger are unafraid to back state Comptroller Dan Hynes, a Machine candidate, knowing his constituents overwhelmingly backed Obama for the U.S. Senate.
That is why the most powerful politician in my own town of Maywood, Cook County Recorder of Deeds Eugene Moore, backed the Machine candidate and never once sought a consensus from residents.
But many voters thought for themselves.
"There were a lot of young voters who came out for Obama," said Village Trustee Gary Woll. "It was not an anti-anybody. The people came out with smiles and joy."
Many black aldermen, state elected officials and other pseudo-leaders quilted a patchwork of candidates to serve their own needs and ignored the people they were elected to represent.
Don't get me wrong; we need allies. But too often, those allies are forced upon us like partners in an arranged marriage. They are strangers like Blair Hull, who tried to buy his way into a community he would not have been comfortable spending more time in than it takes to drive through. Sadly, some of us were willing to barter away hope in exchange for sweetbread.
Obama's win begins his journey to become only the third black man to go to the U.S. Senate. But even that distinction is a misnomer since Obama's mother was a white woman from Kansas and his father was a black man from Kenya.
Some predicted Obama would win this election only if the weather was about 44 degrees. The Machine could take the cold, but Obama's base -- black people -- would stay home if it snowed.
The Machine did not stand against dogs and water hoses and burly thick-necks; black people and their allies did.
The diverse and jubilant crowds knew early in the evening that Obama -- the man who elected officials like U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush said was "not black enough" -- had kicked political butt.
And supporters like Dave Cann, 24, a white union organizer from Evanston, "couldn't have been happier."
"It's a little bit more than an ordinary campaign. Barack Obama represents a gasp of fresh air that hasn't surfaced in at least 50 years," he said.
After the polls closed, I picked up Obama's book, Dreams From My Father, again and looked for this moment. I found those words in his epilogue:
"We hold these truths to be self evident. ... In those words I hear the spirit of Douglas and Delany, as well as Jefferson and Lincoln; the struggles of Martin and Malcolm and unheralded marchers to bring these words to life. I hear the voices of Japanese families interned behind barbed wire; young Russian Jews cutting patterns in Lower East Side sweatshops; dust-bowl farmers loading up their trucks with the remains of shattered lives. I hear the voices of the people in Altgeld Gardens, and the voices of those who stand outside this country's borders, the weary, hungry bands crossing the Rio Grande. I hear all of these voices clamoring for recognition, all of them asking the very same questions that have come to shape my life, the same questions that I sometimes, late at night, find myself asking the Old Man. What is our community, and how might that community be reconciled with our freedom? How far do our obligations reach? How do we transform mere power into justice, mere sentiment into love?
"The answers I find in law books don't always satisfy me -- for every Brown vs. Board of Education, I find a score of cases where conscience is sacrificed to expedience or greed. And yet, in the conversation itself, in the joining of voices. I find myself modestly encouraged, believing that so long as the questions are still being asked, what binds us together might somehow, ultimately, prevail."
Let this victory mean death to the Machine.
"Meet the new boss..."
"Same as the old boss..."
Jeeeezzzzz....
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