Why Will Smith Matters.

From the always on time Ta-Nehisi:

I see a lot of that in Will, when I watch him acting. Dig his style in Hancock or I Robot. Whatever you think of those movies, you can see hip-hop oozing out of dude’s pores. I make no brief for black exceptionalism here–this is how identity works. But I think one of the things that’s so cool about this generation–the Andre 3000s, the Jay-Z’s, the Colson Whitehead, the Junot Diazes–is how we claim our heritage but not to the exclusion of the rest of the world.

Yes. We. Can.

This made me cry this morning.

Today is here.

Vote.

Undecideds I Can/Can’t Understand.

The article is from Time.

Sheen, of Lincoln, Nebraska, says his vote is coming down to one issue: abortion. Sheen says he’s “definitely pro-life” and he’s trying to decide whether Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain is more in line with his views.  “Neither of them have the track record I would like in a political candidate. So at this point, it’s me sort of deciding upon, who do I think will be the best representation for if something is able to happen with the issue of abortion,” he says.  – Isn’t this one pretty clear?  Someone who is anti-abortion (I don’t agree with the term “pro-life”) has only one choice here, no?  One candidate will appoint conservative justices, one will appoint more liberal ones.  Am I missing something?

In McCain’s home state of Arizona, iReporter Kyle Aevermann, 21, is preparing to vote in his first presidential election. He is one of the few who has yet to reach a decision on his vote, although he knows he will not vote for the state’s long-time senator. Aevermann is debating between Obama and Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney, although he acknowledges voting for McKinney might be a “waste of a vote.”  – This kind of undecided I get.  This is where I was with Nader/Gore way back when.  I broke for Nader, largely because I knew it didn’t matter much in New York.  Gore simply didn’t represent my views as well as Nader did.  And honestly, McKinney probably represents my views as well if not slightly better than Obama.  I’ve made a decision to get behind someone I feel is competent enough to handle the job, and who has great symbolic and cultural weight.  The fact that I agree with lots of his ideals make the decision a lot easier.  Still, I completely get the pull between voting for major party vs. third/fourth party in terms of following one’s conscience.  Paul supporters, McKinney supporters — it makes sense to me that they’re undecided.

But McCain vs. Obama?  You’re torn still?  Really?

1.8 Million Doors.

It’s not a thousand points of light.  It’s better.

I have nothing but respect for all my friends who were part of this number, not to mention all those who have knocked in previous weeks.

And if you didn’t knock, or call, and you feel bad about it, remember this: the groundswell of support is important all around.  If you’re excited, be excited.  That helps too.

Why Pumpkins Have Made Me Teary.

A few weeks back, a big group of us went apple picking and pumpkin patching. Someone, in passing, joked that we should should carve pictures of Obama into our pumpkins instead of the traditional jack-o-lantern. I’m not sure anyone from our group did it, or carved our pumpkins at all (I didn’t even bring one home).

Today, I got a look at this. And I got a little misty-eyed.

So here’s the thing. As we get down to the wire in the presidential election, it looks more and more like the work we’ve done over the last few years (and many folks have done far more than me, clearly) might be rewarded. By proxy, the work we did four years ago on behalf of John Kerry — that’s being rewarded in this campaign as well. So this all is eight years in the making. A lot of money has gone into this. A lot of money. My friend Bill Bragin raised $40,000, largely through Facebook and a big old birthday party. I’ve never seen anything like that happen before for a presidential campaign. And it’s beautiful. We’ve rallied around a leader for once, instead of fighting against a candidate we couldn’t stand. We’ve been given symbols and slogans, a powerful and presidential face to stand behind, a common figure to inspire similarly-minded folks to unite.

And we’re carving pumpkins, an entirely local act, an entirely individual act that then spreads out to one’s community, only since there’s a common theme and a common bond and a common location to send all our pics and videos, we stand together in a visible way on a national and international scale. They’re pumpkins, yeah. And they’re marketing logos, for sure. And they’re centered around the cult of personality, the celebrity of Barack Obama, celebrating him the way fans of a hip-hop star or a famous actor might celebrate their own entertainment matinee idol. I get all that. I understand people’s concerns about so many people throwing so much of their faith behind one guy. I get that the big rallies, the catchy signs, the wholehearted devotion (often even blind devotion) to the eloquent speechifying, they all conjure up images of cults and political movements that don’t always lead to the best results. I get it.

But listen to what folks are saying during the pumpkin video:

“It’s going to be about living for every other American.”

“I don’t want a nation just for me. I want a nation for everybody.”

“We’re organizing ourselves. The campaign helps us, but we’re organizing ourselves.”

And that, my friends (to steal a phrase from Senator McCain) is what’s happening here, at least theoretically. That’s what we’ve got to be excited about. Personal responsibility, not just for one’s self and finances and health and safety, but for everyone around you. And that, to me, is the only way to go, even on the most selfish level. If you want to be safe, and healthy, and prosperous, you need the folks around you to be safe and healthy and prosperous. If you want to hold on to what you have, the best way to do that is to make sure that the folks around you have enough. That’s this “spreading the wealth” idea that seems so foreign and evil to so many conservatives (or at least to the McCain camp). So folks are carving pumpkins, and the pumpkins mean nothing — they’re just a symbol of reaching out to the folks around you. And I love that.

The concern, of course, is that folks will forget that the pumpkins (and the man on them) are just symbols of the cause, not the cause themselves. Go back to Tupac and the Notorious BIG. Both were genius MCS with major flaws (BIG had incredible flow, but nothing to say. Pac was just the opposite: lots to say, not a lot of art to how he said it.), and both became symbols of something greater, especially in death. Folks believed in what both those guys brought to the table, and wanted to emulate them. Problem was, it was really hard to rhyme like BIG. It was really hard to open yourself up like Pac. All that required work, and folks chose not to put that work in. Instead, they picked up the easier stuff to copy: BIG’s subject matter, Pac’s flow. They got the worst of both worlds. They celebrated the symbol, but lost sight of what actually made the symbol worth celebrating.

That’s my biggest fear in all this. If Obama gets elected, the work has just started.

“Hope and change” doesn’t mean that we’re hoping to change who lives in the White House. “Hope and change” doesn’t apply to the election — it applies to what the election theoretically will allow us to do. I’ll repeat: “will allow us to do.” Obama’s going to have to hold up his part, for sure. He’s making a lot of promises. He can’t possibly keep them all. We have to be aware of that. We have to be realistic in what can happen over four years, over eight years. We also have to demand that the man we rallied behind, the man we raised hundreds of millions of dollars for, stands up and leads and remembers what he’s led us to believe he stands for. We need to demand results. We need to hold him to an almost impossibly high standard. Yes, all those things are true.

But ultimately, we need to take what this campaign has given us, and we need to take it regardless of if he wins or not, and we need to hold ourselves to that almost impossibly high standard as well. “Hope” has been mocked in this election as a slogan, not a way to solve problems. And those mockers are right. Hope in and of itself is worthless. Hope will not take care of our problems. Carving the word into your pumpkin doesn’t make our country safer, our communities tighter, our art more truthful or more beautiful.

But.

Hope allows us, empowers us, impels us to get out there and do those things ourselves.

So carve your pumpkins. Paint your lawns. Hell, get a tattoo. Do whatever it takes to remind you of the mission and the message and the ultimate goals.

Just remember that this election is a step. A relatively small step at that. We’ve got a lot of work to do.

I’m Watching The Informercial Now.

I’ll say this: if the other party did something like this, I’d most likely dismiss much of it as hokey.

I’ll be very interested to see what effect this has on the race.

Conservatives for Obama.

Shameless self-promotion week is officially on hold.

There’s more important work to do this week.

Obama in Virginia.

Less than two weeks away.

Remember Immigration? || The Great Schlep

Two part post today, with a shameless self-promotion post on its way.

1.  Remember not long ago when immigration reform was this huge issue that would play a major role in shaping the face of the election?  Someone (I believe it was my buddy Pampers) pointed out his shock that the GOP hasn’t revisited immigration in the face of the economic crisis.  I think it would be a cheap shot, but it seems like it would play.  I’m thinking of it again today after reading this CNN article about the effects of immigration raids in places you’d least expect them…like Iowa.

Here’s my quick thought on it all: there’s a tendency to cast Latinos as the great immigration defenders in this debate, but I’m Puerto Rican — immigration wasn’t an issue for my family.  I’ve got questions about border security and the like, although I’ve also got a bunch of folks I respect and trust who come from border towns (or are illegal themselves), and the issue simply isn’t simple.  The CNN article, and the story of Postville in general, really explain the complexity.  When I think Iowa, I think 5′10″ blond rugby playing schoolteachers (but that’s just me) — I certainly don’t think Guatemalans, Hasidim, and Somalis.  Maybe I should.

2.  Sarah Silverman can be super funny.  She can also be less than funny; she’s really of that hit-or-miss, jokes in volume kinda humor that works with her gross-out/offensive style.  For the most part, I like her (and if I was able to, I’d link you to her Matt Damon stuff from Jimmy Kimmel Live just in case you haven’t seen it), and I think she’s an effective advocate/spokesperson for certain stuff.  A few weeks ago, I saw her video for “The Great Schlep,” a program in which young Jewish folks go visit older Jewish folks (often their grandparents) in Florida to convince them to vote for Obama.  I thought it was a joke at first, then I realized it’s kind of brilliant.  And now it’s happening.

And that, on some level, is a big part of what I’m excited about in this election, regardless of how it unfolds: young people are (a) taking responsibility for the things they believe in and (b) finding creative ways to bring about change.  It’s hard to say what tangible impact initiatives like this will have on the world.  Maybe none.  Maybe it doesn’t change the election at all.  Who knows?  At the very least, it’s making people care.  And try.  And it’s leading to sentences like this (from the CNN article):

Sporting an Obama T-shirt with Hebrew writing on it, retiree Morty Brill said, “The economy, the war, you think you can trust Republicans to fix them?”

The world is changing, folks.

Explain It to Me, McCain Supporters.

Maybe more accurately: explain it to me, undecideds.

I watch the debates, and I see one candidate who (and let’s put aside “values” and “issues” for a second) is calm and measured, who answers questions placed before him by providing a logical context, then ennumerating step-by-step the plans he’d take towards solving the problems at hand, who speaks eloquently and specifically about the state of the world and the United States’ position within it.  On the other side, I see a man who comes off cranky and unsettled, who paces nervously while the other candidate is speaking, who tosses off snide comments as jokes (that immediately plummet to earth with a thud).

I don’t get it.

Yes, I know the issues are important.  Most people vote on the issues.  I vote on the issues.

But the difference here is clear.  The difference between Biden and Palin is clear.  This shouldn’t even be a race.

UPDATED: This is a long, very interesting take on the whole thing from an outsider perspective.  A lot of it actually makes sense to me–I need to spend some more time with it, of course, because I’m not sure I can wrap my mind around all the accusations just yet.  And I’m certainly going to try to spend some Ron Paul/Cynthia McKinney time here on these pages shortly.  But here’s the thing: listening to these two folks last night, there are obvious differences.  One candidate is more acceptable than the other.  It’s incremental change in the grand scheme of things, but it’s huge in the here and now.