Barack Obama and the Right to Hope
All this talk of hope and for what? What do we have to hope for?
“Hope doesn’t have a face and can’t be grasped; her power and presence can only be sensed. We can smell her and we can taste her when she shines out of our own depths, in our very own nest of spiders. That is where we go down into her, and emerge infected all the way to the marrow. She shows up, body and soul, in ordinary human life, right there where everything’s gone wrong, where all defeats flourish, where there is no chance for success and where disasters collect prizes. Hope is the right to be imperfect, to be perfectly human…. Hope lives in the pores of all those who have fallen down, of those who are exhausted, who cry, who fail, who make ridiculous mistakes, in those who once couldn’t do something, and then later learned to do it better than many others, in those who betrayed others and then weren’t able to build up enough courage to recognize it and not do it again, in those who in a passion forgot about principles…. Hope doesn’t live across the street, and she isn’t sticking her tongue out at us from the house next door. She doesn’t live in someone else’s skin. She’s not peering at us with a neighbour’s eyes: rather she can be found within ourselves, right when we feel our heart and soul breaking at the rejection by another, because in the end, we are that other as well. Hope is here and now, feeding on pain and joy and smiles from the past and the future.” – Raul Gatica
http://www.horizons.ca/categories.php?op=newindex&catid=4
Barack Obama offers us no hope. He offers us no vision of a better tomorrow. His policies offer us nothing either. Perhaps through his attitude so many look to him for hope; but really what we see in him is ourselves, our own potential for change. We need to act on our own potential. Stop putting our energy and hope into the hands of one man–we will forever be let down. Hold that power in your own hands. Our hands can do so much more than merely hold a ballot for 5 minutes every four years. With our hands we can sculpt our world. This is our future! We’re 22, 21, some of us 18. We have so much energy, so much potential. We can shape our future, not merely let it be handed to us by a dying generation of manipulators, thieves, and frauds. Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” We can do that! But not by putting our blind faith in a Barack Obama, a Ron Paul, another Clinton. One person cannot be trusted with our hopes and dreams– when we do this, we have always been let down, and we always will.
It is easy to throw out countless quotes: “Democracy is a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses” (H.L. Mencken). “Democracy is nothing if it is not dangerous” (Carl Oglesby). There will always be a debate about the usefulness of voting. Casting one vote out of 100,000,000 clearly will do nothing. Or maybe it will make all the difference. But even at it’s biggest payoff, what do we win? The lesser of two evils? What if it is likely that neither candidate will help us, but further drag us down? Should we continue to shovel our hope on the candidate like confetti at a parade?
Perhaps there will never be a perfect candidate. This is unavoidable, any “populist” candidate has his drawbacks. Should this not reinforce the need for us to act outside the political system? If the two channels given us resemble quicksand more than they do ladders, shouldn’t we escape the quicksand altogether instead of debating which will sink fastest?
There is no Holy Grail of Hope, no single person to deliver us from the despair and emptiness of our lives. Maybe we can gain guidance from those behemoths we inflate with our hopes and desperation. But no Obama, no Marcos, no Reagan, no Che, can possibly save us single-handedly. Only by mobilizing our passions, uniting them with other people, in our classes, in our workplaces, in the streets, in our collectives and co-ops, in our families, even across the counter at McDonalds, can we transform our hope into something powerful, a sweeping wind that can carry us, not necessarily to our Utopia, but at least somewhere better.
Memorial
Che Comandante
No porque hayas caído
tu luz es menos alta.
Un caballo de fuego
sostiene tu escultura guerrillera
entre el viento y las nubes de la Sierra.
No por callado eres silencio.
Y no porque te quemen,
porque te disimulen bajo tierra,
porque te escondan
en cementerios, bosques, páramos,
van a impedir que te encontremos,
Che Comandante,
amigo.
Con sus dientes de júbilo
Norteamérica ríe. Mas de pronto
revuélvese en su lecho
de dólares. Se le cuaja
la risa en una máscara,
y tu gran cuerpo de metal
sube, se disemina
en las guerrillas como tábanos,
y tu ancho nombre herido por soldados
ilumina la noche americana
como una estrella súbita, caída
en medio de una orgía.
Tú lo sabías, Guevara,
pero no lo dijiste por modestia,
por no hablar de ti mismo,
Che Comandante,
amigo.
Estás en todas partes. En el indio
hecho de sueño y cobre. Y en el negro
revuelto en espumosa muchedumbre,
y en el ser petrolero y salitrero,
y en el terrible desamparo
de la banana, y en la gran pampa de las pieles,
y en el azúcar y en la sal y en los cafetos,
tú, móvil estatua de tu sangre como te derribaron,
vivo, como no te querían,
Che Comandante,
amigo.
Cuba te sabe de memoria. Rostro
de barbas que clarean. Y marfil
y aceituna en la piel de santo joven.
Firme la voz que ordena sin mandar,
que manda compañera, ordena amiga,
tierna y dura de jefe camarada.
Te vemos cada día ministro,
cada día soldado, cada día
gente llana y difícil
cada día.
Y puro como un niño
o como un hombre puro,
Che Comandante,
amigo.
Pasas en tu descolorido, roto, agujereado traje de campaña.
El de la selva, como antes
fue el de la Sierra. Semidesnudo
el poderoso pecho de fusil y palabra,
de ardiente vendaval y lenta rosa.
No hay descanso.
¡Salud, Guevara!
O mejor todavía desde el hondón americano:
Espéranos. Partiremos contigo. Queremos
morir para vivir como tú has muerto,
para vivir como tú vives,
Che Comandante,
amigo.
“Che Comandante” por Nicolás Guillén
————————-
Aprendimos a quererte
desde la histórica altura
donde el sol de tu bravura
le puso un cerco a la muerte.
Aquí se queda la clara,
la entrañable transparencia,
de tu querida presencia
Comandante Che Guevara.
Tu mano gloriosa y fuerte
sobre la historia dispara
cuando todo Santa Clara
se despierta para verte.
Aquí se queda la clara,
la entrañable transparencia,
de tu querida presencia
Comandante Che Guevara.
Vienes quemando la brisa
con soles de primavera
para plantar la bandera
con la luz de tu sonrisa.
Aquí se queda la clara,
la entrañable transparencia,
de tu querida presencia
Comandante Che Guevara.
Tu amor revolucionario
te conduce a nueva empresa
donde esperan la firmeza
de tu brazo libertario.
Aquí se queda la clara,
la entrañable transparencia,
de tu querida presencia
Comandante Che Guevara.
Seguiremos adelante
como junto a ti seguimos
y con Fidel te decimos:
hasta siempre Comandante.
Aquí se queda la clara,
la entrañable transparencia,
de tu querida presencia
Comandante Che Guevara.
“Hasta Siempre” – Carlos Puebla
From Behind the Orange Curtain 