Blog

The McPalin Campaign


I’ve been following the stories about the racist undercurrent at the recent McPalin rallies (from both the candidates and audience members). A week later, after universal condemnation from the media and a continued drop in the polls, McCain decided to do what he should have done instantly — ask for respect for his opponent as a human being and a candidate. But now he’s surprised by the response of his ignorant followers when they boo him. What does he expect after encouraging it for a week?

I’m ashamed of both McCain and Palin. I never agreed with them on the issues and I never planned to vote for them, but at least they did not thoroughly disgust me as human beings. In the 21st century, two political candidates for president should not have tried to distract the public from a serious economic crisis (for which they have no plan to help) by insinuating and outright (and falsely, as proved) accusing their opponent of being a terrorist and allowing racist, dangerous, and murderous reactions from their crowds.

The socialist charge has been the most innocent, due to Obama’s plan for government-aided health care. Call me whatever you want but, as we can plainly see in Canada, making sure its citizens are alive and healthy seems like a pretty good move for any government.

Obama the terrorist. Is this the attitude a politician should encourage? That if he’s black, he must be a terrorist? If he has an unfortunate middle name (over which none of us have control and which is completely meaningless), then he’s a terrorist? If he is well traveled and educated, a terrorist?

And the William Ayers connection? Once again, proven to be exaggerated by the McPalin campaign and now irrelevant. From The New York Times:

"The suggestion that Ayers was a political adviser to Obama or someone who shaped his political views is patently false," said Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman. Mr. LaBolt said the men first met in 1995 through the education project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and have encountered each other occasionally in public life or in the neighborhood. He said they have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005 and last met more than a year ago when they bumped into each other on the street in Hyde Park….Since 2002, there is little public evidence of their relationship.

From CNN:

CNN’s review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved… There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now "palling around," or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are.

Now, if we’re going to insist that past social associations have bearing on someone’s presidential abilities, let’s take a look at the new Salon article linking Palin with "violent…right-wing…successionists" of the Alaska Independence Party who were once sponsored by Iran. The AIP is described as:

…rubbing shoulders and forging alliances with outright white supremacists and far-right theocrats, particularly those who dominate the proceedings at such gatherings as the North American Secessionist conventions, which AIP delegates have attended in recent years. The AIP’s affiliation with neo-Confederate organizations is motivated as much by ideological affinity as by organizational convenience.

Apparently this isn’t the first time Palin has taken part in bigotry for political gain:

While Palin played up her total opposition to the sales tax and gun control — the two hobgoblins of the AIP — mailers spread throughout the town portraying her as "the Christian candidate," a subtle suggestion that Stein, who is Lutheran, might be Jewish. "I watched that campaign unfold, bringing a level of slime our community hadn’t seen until then," recalled Phil Munger, a local music teacher who counts himself as a close friend of Stein.

Nor was Troopergate the end of her ethics violations and abuses of power:

When Palin won the election, the men who had once shouted anti-government slogans outside City Hall now had a foothold inside the mayor’s office. Palin attempted to pay back her newfound pals during her first City Council meeting as mayor. In that meeting, on Oct. 14, 1996, she appointed Stoll to one of the City Council’s two newly vacant seats. But Palin was blocked by the single vote of then-Councilman Nick Carney, who had endured countless rancorous confrontations with Stoll and considered him a "violent" influence on local politics. Though Palin considered consulting attorneys about finding another means of placing Stoll on the council, she was ultimately forced to back down and accept a compromise candidate…

…Emboldened by his nomination by Mayor Palin, Stoll later demanded she fire Wasilla’s museum director, John Cooper, a personal enemy he longed to sabotage. Palin obliged, eliminating Cooper’s position in short order. "Gotcha, Cooper!" Stoll told the deposed museum director after his termination, as Cooper told a reporter for the New York Times. "And it only cost me a campaign contribution." Stoll, who donated $1,000 to Palin’s mayoral campaign, did not respond to numerous requests for an interview. Palin has blamed budget concerns for Cooper’s departure.

And this is not ancient history for her:

When Palin ran for governor in 2006, marketing herself as a fresh-faced reformer determined to crush the GOP’s ossified power structure, she made certain to appear at the AIP’s state convention. To burnish her maverick image, she also tapped one-time AIP member and born-again Republican Walter Hickel as her campaign co-chair. Hickel barnstormed the state for Palin, hailing her support for an "all-Alaska" liquefied gas pipeline, a project first promoted in 2002 by an AIP gubernatorial candidate named Nels Anderson. When Palin delivered her victory speech on election night, Hickel stood beaming by her side. "I made her governor," he boasted afterward. Two years later, Hickel has endorsed Palin’s bid for vice president…

…Just months before Palin burst onto the national stage as McCain’s vice-presidential nominee, she delivered a videotaped address to the AIP’s annual convention. Her message was scrupulously free of secessionist rhetoric, but complementary nonetheless. "I share your party’s vision of upholding the Constitution of our great state," Palin told the assembly of AIP delegates. "My administration remains focused on reining in government growth so individual liberty can expand. I know you agree with that … Keep up the good work and God bless you."

CBS News has also covered Palin’s association with the AIP. Less than 24 hours after the Troopergate verdict, Palin stoked another non-economic fire at a rally in Pennsylvania:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin charged into the culture wars Saturday in Pennsylvania, painting Sen. Barack Obama as a radical on abortion rights.

"In times like these with wars and financial crisis, I know that it may be easy to forget even as deep and abiding a concern as the right to life, and it seems that our opponent kind of hopes you will forget that," Palin told a crowd in Johnstown. "He hopes that you won’t notice how radical, absolutely radical his idea is on this, and his record is, until it’s too late." (Translation: "Gosh-darnit, I have no idea how to fix your economy, so I’m gonna stand here all folksy and talk to ya straight about the beauty of life, and repeat how wonderful America is, and how mean reporters are to me with their questions.")

Now she’s no longer claiming that Obama will let domestic terrorists blow you to East Chuck and dare to actually hold diplomacy talks with foreign leaders, but get this — the big scary black man will kill your babies!

You want to talk about radical:

Palin opposes abortion in all cases, including rape and incest, except when a mother’s life is in danger, and said she believes Roe v. Wade should be overturned and the decision given to the states.

McCain voted for the Prohibit Partial Birth Abortion bill in 2003 and "yes" for Prohibiting Funds for Groups that Perform Abortions amendment in 2007. He believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and also supports the Supreme Court ruling upholding the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.

Palin also talked about a remark Obama made about sex education while campaigning in Johnstown in March, when he told a voter he didn’t want his daughters "punished with a baby" or "punished with an STD" if they were not educated about sex and made a mistake.

"So I listened when our opponent defended his unconditional support for unlimited abortions and he said he said that a woman shouldn’t have to be ‘Punished with a baby,’ " Palin said as the audience jeered at Obama. "Ladies and gentlemen, he said that right here in Johnstown. ‘Punished with a baby.’ It’s about time we called him on it."

I wonder if Bristol feels "blessed?"

I’m sure you all will soon hear about Obama supporting "infanticide" by voting against a bill that was supposed to protect fetuses born alive (a hysterical pro-life nurse and Fox News/Bill Donohue favorite, Jill Stanek, claimed, falsely, that late-term abortions were being performed at a Chicago hospital, and the still-living babies were left in soiled linen closets to die) but in actuality chips away at abortion rights. Obama’s reasoning for his nay vote — that sanity, common sense, and a doctor’s Hippocratic Oath dictate that A) obviously measures would be taken to keep any such fetus alive and B) if such measures are not taken, those actions violate already existing laws. He was backed by the Pro-Life-run Illinois Attorney General’s office.

Fun extra tidbits about Jill Stanek — she sponsors billboards in Africa that read: "Faithful condom users die." She posted, as fact, an urban legend about the Chinese eating aborted fetuses. "She works with Eric Scheidler and his father Joe Scheidler who [are] violent anti-abortion activist…" And she believes that birth control should be outlawed — not just abortion.

Eric Zorn of The Chicago Tribune and Obama’s website can provide further details. Or you can listen to Palin shoot her mouth off some more.

To all this, the ever-calm, thoughtful Obama responded:

"They can run misleading ads, and pursue the politics of anything goes, they can try to change the subject. They can do that what they want to do because the American people understand what’s going on — but it’s not going to work. Not this time."

I sure hope not.

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Blog

A season of change


Barack Obama has been calling himself an agent of change since he launched his campaign more than 18 months ago. John McCain recognized the power of Obama’s message and tried to claim the mantle of change for himself at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Since the beginning of September, this mantra of change coming from both parties has hung heavy in the air, like gunsmoke over a 19th-century battlefield. How much change can either candidate really hope to bring? The sheer size and inertia of the U.S. government all but guarantees that any change will be incremental and slow. Yet both campaigns use the same word. What do the candidates mean when they talk about change?

In this month’s issue, we take a look at change both in the political spectrum and in the wider world. We start with a story of rebirth at the bottom of the earth in Nathan Bahls’ piece An end to the long dark. For the scientists and support staff posted at the South Pole research station, spring means that not only has the sun risen above the horizon for the first time in six months, but flights to and from the rest of the world will soon continue. Accompanying this story is a series of stunning images by Calee Allen that showcase the stark beauty of Earth’s last true frontier.

Both political conventions this year were marked by unrest and protest. In Denver, Mike Ludwig joined the Black Bloc as they protested the DNC and were put down by the police. His piece, Dissent and repression at the DNC, is a story from inside a protest movement. In St. Paul, I watched in horror as my hometown was militarized in response to widespread protests. Journalists, bystanders, street medics and protesters were all arrested. In A bridge too far, I look at what happened here in St. Paul and some of the possible reasons why.

This month’s book review, by Tracy O’Neill, reviews The Faith of Barack Obama, by Stephen Mansfield, a Bush biographer and evangelical Christian. Mansfield takes an in-depth and thorough look at Obama’s faith and how it has shaped his character and his policy initiatives. Next month, we’ll feature a review of Free Ride: John McCain and the Media by David Brock and Paul Waldman.

Faith and culture play a significant role in shaping a person’s psyche. In Amalgamation, Francelle Kwankam looks inward as she arrives in a new country, reflecting upon the countries that have shaped her: Cameroon, the United States, Switzerland and now Spain.

Change is often assumed to be a positive thing when in reality, it is inherently neither positive nor negative. Drew Dutton explores the negative effects of the changes of urban renewal in Loss through change.

Columbia University is known for hosting controversial figures. Katherine Reedy looks back over the speakers the university has hosted during her undergraduate career in her essay Autumn visitors. From Ashcroft to Ahmadinejad to Obama and McCain, the conversations held at Columbia have influenced the conversations in the wider world, and are invaluable experiences for undergraduates, challenging them to explore what they think about an issue and why they feel that way.

We close this issue with Songs of change, five poems from Rae Pater, who profoundly reminds us that change is a constant, inescapable and universal.

Regardless of who wins the U.S. election this fall, things are already changing. The global economy is sinking, threatening to plunge millions more people worldwide into desperate poverty. Clouds gather on the horizon, and, according to the experts, they threaten a storm of generational proportions, unseen since the grinding misery of the Great Depression. Still, there is reason for hope. The political involvement of Americans is as high as it’s been in my lifetime. There is a sense that it’s time to act, each one of us, to reshape the world into a place that is more equitable, more free and happier. With every crisis comes opportunity. We must not be afraid to seize it.

I am a writer/editor turned web developer. I've served as both Editor-in-chief and Technical Developer of In The Fray Magazine over the past 5 years. I am gainfully employed, writing, editing and developing on the web for a small private college in Duluth, MN. I enjoy both silence and heavy metal, John Milton and Stephen King, sunrise and sunset. Like all of us, I contain multitudes.

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Reviews

God and the “chosen one”

An evangelical Christian looks at what religion means to Obama.


 

The religion of Barack Obama has become a matter at the forefront of the 2008 American presidential race, from the media storm surrounding his former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, to assertions that the democratic nominee harbors a closeted Islamic faith. In his latest volume, The Faith of Barack Obama, Stephen Mansfield attempts to trace the arc of the Illinois senator’s spiritual development, casting it as a paradigm of contemporary faith with potentially profound political resonance.

Beginning with the admission that the book is "written in the belief that if a man’s faith is sincere, it is the most important thing about him, and that it is impossible to understand who he is and how he will lead without first understanding the religious vision that informs his life," Mansfield frames his work with an exceptionally honest recognition of the writer’s worldview. He regards spirituality as the imminent force of one’s life, identity, and behavior.

With an atheist mother, a stepfather practicing folk Islam, and educations at Catholic and Congregational schools, Barack Obama was not raised with unified religious influence. His faith today is one that he selected as an adult, not one that he received osmotically through his rearing. Mansfield implies Obama to be a man fortunate to have risen from the spiritual mishmash which his mother, Anne Soetoro, allowed. Mansfield somewhat disparages her as he writes, "She paid the price for her [religious] detachment by ultimately having no belonging, no tribe, no people to claim for her own," and, "Only through a steely shielding of the heart, only through a determined detachment, could a child of Barack’s age be exposed to so much incongruous religious influence and emerge undamaged."

Yet Obama’s early introduction to diverse forms of spirituality informs his belief that various religions may act as vehicles to the same objective Faith. Though later he chose to worship via the United Church of Christ, he refuses to view it as a denomination holding a monopoly over religious truth. He can appreciate pluralism despite his particular affiliation with the sect, saying in 2006, "Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers."

Obama did not commit to a particular church until adulthood, when he began attending the Trinity United Church headed by Reverend Jeremiah Wright in Chicago’s South Side. Seeking what he called a "vessel" for his beliefs, Obama chose it as his own. It was a church that permitted close intellectual examination of the spiritual, a method not unlike the textual deconstruction he practiced as a student of political science as an undergraduate at Harvard. It was a church in which sermons often conflated religious life with fighting oppression, much as Obama did in his job as a community organizer. It was indeed a vessel for him to enter as himself without needing to excessively remold himself. Mansfield infers that Obama did not immediately abandon the Trinity United Church after incendiary remarks, such as "God damns America," were made by Wright because of this newfound sense of belonging.

Still, Obama did not leave everything of the Trinity United Church behind, retaining a conviction in that religion and civic life need not be always divorced. In 2006 in a speech at a conference called "From Poverty to Opportunity: A Covenant for a New America," he deviated from the norm of secular liberalism by saying, "Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square…to say that men and women should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality."

Mansfield depicts Obama as the ultimate example of this generation’s spirituality, one not of rigid dogma but one of plasticity permitting interfaith fluidity, integration with civil life, and most of all, doubt. Though the senator has expressed belief that faith will lead him to eternal life, he has also confessed that when asked by his daughter what happens upon death, he vacillated between telling her he was uncertain or simply providing a comforting answer. Obama has professed his belief that Christ is the Lord’s son but does not believe Christianity is the sole path to God. He has attended church regularly for twenty years and staunchly supports women’s rights in Congress, yet has admitted that someday he may realize error in his pro-choice sentiments. To Mansfield, Obama is a model of this generation’s believer, that is, a believer who does not always adhere to dogma, does not always sever church and state, does not always insist that he knows but permits doubt into his faith.

This new religion is one that Mansfield compares to three other kinds of faith typified by Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and George W. Bush. The difference to Mansfield is not so much the doctrinal as narrative. While Clinton has experienced faith as the exercise of social decency, McCain has kept a quietly personal religiosity separate from his position as a senator, and Bush has felt an evangelical call which provided a sense of destiny to his foray into politics. Mansfield asserts that Obama, by choosing his religion yet tolerating the religion of others, by refusing to allow faith become the sole possession of Republicans, and by allowing morality a place in public life, may heal recent wounds of partisanship, class stratification, and racial or religious rivalry to move towards an improved nation. His is a faith that today could change America.

Though certainly Mansfield often makes overly broad statements without providing evidence of their veracity, proclaiming that we live in a "faith-fixated age" and that "brilliant dresses, hats, and fashionable suits [are what] one expects of a black church in America," he offers a detailed study of Barack Obama’s spiritual development. At times it is evident that he must fight his own prejudices of what religion is, such as when he rather dismissively writes that Obama epitomizes "a new, postmodern generation that picks and chooses its own truth from traditional faith, much as a man customizes his meal at a buffet." Yet Mansfield is not so myopic as to miss that a man such as Barack Obama, who has defied so many preconceptions of what it means to have belief, may indeed help Americans have the faith to change.

Next month: A review of Free Ride: John McCain and the Media by
David Brock and Paul Waldman

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Photo Essays

Scenes from Antarctica

[ Click here to view the visual essay ]


[ Click here to view the visual essay ]

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Commentary

Loss through change

Another perspective of urban renewal.


Most people hear about urban renewal and consider it a good thing. They think about slums and ghettos being turned around into safe, clean, and prosperous neighborhoods that in turn become close-knit communities. They have images of children playing baseball in the street and neighbors getting together to talk and plan festivals. It’s a popular image that accompanies a popular catch phrase. It’s also wrong. What people don’t think about is the loss of community and the locals who are forced out due to the increasing property taxes that stem from “renewal.”

Most metropolitan areas have neighborhoods that are considered “unsavory” and present an image that the city would not like to portray. Cities respond by beginning the urban renewal process. First they’ll install a park or two and a community center. Then they’ll give tax breaks to certain businesses and homebuilders in an attempt to lure them in. Then they’ll advertise about how this area that “decent” people used to avoid is now the place where they need to be. The area then takes on a tourist feel, as people begin to flood the area hoping to become part of the new “hip” place to live. Overpriced boutiques sprout up, while old food markets get torn down to make way for the large organic grocery store chain. Playgrounds and empty lots get replaced by Starbucks and tapas restaurants. Ordinances get passed to get rid of street performers in favor of kiosks that give directions. Streets get completely renovated until the area no longer resembles the community that used to thrive there.

These changes cause problems for the people who have lived in the area. Their rents go up, while their old gathering places come down. Many of them can’t afford the groceries in the new trendy organic market, and they could never dream of affording the clothes in the boutique that replaced the old vintage shop. Their bars and restaurants are no longer places to meet their friends but are filled to capacity with the new crowd. The city has taken over their community festivals, which now feature large corporate sponsorships and are so crowded that the locals can’t even park at their own homes. New neighborhood associations mandate restorations on the old houses they live in. The Joneses move in, outspending neighbors in vain attempts to best them. Gone is the concern or respect for the people who were there before them. Alienation settles in, as old neighbors and friends move out.

In a decade’s time, I’ve watched firsthand the life of an entire neighborhood from ghetto, to renewal, to trendy, to cliché, to decline, and back into ghetto. Once the locals move out and the neighborhood loses its character, many of the newcomers no longer find it desirable. The once-hip place gets left behind, as its residents look to the next happening place to call home — typically another community undergoing renewal. So as the old neighborhood becomes totally vacated, taxes and rents get lowered until the only people moving in are those who can’t afford anything else. Of course after some time, these new residents will have set up their own community and brought some sense of character, and the city will take notice and begin the entire process again.

I think it’s important for communities to exist in a large city. A city is not defined by buildings and attractions but by the people who call it home.
It is they who preach the loudest when their parks and roads are not being properly maintained. It is they who protest when a new parking deck is being planned for an empty lot where their children play. They are the ones who gather in droves when neighborhood crime rates spike.

If urban renewal is to spread, perhaps cities should consider putting it into the hands of the locals. Instead of businesses and politicians deciding which businesses would improve an area, residents should have the say as to what they might enjoy. They might choose a dive bar over that expensive wine bar.    

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Commentary

Autumn visitors

Shaking up the campus.


Autumn – the season of change, of turning inwards for warmth as the summer sun fades -– is always a time for excitement at universities. Classes begin, friendships are rekindled, and roommates meet for the first time. Students are reminded once again of the unique pleasures and challenges of school living, of the joys of this liminal space brimming with knowledge for those between youth and the “real life.”

At Columbia University, where I am an undergraduate senior, autumn is also high-profile visitor season. At least once a semester, an infamous guest appears on campus, addresses over-excited students, and then exits. Often, the Daily News or the New York Post weigh in on the event:  “Columbia Hosts a Thug” opined the Post when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appeared on the scene last September.

This year’s visitors came on the seventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Students were ecstatic when they found out that Columbia was hosting a forum for presidential candidates Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain  as part of the ServiceNation Summit, a two-day gathering of leaders highlighting volunteer and national service. The candidates’ presence, especially that of campus favorite Obama, a 1983 grad, was expected to exorcise the ghosts of fall speeches past.

In late 2005, I was a freshman when I saw John Ashcroft, who’d stepped down as Attorney General earlier in the year, speak to a hot undergraduate-filled auditorium. Some students brought banners decrying torture; others presented rational arguments during the question-and-answer portion of the event. I stayed up the rest of the night, buoyed by adrenaline, to write a paper due the next day at 9 a.m. At the fourth or fifth hour of my vigil, I realized that the political themes of the Ashcroft spectacle – the debate over security, national identity, civil liberties – had informed my understanding of Thucydides’ reading of the Peloponnesian Wars.

This is what they meant by extracurricular education, I thought. I was pleased.

The next fall, when I was a sophomore, the College Republicans invited the Minuteman vigilante group’s leader Jim Gilchrist to discuss the perils of letting immigrants over the Mexican border. Many student groups, led by the Chicano Caucus, viewed the event as deeply offensive, even threatening. I was covering the swelling protests on campus for a student magazine when a cluster of friend reporters cried out that chaos had broken out. After an introduction by an African American preacher, Gilchrist began spewing invective against the heckling students in attendance. A Chicano Caucus-led contingent then burst onto his platform to unveil a banner that read “No Human is Illegal” in English, Spanish, and Arabic. Minutemen supporting Gilchrist responded by trying to rip down the banner. College Republicans jumped into the fray, and a Latino student was kicked in the head by a middle-aged, burly, booted vigilante.

In the weeks that followed, “The O’Reilly Factor” had a heyday with the debacle, University President Lee Bollinger – a free speech lawyer – denounced the student protesters, and the Columbia blog at which I was an editor received dozens of threats and vile messages. One read simply: “your worse then the mooselums [sic] who flew the planes into the buildings.”

My bright-eyed freshman enthusiasm for Thucydides on the wane, I stared head-on at the ugly side of racism, media bias, and violence underpinning various aspects of American society. 

Within weeks of returning to campus, this time for my junior year,  we received a jolt of news: Iran’s Ahmadinejad, who’d reportedly called for a “world without the United States and Zionism,” had been invited to speak at the university’s World Leaders Forum. The press exploded. On the day of the speech, nearly sick with excitement, I entered an auditorium buzzing with reporters, students both angry and curious, and sedate professors, while outside, thousands of students watched on massive screens. It was here that Ahmadinejad said, “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals, like in your country” and called Iran “friends with the Jewish people.” 

My friends’ reactions ended up on USA Today, The New York Times, international wires as well as Fox and CNN. I soon learned that Richard Bulliet, a history professor at Columbia’s Middle East Institute, was behind Ahmadinejad’s invitation. In an interview with me for The Bwog, he explained, “My feeling, what I wanted, was to see to what degree this event can serve as a brake on the push towards war.…What kind of a triumph would it be to bring down Ahmadinejad?”

So with these memories of speeches past, I geared up this September for what I thought would be the most exciting autumn addresses yet: Obama and McCain, either of whom could become the next president of the United States. The excitement was all the more palpable because of their Columbia connections: Obama as an alum and McCain as the father of a 2007 grad.

“You realize that he’s had the exact same education as us,” a female student said of Obama. Her eyes brightened. “He’s read The Wretched of the Earth too.” For McCain’s part, he wasn’t just a Columbia parent; he also delivered the keynote address to graduates in 2006. We felt these things were significant.

By 8 p.m. on the big night, thousands of students had swarmed over the steps of Low Library, Columbia’s popular  hangout, to watch the event on a large screen. The expanse of stone and brick was covered with picnics, games, books, blankets, beer bottles, water jugs, cigarettes, and cameras. Clusters of students became territorial about their 2-by-4-foot plots of brick ground, and bathroom runs were out of the question. There was something epic about our rock concert stance, as if we expected to wave lighters or break out in mass dancing.

McCain, we were told, had won a coin toss to be the first interviewed by PBS correspondent Judy Woodruff and Time editor Richard Stengel. McCain said America should expand its military without a draft. He also criticized Columbia for not allowing Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) recruitment on campus, a measure first taken to protest the Vietnam War and later reaffirmed because of the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward gay personnel. After a commercial break, Obama took the stage. He too called for the expansion of the military, and he also criticized Columbia’s stance on ROTC.

Suddenly, things were not as they had seemed. We had assumed Obama read Fanon, that he understood us and represented our intellectual desires. But on the ServiceNation stage, under the scrutiny of television viewers, he joined McCain in criticizing our school for its hard-line stance for gay rights. We were at a loss.

In my first three autumns of college, I came to understand that the truths we held self-evident were really strands of many truths tied together with frayed edges. Politics was messier than I ever imagined. And big issues – about civil liberties, racism, and foreign policy, to name a few – were so complex it was a wonder anyone made any progress. Watching McCain and Obama laud service, I hoped desperately for a deep, real change.

Additional Reading:

The rationale of Richard Bulliet

President Ahmadinejad delivers remarks at Columbia University

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Fiction & Poetry

Songs of change

Five poems.


My Light
 
Could I take your hand?
In my mind the skin feels
               uh
too close

walk with me
there’s this fence
one two three …
five strand wire
and sheep

amidst the sunlit grass
blade by blade step through
step      
how the hillside climbs
away in rolls and slides
tracks and shelves
where the sheep trail
little feet climb

from the top
where the Maori cemetery
hushes your mouth       gaze
out to the glass horizon
where the whales boom

I want to show you
                        the sea wall,
the tiny huts two beds bunks
outside dunny

and the wood pigeon
carrying the sound of five hundred
journeys in each wingbeat
downstroke
fat with plums

show you the cut cross
clean above the salt bones of driftwood
sparking up the dark

take my hand
I’ll try not to mind
how close you are

see the morning rise?
This is mine.

Separation
 
As I was cleaning my bathroom,
I found a place beneath the doorframe
where two edges of vinyl touched.

I’ve cleaned this floor many times
and never noticed that line before.

Funny, so often we don’t see
how completely two have joined
until they come asunder.
 
 
Night Dust
 
As I walk the glistening halls of night
my bones sing of calcification.
Fluid thrums from the caverns
beneath my teeth.

Poker machines lolly-gagging tunes
play in the spaces my throat
tries to swallow.

This is a new kind of dark,
where one day melts into another
in a way you just can’t be bothered with.

Moonsong
 
Flowers are embroidered in glittering beads
along the curves of my thighs.

You’ve heard my voice chime
deep silver along the horizon
as I rise
but you don’t remember.

I have many names,
Crow and Sickle, Arctic, Wolf,
Barley and Blood, as I shift
in shade and shape.

I cup light in my palms for you to bathe,
but you must come to me unclothed,
stripped of all pretensions.
I care nothing for the weight you bear.

Rest, for you have not known rest.
Divest yourself of clutter
and concealment. You are
a manifestation of love,

and I am a crone born from fires of stone
and cooled to airless ice. I hold
the traction of tides and seasons.

Time upon time I have died and renewed.
If I wash you clean in the bowl
of my lap and chant my names,
might you remember me?

Southern Alps at Midnight
 
The soldier on maneuvers
stands in the howling dark,
on rock crystallized to white.
 
The night strips away camouflage,
opens his ribs and creeps around lungs,
to germinate a small seed,
the dream that is his life,
whenever he thinks of home.

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Commentary

Amalgamation

A collective identity.


 

     As I step uncertainly through the doors beyond the Nothing to Declare lane, a catholicity of stimuli greets my senses. A sea of earth-toned faces of various gradations waits eagerly. Arab North Africans, dark-haired Andalucianos, and fair-skinned Vascos mix with expectant German and American tourists, completing a cultural mosaic. The dry, crisp smell of winter hits my nose, making it tingle slightly. I think I am already engulfed, when suddenly I hear it: the deep, sonorous music of words. 

    It slides off tongues quickly, but consciously, pointedly. It lacks the song-like sprightliness of Swiss-French and the sharp, long tones of Swiss-German. Dialogue now has a smooth, rich molasses quality; it clings to the ears like the lingering aftertaste of a robust red wine on an attune palate.

   “Querida mía, hace mucho tiempo.”
   “Hola guapa, que tal?”
   “Como fue tu viaje cariño?” 
   I am inundated, overwhelmed, enraptured.

    In Salamanca, Spain, I was una americana to the Spaniards, “so Euro” to the Americans, and to the three Gabonese in the entire city, I was une Camerounaise—une belle café au lait, that they would gladly bring home to Mom and Dad. My identity shifted constantly, based on the story I told people. When I felt like being adventurous, I laid it all out—a ten-minute saga describing my Cameroonian origins and upbringing, my current dual residency in Geneva and Providence, and the fact that I now simultaneously call three continents home.

    Other times, surrounded by scrutinizing Spaniards who claimed “hablas muy bien para una americana,” I claimed Boston as my home turf, although I have never lived there, and neither of my parents are from there. Given my time at Brown University, only fifty short minutes from the city, and the many summers I escaped Cameroon to find solace in Boston’s commercialized downtown districts, I figured I could make this slight breach of the truth. Mom often attested that she was from Boston when questioned. Although she was born in Georgia and lived most of her life outside North America, “Boston is the place where I spent the most time within the U.S.” she would justify. Calling it my own didn’t seem too far-fetched, I decided. —

    When I felt like being exotic, I snobbily expounded on my life in Geneva with tales of Gruyère and Vacherin fondue savored with Chasselas wine, indulgent soirees at expensive Swiss night clubs, and daytrips through the Alps. With these slightly fictionalized accounts, I dazzled the Americans, coloring their pre-existing fantasies of Europe as a bastion for cultural and gastronomic excellence.

    But encountering sub-Saharan Africans in Salamanca made me squirm.

    “Mais, tu parles français avec un accent américain? Et la langue de ton pere?“ they would ask, as if my seventeen years in Cameroon and native Cameroonian father guaranteed that I would speak French and the language of my father’s ethnic group perfectly. The backlog of memories from my upbringing in an isolated international, largely American, community in the heart of Yaoundé would stream before me, strangling my tongue. I didn’t speak perfect French, or my father’s Bamileke language, because  we spoke English at home. And so that was my final answer.

    Whenever I came into contact with Cameroonians the realization that I was half-white often emerged amid these heated cultural discussions, often followed by a barrage of professions of love and marriage proposals.  To these I simply answered no, in Spanish, the language that helped erase some of the societal barriers that threatened to separate us extranjeros. Most often it served to unite us across cultures, creeds and colors in our new country.

    As I grappled with my identity, for perhaps the first time since freshman year—when I was encouraged to associate and self-identify based on my race—I  had to recall my personal mission for my study abroad. My desire to experience Spain was the primary objective, and although this understanding would be colored by culture and identity, I would not allow these issues to obfuscate that goal.

    The truth is that I am an amalgamation of all these cultures, each subsequent experience in my life shedding a little piece of itself into my collective identity. Pooled together, these seemingly disparate parts have become the all-encompassing me.

  ***

    It has been three months since my American comrades and I have hit Iberian soil, and tonight we have begun yet another noche de fiesta.

   We sashay along, Marlboro Lights in hand, teeth tinged blue by cheap Ribero wine, swaying to the music in our heads. Passing by O’Hares we laugh at the American mini-circles of exclusion, holding the walls for balance against the turbulent forces of legal drinking. We smirk at the Spaniards calling out their piropos to us with that sensually slurred manner, undoubtedly attributable to the calimocho we have all been drinking for hours. I am sloppily reflecting on the lewd, wine-savoring stereotypical Castellanos before us, the kind we hear about from politically correct northeastern American tourists returning from their first European vacations, utterly scandalized. And then, puzzlingly, I am gripped by something.   

    There is something all too familiar about los Castellanos, both men and women. It is an indescribable, amorphous passion for life that one cannot fully describe and must simply be experienced. It is something that many Americans are removed from in their commercialized, commoditized lives-on-the-go and something many Europeans tend to regard as inappropriately effusive in societies where emotions are expressed through a veil of reservation.

    It is a fervor that reminds me of the countless celebratory, makossa music-infused Cameroonian nights, garnished with bitter plums, ndolé greens and rice, topped off with palm wine. I remember the numerous troops of joggers who would trot by our school in Yaoundé singing in harmonious tones almost unaware of their beautiful sound; the creativity of the little boys in my quartier, who would use metal and rubber from old flip-flops to create trucks and cars to play with. I am taken back to the cries that would shake the valley when a goal was made or missed during a Cameroonian football game and the pride with which Cameroonians embrace their culture—seeking out occasions to speak their native tongues, wearing their traditional clothes in cultures of suffocating uniformity and commercialism, gaining simple happiness by meeting other Africans in foreign lands, and artfully recreating customs and traditions through music, food, and art. The Cameroonian and African zest for life is something that I had never seen reproduced so powerfully in any other country.

    But Spain embraces its own customs as fervently and passionately as Cameroonians. I was taken aback each time I observed the multitude of older men sitting in plazas sipping on cafes con leche and tortilla espanola while reading El País; the way the city shuts down at two p.m. and everyone goes home for the sacred family lunch, followed by the religiously-observed cena six hours later; the constant responses of no pasa nada and tranquila which categorize the Spanish mentality; the tapas bars and vinotecas bursting with people eating, conversing, watching their favorite teams battle it out in La Liga, and of course the passionate, drunken uprisings upon each potentially goal-resulting flick of the foot. This lifestyle, and the way los Castellanos embrace it, strikes a deep chord in me; it resonates and harmonizes with the other facets of my identity. It is as if somehow a piece of Cameroon has nuzzled its way into mi Salamanca, this tiny diverse town.
   

     Mom always remarked on the dancing at parties thrown by her African friends. People were never shy; everyone was extremely outgoing and eager to move. Whereas at parties sponsored by her white American friends, people had to be pried off their chairs and lured to the dance floor, or jostled out of their comfortable chatting circles after one too many beers. This memory comes to me as I sit at the bar at Capitoleum, surrounded by eager Castellanos trying to chat up my friends and me. I am amused. As a short, dark-haired Andaluciano approaches me, I smile. He thinks I’m flirting with him, but I’m really smiling at the memory, lifted from the rest,  rising to the forefront of my mind. “Anímate, be alive,” he encourages. He is aggressive, nearly knocking me off my chair with his forceful, tugging hands. As we rise and join the stream of dancers, I lose myself in exuberance.

Glossary

Spanish terms:

“Querida mía, hace mucho tiempo.” – Darling, it has been awhile.
“Hola guapa, que tal?” – Hello gorgeous, how are you?
“Como fue tu viaje cariño?”  – How was your trip, sweetie?
Una Americana – an American woman
“Hablas muy bien para una Americana” – You speak Spanish well for an American woman
Extranjeros – foreigners
Piropos – cat calls and flirtatious comments
Calimocho – typical Spanish drink made of beer and red wine
Los Castellanos – Spanish people
Cafes con leche – coffee with milk
Tortilla Espanola – Spanish dish made of eggs, onions and potatoes
El País – Spanish periodical
Cena – dinner
No pasa nada/tranquila – don’t worry about it
Vinotecas – wine bars
Salamanca – small town in Central-West part of Spain

French terms:

Une Camerounaise – a Cameroonian woman
Une belle café au lait – a beautiful coffee with milk
Gruyère and Vacherin – two types of cheeses native to Switzerland
Chasselas wine – typical Swiss wine often eaten with fondue
“Mais, tu parles français avec un accent américain? Et la langue de ton pere?” – But you speak French with an American accent. And what about your father’s language?
Bamileke – Language spoken by the Bamileke people of Western Cameroon
Makossa – type of music popular in Cameroon
Ndolé – Cameroonian dish made of greens and bits of beef
Quartier – neighborhood

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