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Nov. 4th, 2008 11:54 amPatty got out of bed at 6:10am this morning to get on a bus to Pennsylvania to volunteer for Obama. After a couple of hours I finally rolled out of bed to vote. Today is the first day since the primaries I don't feel terrified Obama is not going to win. It's going to be okay.
Although, truth be told, I can't imagine what okay feels like. I don't know how to picture him winning, although I do wonder what newscasters or commentators will cry on air tonight (they will, someone will) and I wonder if a lot of anger is going to come out from the pro-Palin part of the Republican party.
The first presidential election I voted in was Clinton in 1992, and what I remember most about election night was a bunch of the Young Americans for Freedom kids going down to the White House to hold a candlelight vigil for the nation that the new president elect was surely, they thought, about to destroy. One of those guys later raped a friend of mine, broke her clavicle; recently, I saw his photo in the newspaper as a Nazi party leader. *shrug* Life is very strange.
I had tickets Clinton's first inauguration, and protested at W.'s first -- you never saw it on the news, but there were blocks and blocks of people who just turned their backs as the motorcade came by. It was simple and harsh.
In a lot of ways, politics were supposed to be my life. I covered the Democratic National Convention for the Associated Press in 1996 (still have my credentials and little enamel pin), and I had wanted, back in 1990, to work in politics, but that didn't pan out in a way that's sort of awful and complicated and is another story for another time. But that's okay, because in a lot of ways, of course, politics still is my life. And wow, just look at the things I've done -- life is strange, and sometimes kind.
Like most people, I vote selfishly. For me, that selfishness isn't about finances, but about being a full person in the eyes of the law -- not a child and not a deviant. As a queer woman that battle is profoundly uphill. Moreso than a lot of people think -- especially those that are younger or straighter than me. I remember when it wasn't really safe for a same-sex couple to hold hands walking down the street in New York City, and I remember vitriolic arguments in our campus LBGT group about the equal marriage rights case in Hawaii during the 1990s because it seemed too much to ask to soon.
Now, you can tell me abortion rights and gay rights and all this stuff doesn't really matter to a nation: it doesn't affect our safety or our prosperity, but that's where you're wrong. Women who can control their fertility can also control their prosperity. And gay people who feel like full citizens are more likely and able to take on citizenship's optional burdens -- lord knows, our country needs more soldiers these days; lord knows, our community needs more cops that will treat us fairly.
And I get, I do, that your issues may be different. That the gun thing may stick in your craw more than it sticks in mine (but it does stick in mine!), that the tax issues have a greater and more worrisome impact on you than they do me. Sure. But if you choose your guns, or your couple of hundred bucks at the end of the year as more important than my government actually treating me like a person? Be clear on that and either make other political contributions in a way that off-sets the incidental damage to human rights caused by the candidate you support or recognize you're making choices about the worth of whole groups of people, and if that's really how you feel, why have those people in your life? Because the version of the world where I only count when I'm amusing you as opposed to when I'm at risk? Not interested. Bold thing for a performer to say, I know.
But today it's going to be okay. I know it irrationally, the way I know my Jewish great-grandfather who was a tailor in St. Louis in the 1920s who have liked me solely because I apparently share his lopsided smile and sad eyes. Sometimes things work out. Just because they have to.
Although, truth be told, I can't imagine what okay feels like. I don't know how to picture him winning, although I do wonder what newscasters or commentators will cry on air tonight (they will, someone will) and I wonder if a lot of anger is going to come out from the pro-Palin part of the Republican party.
The first presidential election I voted in was Clinton in 1992, and what I remember most about election night was a bunch of the Young Americans for Freedom kids going down to the White House to hold a candlelight vigil for the nation that the new president elect was surely, they thought, about to destroy. One of those guys later raped a friend of mine, broke her clavicle; recently, I saw his photo in the newspaper as a Nazi party leader. *shrug* Life is very strange.
I had tickets Clinton's first inauguration, and protested at W.'s first -- you never saw it on the news, but there were blocks and blocks of people who just turned their backs as the motorcade came by. It was simple and harsh.
In a lot of ways, politics were supposed to be my life. I covered the Democratic National Convention for the Associated Press in 1996 (still have my credentials and little enamel pin), and I had wanted, back in 1990, to work in politics, but that didn't pan out in a way that's sort of awful and complicated and is another story for another time. But that's okay, because in a lot of ways, of course, politics still is my life. And wow, just look at the things I've done -- life is strange, and sometimes kind.
Like most people, I vote selfishly. For me, that selfishness isn't about finances, but about being a full person in the eyes of the law -- not a child and not a deviant. As a queer woman that battle is profoundly uphill. Moreso than a lot of people think -- especially those that are younger or straighter than me. I remember when it wasn't really safe for a same-sex couple to hold hands walking down the street in New York City, and I remember vitriolic arguments in our campus LBGT group about the equal marriage rights case in Hawaii during the 1990s because it seemed too much to ask to soon.
Now, you can tell me abortion rights and gay rights and all this stuff doesn't really matter to a nation: it doesn't affect our safety or our prosperity, but that's where you're wrong. Women who can control their fertility can also control their prosperity. And gay people who feel like full citizens are more likely and able to take on citizenship's optional burdens -- lord knows, our country needs more soldiers these days; lord knows, our community needs more cops that will treat us fairly.
And I get, I do, that your issues may be different. That the gun thing may stick in your craw more than it sticks in mine (but it does stick in mine!), that the tax issues have a greater and more worrisome impact on you than they do me. Sure. But if you choose your guns, or your couple of hundred bucks at the end of the year as more important than my government actually treating me like a person? Be clear on that and either make other political contributions in a way that off-sets the incidental damage to human rights caused by the candidate you support or recognize you're making choices about the worth of whole groups of people, and if that's really how you feel, why have those people in your life? Because the version of the world where I only count when I'm amusing you as opposed to when I'm at risk? Not interested. Bold thing for a performer to say, I know.
But today it's going to be okay. I know it irrationally, the way I know my Jewish great-grandfather who was a tailor in St. Louis in the 1920s who have liked me solely because I apparently share his lopsided smile and sad eyes. Sometimes things work out. Just because they have to.
