ALEXIS PAULINE GUMBS: I understand why looking at that family and imagining them in the White House makes us imagine we might finally be at home. But I have to resist that feeling. If I pretend that home is something that the state can give me in the form of a good-looking “first family” without stopping its economic, invasive, nativist violence, then I deny us all the home in the making that I believe in today and every day.
CARMEN D: In 2004, President George Bush garnered 44% of the Latino vote and pundits everywhere declared that “Hispanics” were conservative, and might provide a growing base of support for the Republican party going forward. It was a reasonable hypothesis, I guess…
ELLE, PHD: I expected to cry if Barack Obama won the election—everyone who knows me expected me to cry. I even had friends who called and said, “Are you crying yet?” Admittedly, I dashed away a few tears, but I didn’t really cry. The joy I felt was overshadowed by worry. And why am I letting it get to me?
AND NOW, the results of The PoliticsOnline.com Presidential Election Predictor Competition! Each member of the Online100 panel, the daily tracker of the US blogosphere consisting of the “100 leading online voices in the United States” was asked to predict the outcome in all twenty potential battleground states. The envelope, por favor!
IT’S BEEN A LONG, INTENSE ELECTION YEAR. And just as after the primaries ended, at this point I feel the need to center myself. To calm, to restore, to reorient and mostly to withdraw a bit from the online activity and conversation, at least for a brief moment. Enough to mark a pause or a divide.
CONGRATULATIONS TO BARACK OBAMA, the 44th president (-elect) of the United States of America. And to all who supported and worked for or contributed in some way toward this moment. It has been an overwhelming and amazing night. Here’s looking toward the future, and all it may contain.
HERE IS AN ‘I VOTED’ BUTTON that I was hired to make. The person who bought it gave permission for me to offer it to you freely, in the spirit of our new Black Socialist Nation. So spread the pixels, my friends, if you so desire.
THE DAY IS HERE! It’s time for the first change of many and it’s all very exciting. I feel like it’s early Christmas morning over here in the dark Pacific Northwest morning. I’m shakin’ the boxes! I’m smelling the pine needles! Warm red-gold-green-blue glow on my face! My heart is full of hope and a feeling of renewal.
SHOT WHEN I WAS WORKING FOR MTV and their Choose or Lose Street Team, here are three videos of Obama speaking here in Oregon. I feel very lucky to have been part of history in the small way I was, by hearing him speak and shooting these. The first video begins with people lined up around the block waiting for hours to hear Barack Obama speak. Just like the lines at many of the polls today.
MY HOPE IS THAT WE CARRY THIS FORWARD. This energy now rising. That we all carry on with this decision to work for a new day and a new way of seeing. A way out of the hate and the fear and the small-minded paradigms that keep us running in circles as we try to spiral up to the Top of the Shining Heap and step on other hands to get there. That we continue to open our minds and our hearts and become this change we want so much to believe in.
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