Make Obama a Movement, Not a Man

In Tuesday night’s chorus of thousands of jubilant “yes-we-cans” that emanated from the spontaneously gathered masses on 125th Street, we saw not only the joy that a redemptive political moment can inspire, but also a glimpse of what a mobilized American population looks like. With shouts of triumph that rang into the night, we took to the streets and reclaimed our city. Class, race, and culture did not disappear, but for a couple of hours they were unimportant. America was important, and we defined it much as Barack Obama did—black, white, and Latino, gay and straight, old and young. In its teeming contradictions brought together, we saw beauty.

During the campaign, the Republican Party, long devoid of ideas and vision, reverted to the old standby that had served the right wing so well in its ascendance: fear. Fear of the immigrant coming to take your job. Fear of the Arab terrorist coming to blow you up. Fear of the black man who you just can’t trust. Fear of the 1960s radicals with their long hair talking about revolution. Fear of the communists coming to take your money. Fear of the cities and their decadence, their vigor, their endless flows, and reinventions of identity. Fear.

It was an all-consuming fear, which took shelter in the most retrograde definitions of American identity—a normative patriarchal whiteness with all the racism, militarism, and reckless hyper-individualism that it implies. While the sons and daughters of the nation were busy fighting against the imagined enemies of the nation, the economic elites of this nation could go about reaping super-profits and systematically dismantle the gains of the working class in the midst of deepening inequality and poverty.

Obama, as symbol, as story, and as leader, was the first figure that could channel the seething discontent with this status quo into a positive message. The agenda of fear was not simply rejected, it was overwhelmingly defeated.

This is the time for celebration, not for cynicism. Yet several storm clouds hang over the new morning in America. First, the huge and broad-based nature of Obama’s electoral victory relies on coalitions between interests that are in many ways contradictory. The large multinational corporations and financial institutions that dominate our economy and were the big winners of the free-market orgy have always funded both major political parties. But now, with the obvious decrepitude of the Republican Party as a vehicle for protecting their interests, many have jumped ship and are hanging on to the Democratic coattails, as voters, fundraisers, and advisors to the incoming president. His big tent may be just a little too big.

It would be tragic if Obama, who has so eloquently positioned himself as the candidate of the people, were to serve as a Trojan horse for the same interests whose role in society he clearly understands and has, at times, denounced. The multiple crises that America faces call out for visionary, revolutionary reforms that evoke the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt, not the pale ratiocination of the Clinton era that failed to break from the existing consensus. It is entirely unclear what kind of president Obama will be, for he has evinced both visionary and conservative tendencies both in his elected career and throughout his campaign.

For real change to happen and for the American people to really win this election beyond the symbolic level, we must maintain the level of political mobilization and collective organization that Obama has inspired. Now that both Wall Street and Main Street have invested themselves with Obama, the long overdue battle for the soul of the Democratic Party will likely commence. For the people to win, we have to understand that just because we have vanquished the darkest forces of our nature, just because we no longer have to be ashamed of the travesty that is our government, the struggle for America is not over.

We who pumped our fists in the air in Harlem and Times Square and knocked on doors in Virginia and Ohio have arranged a tryst with destiny, and it is one that we cannot renege upon. We will need to assert that change means more than breaking white conservative control of the government. Fundamentalist capitalism easily feeds on racial prejudice, but can exist on other ideological terms as well. A multiracial, inclusive, “enlightened” dictatorship of Wall Street is not what we are asking for. We must demand that Obama be more than a sensible administrator of a system that grinds people down.

We have to take on the fundamental assumptions of our foreign policy, an economic system that has led to huge class and racial disparities, a development model that leads to environmental degradation and social atomization, and many, other issues. But the beauty is that, at least in theory, all of these formerly unspeakable issues are now on the table.

But they are only on the table if we demand them to be. The movement that Obama built will be the key to any systemic change that comes out of his election and is more important than his oratorical flourishes, racial identity, or most of what we tend to focus upon. Tremendous possibilities lay in front of us, but Obama is not a prophet who will save us. He is a tool that, potentially, could be used for the benefit of the victims of American power, both at home and abroad. History will pardon neither him nor us if we fail to step up to the challenge.

Andrew Lyubarsky is a Columbia College senior majoring in Hispanic studies. Cliché Guevara runs alternate Thursdays.
Opinion@columbiaspectator.com