This election season has been very emotional, personal and stressful for everyone. It has conjured up all kinds of suppressed emotions and thoughts such as fear, doubt, racism, sexism, hate and doubts. With all the heated discussions and topics taking a personal turn, it is very easy to get caught up and lose sight of what this election is about. This election is about change, which no matter where you stand on the political spectrum we are in need of great change in this country as a whole. We are at a crossroads where we will either grow together or fall apart.
As a democrat and Obama supporter, I personally have been on the bull horn calling for change and peace. I have been proud to find that my choice for leadership has presented a platform that was built on the issues, facts and a plan for change in a peaceful united front. Where we stand economically and in the global community is devastating enough without turning on one another. This time, this election is and should be about uniting a torn and depleted nation, not creating more division and confusion. I felt that most democrats and Obama supporters were on that same page, unfortunately I was wrong.
Friday morning I was at the gas station wearing my “I Only Date Democrats” t-shirt and my blinged out Obama sweatshirt. A Jewish man approached me as I pumped gas and asked where I got my sweatshirt, he liked it and wanted to get one for his daughter. I gave him the card of my girlfriend who created the shirt and started a conversation about Obama and the election. Then he asked me if I had seen the “art” display in West Hollywood where they had McCain burning in the chimney and Palin hanging from the roof in a noose. I said yes, and he said that he was sad to see it come down. I stood there in shock! To hear a man… a father who’s ancestors face mounds of ridicule and discrimination promote hate and violence over political differences was scary! I couldn’t believe it!! Well, I couldn’t just stand silent of course. I told him though I do not agree with the McCain/Palin platform and don’t really care for Palin personally… the thought of someone promoting violence against her based on that, is disgusting and wrong. She may be a lot of things, but is also a mother, a wife and a woman and she isn’t deserving of DEATH or DEATH THREATS! And that is what that display was, a death threat!
Well, needless to say this man went on. He claimed that he was afraid that, “the gays” were going to cost Obama the election with “this prop 8″ nonsense. Now I haven’t really been vocal about my position on prop 8… not out of fear, but because I’ve been focused on the “main event”. But, the bottom line… this proposition is divisive, discriminatory and just plain wrong! This man argued with me that it is a moral issue rather than a discrimination issue and it doesn’t compare to Black people not being able to marry White people. But he is wrong. What he fails to realize, and I say this as a Christian/Catholic, is that for years people have thrown around the morality clause and scripture in order to control a group of people. It wasn’t just black and white people not being able to marry one another. It was all interracial marriages, and native American marriages weren’t even recognized at all until the late 1950’s. And not too long before the Civil Right Acts, black people were not recognized as citizens or even human… we were deemed soul less by pastors and masters all over the country. The Germans did it to the Jews, the southern white Americans did it to the Africans, the southern blacks and whites did it to the Creoles, The whites to the Native Americans and the Egyptians to the Jews. This was an argument that this man just couldn’t win with me because I am the product of a single man that faced more discrimination in his lifetime than most, my grandfather.
My grandfather was a homosexual Navajo Native American man who ran away from the ranch his family worked in Texas to go to Chicago and have a real life. When arriving, he had to change his identity to become a black straight man in order to survive! Technically his marriage to my grandmother in the early 1950’s would have been illegal because technically he wasn’t an African American marrying another African American. Later down the line when he came out of the closet he was unable to benefit not only from the choice of marrying legally, but to be able to reap the benefits of domestic partnership in the eyes of the law. Though my grandfather never really could be truly comfortable or accepted fully by society, he never promoted hate. He didn’t focus on the pain that discrimination caused him or his family, he once told me that thinking about it was a waste of time, he had other things to do!
As his granddaughter and has a young minority woman, I am overwhelmed with emotion over this election period as I know all of you are. But one emotion that doesn’t overwhelm is hate! Hate is wrong in any form! This country has come so far from the days of people waking up to burning crosses, being moved away from their land, not being able to choose who they can legally live the rest of their life with… we cannot afford to go back. The fight that our family, friends and ancestors fought will all be in vain. The conversation with that man scared me and made me sad. I wondered how he could support a man who is all about peace, facts and change, and sit and spew such terrible things and hateful things. He proved to me that even though I can count on his vote for change, he still lives in a fear bubble that is guard by a wall of hate. He isn’t living change.
No matter what happens tomorrow, this country needs to get on the road to healing. As staunch Obama supporters we have to carry on his message. So what do we do? We show up to the polls tomorrow and we VOTE! And whether Barack Obama wins tomorrow, he has started a movement in this country. If he loses it just means we still have to fight a little bit harder, but we cannot give up. Just remember:
Crispus Attucks fell so that Rosa Parks could sit, Rosa Parks sat so that Dr. Martin Luther King could march, Dr. Martin Luther King marched so that Barack Obama could run, and Barack Obama is running so that our children and grandchildren can fly.
These leaders did these things out of faith and love and strength. Hate is a weakness. Obama represents change and we can’t be about change if we are still living and promoting the past! Vote Yes on Obama and No on Prop 8. Don’t just be about hope and change with your vote, but with your words and your actions. It’s a new day in America, make your contribution.
-Brooke
