{"id":1369,"date":"2008-12-01T13:27:27","date_gmt":"2008-12-01T18:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=1369"},"modified":"2008-12-01T13:27:27","modified_gmt":"2008-12-01T18:27:27","slug":"marginalized-voices-emerge-in-obama-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2008\/12\/01\/marginalized-voices-emerge-in-obama-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"Marginalized Voices Emerge in Obama Campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Back from a little Thanksgiving break, we bring you today Family Stories<\/a>, the monthly column from Jacqueline Hudak<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Still stunned, energized, and moved, I think we’ll all be processing Obama’s victory for a long while. -Deborah <\/em><\/p>\n

As GWP readers know, I am fascinated by which stories are told in our culture, which remain silenced, and what conditions bring certain ones to the fore. I often say my work as a family therapist entails listening to stories \u00e2\u20ac\u201c stories that either cannot be spoken or heard outside of my office.\u00c2\u00a0 From the personal to the cultural, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s often not a great leap.<\/p>\n

As so brilliantly documented in a book by a former history prof of mine at BU, (A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present<\/a>\"\"), Howard Zinn presents history through the eyes of those rarely heard in mainstream texts.\u00c2\u00a0 I was reminded of this the other week when my friend Trina Scordo, a longtime union organizer, began to tell stories she heard in North Carolina as she knocked on doors for the Obama campaign as the election approached. Trina asked one of her fellow union members why he chose to travel from New York to Charlotte for this election eve.\u00c2\u00a0 He told Trina that his father had said there would never be an African-American president in the United States.\u00c2\u00a0 He said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My Father always told me racism was too strong.\u00c2\u00a0 My grandparents were slaves and my father faced racism on his job and in the neighborhood in which we lived.\u00c2\u00a0 My Dad always tried to avoid the discussion of race because he did not believe it would ever change.\u00c2\u00a0 He died believing that.\u00c2\u00a0 I had to be here on this day, on this night for him.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 When Barack Obama surpassed 270 electoral votes, Trina told me, this gentleman fell to his knees and wept.\u00c2\u00a0 He held in his hand a picture of his father.<\/p>\n

Other stories came from those on the other side of the doors.\u00c2\u00a0 As Trina said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153African-Americans shared their histories with organizers at their front doors and porches.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a collective history of slavery, civil rights and unions.\u00c2\u00a0 Some told me it was the first time they had shared this history outside of their families and further, with a white person.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

This election gave a sense of liberation to the marginalized: youth, women, communities of color, the exploited and working class.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet it was a bittersweet victory \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a victory tinged with sadness about the passage of California\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prop 8. I asked in my column last month: How do we fill the gap between what we wanted and what we get in this election?<\/a><\/p>\n

I found an analysis of the breakdown of who voted for Prop 8 at Pam’s House Blend<\/a>, one that did not engage in racial scapegoating.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Hendrik Hertzberg<\/a> (New Yorker, Dec 1) points to the tens of thousands of people who took to the streets all over this country in spontaneous protest, and believes \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t enough this time. But the time is coming.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

In the afterword of the young readers version of A People’s History<\/a>\"\", Howard Zinn asks youth to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153imagine the American people united for the first time in a movement for fundamental change.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

We are on the cusp of such a movement.\u00c2\u00a0 May it be so.<\/p>\n

—Jacqueline Hudak<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back from a little Thanksgiving break, we bring you today Family Stories, the monthly column from Jacqueline Hudak.\u00c2\u00a0 Still stunned, energized, and moved, I think we’ll all be processing Obama’s victory for a long while. -Deborah As GWP readers know, I am fascinated by which stories are told in our culture, which remain silenced, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1902,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10745,85,21733,21789],"class_list":["post-1369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-political-campaigns","tag-politics","tag-racial-equality","tag-sexual-freedom"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1902"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}