A Plea: STOP the politics of MARGINALIZATION

[geiger]

Send your angry emails and letters....

When something wakes me up at 4 o'clock in the morning, I am not a happy camper.

I was bothered all day yesterday by headlines trying to narrow the contest down to one btwn a cackling HRC and an angry McCain, too many numerous new meaningless "endorsements," HRC's inappropriate announcement near the end of the debate of her "national town meeting" the night before Super Tuesday (like she's "pulling" something on Obama), and other responses I saw to the Obama/Clinton debate.... Couldn't quite put my finger on it until my brain worked on it overnight.

Okay, I am pissed, and at the moment too pissed to get out all my text books from graduate school, or to quote sources, and so I ask for a bit of leeway by just saying I have been involved in political campaigns, advocacy and have worked in not only in the political sector, but for non-profits, business and in educational settings. I have two master's degrees, so I'm not trying to pull anyone's leg, I'm not necessarily ranting on behalf of any candidate per se.

The day before this grand event of a debate, I sensed a stirring of consciousness, involvement, and genuine desire for contribution, that in the context of all the years of my direct personal political involvement, I truly believed I have never witnessed, felt or believed to be authentic before. So this was one of the reasons was I felt it was going to be a true contest, btwn Obama and HRC on one side and McCain and Huckabee (Huckabee, who refuses to be marginalized, as witnessed in taking on Anderson Cooper in the latest R debate). Even though I was infuriated by Wolf Blitzer's putting words into both Obama's and HRC's mouths, immediately after the debate, about their responses to his question of a joint ticket, I didn't see what was coming over the next day in the headlines, etc.

I truly believe that some people don't do this purposely, but their words and actions, in their own haste and excitement to be a "player," to add their own imprint or importance to events, such as in the case of Blitzer, effectively move others to the side, in an insidious and unthinking manner at best, arrogant and unprofessional at worst.

But when one of our best and most accomplished leaders takes her opponent to task by saying "It takes a President...," not just a rabble-rouser, when she has been one of the biggest and best rabble-rousers around, and not in a bad way, for most of her life, she needs to be taken to task. In her smugness over the "fact" that a President was the one that signed civil rights legislation into law, a little "fact" that a staffer probably uncovered for her to use, she failed to remember or learn that President Johnson had to be dragged cussing and stomping his fists into supporting civil rights legislation. Now, I am not a snob, I grew up poor, and even though that I am now a person of privilege, only because a Democrat was in office, Mr. Carter, when I started my college career, and even though I worked sometimes thirty hours a week thru college, my education was largely subsidized by the government and thus ever since I have suffered from an obsessive desire to "give back." In that regard, I am going to stand behind one of my master's degrees which happens to be in history, to DENOUNCE Mrs. Clinton for stomping on our history, and yes, indeed, the Kennedy legacy, for all of its twists and turns. It was simply an opportunistic and cynical ploy to MARGINALIZE a worthy, who she knows to be worthy, opponent. I am simply fed up with this kind of bullshit. If we are the party that's not supposed to be doing this stuff, then let's not do it. It's blind arrogance and untrue to our standards, creeds, and beliefs, as a PARTY!

I will be emailing Wolf Blitzer to complain both about a not constructive or journalistically professional question and interpretation.

But my concerns go beyond that. John Edwards made a plea that poverty be kept a front and central issue.... The youth of this country need to be continued to be LOUDLY encouraged to stay engaged: if you do, young people thirty and under, you WILL change history....

I can't begin to tell you of how many meetings and places I have gone to where I saw the nasty process of marginalization occur to people; as a woman and an advocate, it's happened to me. I've acted as advocate, translator, cheerleader. And so have many of you.

DU'er's, you know what to do. Take out your pen and paper, laptops and software, and get to work. Don't let anyone write or speak you out of this campaign. You deserve better. STAY ENGAGED.