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So very sad. Barack Obama's grandmother has died. 1 comments Links to this post ...simple answers to simple questions: "Why do I need to go to Galería Jardin on Election Day and make phone calls with Zak Schwarzman?" See that map? I "stole" it from www.mydd.com, one of the best political websites in the business. It's clickable and it's been prominent on yanquimike.com.ar and it tells a tale... We're looking good in the East ..."that's where the freight is", as we used to say. But if we can't count on WA, OR, and CA... we're in for a big struggle. Those folks in those states already know that they have to come out and vote (note: the great State of Oregon is now 100% mail-in ballot!) ...no matter what the networks will say early Tuesday night. But if it looks like a crushing defeat for John W. McSame early truth about enzyte in the evening, Democrats in those West Coast states might stay home. The West Coast is our "firewall." If you do your part with Zak Schwarzman and Americans Abroad for Obama, today and beginning at 11:00am on Election Day, you can help people find their polling places, you can help find them a ride to the polls if they need one, you can help make sure that complacency doesn't prevent them from casting their votes when all seems to be going so well 3 hours ahead of them. Please come to the center of Buenos Aires, on Calle Florida and Tucumán, and call voters in PA, OH, and FL ...and keep WA, OR, and the big prize, California, from staying at home. ...YOU already voted! Come make sure that nobody else forgets to vote. You can call and shop, call and eat, and come back and call again! Come down in droves and make telephone calls to Democrats in the US ...under the guidance of Obama's Top Dog in South America. You'll be proud to say that you did. 0 comments Links to this post Sunday, November 02, 2008 I got the first word, but was speechless. I knew he was almost 100 years old but I didn't want to think about his passing. He died yesterday on the fifth anniversary of my emmigrating from my beloved, his beloved Chicago. I found a good account of his life and work on NPR ...so here it is. Reading him was one thing, hearing him was another, meeting him on the bus with his "unrepentant" red socks ...was completely another. His "Working" changed my life and radicalized me in 1970 as much if not more than anything in that year of my life. You can listen to him reading Sandburg's "Chicago" and you can cry like I did if you're so inclined. If you can go along with Nelson Algren in that loving Chicago is "like loving a woman with a broken nose", you won't have a hard time sharing my sentiments. So long, ol' pal. 0 comments Links to this post Saturday, November 01, 2008 ...there's a lot of Election Night parties that you can attend ...but there's only one that is sponsored by the United States' Democratic Party ...and only one in which you can meet and greet Barack Obama's Top Man in South America, Zak Schwarzman! Not only that! There's only one Election Night party where you can actually shake the hands of the volunteers that have made Argentina a star in the crown of Democrats Abroad International and have gotten out the vote here in Argentina and South America and Central America and the Caribbean ...and even in the swing states of the US. Those volunteers not only pushed the stone over the mountain top ...but when the US Embassy needed Bi-PARTISAN volunteers ...they were there, too. I'd like to rant, just a little here, if you'll allow me: over this year... during which the efforts of THOSE volunteers from Democrats Abroad Argentina... did SO much to register and assist ANY eligible voter here in Argentina... we had many doors slammed in our face. Sometimes our volunteers were allowed to sit OUTSIDE the door ...and, don't get me wrong, I was grateful for even that. If we could register ANY voter for this Tuesday, I was satisfied that we'd fulfilled our duties ...and I was confident that the majority would vote for our candidate. Many times, we had to pretend that we were not associated with ANY political party. We registered many Republicans; we registered US citizens of all parties and persuasions. But we were not allowed entry to many places in Buenos Aires ...because we were TOO partisan. If we could not enter with a "Republicans Abroad" representative, many venues would not allow us to enter. That was the game ...and we had to play it. The fact that NOTHING along the lines of "Republicans Abroad Argentina" did/does exist ...did not affect certain venues in regard in their decision not to allow us to register US citizens in their houses. It was unfair. We worked around it as best we could ...but it was unfair. In those places that refused us, the fact that ANY another US political party WITHDREW from the effort to register any and all voters along side OUR volunteers ...caused us to be excluded. "Fair and balanced" is one thing ...but this year was not fair and balanced for our VOLUNTEERS that worked tirelessly, under the leadership of our Laura Atkins, to make sure that every US citizen in this city and in Argentina was equiped to cast a valid vote in this Tuesday's election. Brian Byrnes of CNN reported, and has assured me that he verified, that the US embassy in Argentina held the ONLY "voting day" event of it's kind in the world. It was beautiful: jazz band and snacks and party favors and everything ...all on a LOVELY early spring day. But when I saw the staffing of the hard-working volunteers of Democrats Abroad Argentina in virtually EVERY post not devoted to crowd-control inside the embassy ...let's just say that I had mixed feelings. Our volunteers, aparently, did not share my mixed feelings ...they worked just as tirelessly inside the embassy as they did all year outside all the gates locked to us. Don't get me wrong: I like an neutral embassy and I like things being fair and things being balanced. But this year was an uphill battle for our volunteers ...and it didn't have to be that way. If you're in Buenos Aires ...and happy about the outcome of the election ...there's a group of people to thank for it. That group will be found at Sacramento Resto-Bar, El Salavador 5729, in Palermo Hollywood, in Buenos Aires, THIS Tuesday, from 9pm until we can't maintain a crowd any longer. I hope that I have the opportunity to introduce each and every one of them to you. Let me just say that there is NOTHING that Democrats Abroad Argentina has done to compare with the effort of that fine bunch of volunteers. Come on down and do it with your Democrats this Tuesday ...and let our volunteers know that you apreciate their work. Yours in art and labor, 1 comments Links to this post Friday, October 31, 2008 Yep. That's me... but I actually have more hair now... than then. More importantly, that's the woman that I've mentioned from time-to-time in these pages, especially as I was heading to the Democratic National Convention this year. I dedicated my visit and coverage from the floor in Denver to her. The Library of Congress thought it was pretty good, as well. My great-grandmother, Mary Margaret McCune, was a committed Democrat and a community organizer of the first degree ...from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. More specifically, from the New Deal wing of our big-tent party. I like posting her picture (after I finally, finally found it!) on the 25th anniversary of democracy here in Argentina. I think she would like that, too. I caught a lot of crap during the '60's and '70's for referring to myself as an un-reconstructed New Deal Democrat ...after that, it didn't seem to matter how I referred to myself ...as the good ol' US of A slipped into the Reagan-Democrat phase of our party ...then, into where we are now. But I was schooled at her knee. She knew the value of the Federal government backing the opportunity of Americans to protect their own homes, to be protected from the excesses of the market-place, to reward veterans for their service, and to guarantee our participation in the democracy that is allowed to us in this Republic. Come Tuesday, however, we're gonna be looking for a person to sit in the Oval Office as transformational as FDR himself. I think we might just have ourselves someone that would sit well with "Gramma Mary." I remember well coming home one day with a new word I had learned on the playground: "Nigger". She popped me so fast in my chops that I could have missed her whole lesson had she not explained so well why it was so wrong to divide people that had the same interests ...even though those common interests might seem to defy explaination in then apartheid America. She was Irish. To this day, you can find older Chicagoans that refer to African-Americans as "toasted Irishmen." The term harkens back to the days when even slaves were held in higher regard than the Irish. At one time, in Memphis, for example, black slaves were allowed to toss bales of cotton down from the bluffs over the Mississppi to barges below ...but not to catch them. Catching bales was considered too dangerous for owned slaves. The Irish were used for that. She knew how things were. She made sure that I knew it, too. On Tuesday, we are liable to see a transformational figure elected to the presidency of the U.S. comparable to no one since FDR ...but only if we all vote for him. We white Democrats are famous for nominating black candidates ...but in the words of my blog father, the late Steve Gilliard, "we always seem to forget to vote for the black guy" once behind the curtain. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this time we'll do it; we white Americans will actually vote "for the black guy." My good friend here in Buenos Aires, Matthew, from Washington DC, recounted to me last night a story from recent phonebanking in which white voters were heard to say, "we're voting for the nigger!" Gramma Mary would no doubt be displeased with the term ...but the result would please her to no end ...if I can be allowed to channel her committment to the cause. Come Inauguration Day, Barack Obama has the potential to change ...obviously to change white Americans perceptions of our country ...but also to change black Americans perceptions of white people that will actually go behind the curtain and pull the lever for a black man to be our President. I don't want Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton nor Bobby Rush to be pushed into lesser positions; we need them as much as ever. But I would like to celebrate Obama's election as much as for the good he might do us ...as for the change in the perception between white and black Democrats and Americans. From Buenos Aires, |