I wrote my first diary 7 months ago right after our next president spoke so beautifully about race and did his best to diffuse the Rev. Wright contretemps. I wrote about my family: the Lynching Tree, fighting homegrown terrorists, and ultimately, why we as a family not only have to bear witness to history, but why I specifically have to as Kos put it so well, "leave everything on the road".
Today, as news of assassination plots and slurs at rallies swirl around like wraiths from another age, I feel no fear, countenance no doubt. I will find comfort in that age old mantra passed down in countless African American families: "You have to work twice as hard to get half as far ahead." I will work twice as hard tomorrow as I did today, and God willing, will do more the next day and again the next day, until, on 4 November, I am spent.
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So here we are nearing the finish line.
I have been catalouging reasons why I am pushing myself. My daughter's future, my parents' past. My cousin reliving Khe Sanh, my other cousin who is different after a couple (3?)tours in Iraq, yet another cousin washed out on Wall Street at 25. Friends in foreclosure, my mother in law's whispered conversations wondering if she should go back to work.
All of this fits into my personal calculus, but, deep in my heart, my motivation is a profound love for what I hope my country can be.
Hope is a funny thing. Nothing hurts worse, nothing feels so right. My extended family will gather around the stump of the Lynching Tree on the 8th and collectively tell the youngest amongst us the stories of crushing defeats and dark nights filled with fear. But running through the narrative will be a little light that shines: slavery and Ben buying his way out twice, building schools and rebuilding them after they were burnt down, finding a way after losing everything in the Depression, my mom watching relatives swinging gently from tree branches for being uppity, but never failing to pass that same sense of manhood to her sons. We hope against hope, and as each generation has risen, we have been able to unlock this Pandora's Box that is America to let that last, tiny little thing called hope out.
For me, Obama embodies that hope, that idea that we, the people, means me the person. That a black guy with a "terrorist" name is 7 days, 10 hours give or take from winning the highest office in the land speaks so clearly to the fact that America is starving for hope. I absolutely adore the diaries about unreconstructed racists saying they are going to vote for the n*****; for many of these people these days, forget their guns and their religion, hope is the only thing left.
Everyone can do something to get Senator Obama over the top. It doesn't matter what it is, even if it is only encouraging a family member to vote or extending the kindness of giving a bottle of water to a volunteer walking the neighborhood doing GOTV. In the darkness, each tiny step towards the light helps to move mountains. The key is to actually do it. Fatigue is no excuse, you can rest next week. Lack of funds does not prevent you from knocking on your neighbor's door to make sure they are voting. Next Tuesday, we will either feel elated or crushed; dare to hope that hope will triumph and rest easy in the knowledge that you have done your best.