Dare We Hope?

I had been a little busy and had wanted to leave up Karen's "Dance" piece, because I especially liked it. Tonight I realized that it was written 12/28 so has gone into the 2008 Archives. Like many of us, I have been frustrated beyond words with economic and geopolitical events, and focussed mostly on survival (work, car repairs, getting around, helping family, etc.) Locally, we've gone from three unusual back-to-back snowstorms to record-breaking floods. Everyone has been personally affected, to some degree.

I wanted to write something, so I Googled the word "Hope" and learned something I hadn't known, which may be relevant now. When Bill Clinton was first inaugurated,, it was a time like today when there had been years of Republican rule. He organized the Faces of Hope, 50 or so ordinary Americans that he had met during his campaign and that he brought to Washington DC to the Inaugural Ball. Several have died and others have suffered setbacks, but as it says in the article, the rest are older, wiser and possibly more cynical. Literally millions are predicted to converge on Washington DC for Obama's historic inauguration, and so I was interested in the reflections of the Faces of 50 following their recent reunion.

I have excerpted some of their insights (the descriptions are shortened but the quotations come from the article):

Alta Bardsley was a Quaker Oats worker from Cedar Rapids Iowa. She said: "It was like we were welcome to Washington, D.C., again. It was our town, the country's town." With Obama, she says, "I'm sure it will be that way again. We're home again. We're welcome in our capital. We have a man who's going to care about America." She is now 69 years old.

Bob Shannon was a football coach from East St. Louis who worked with inner city teams. He was later forced out of his job after he became a whistle blower on corruption, but he moved on and is now 64 and retired. He remembers his trip to Clinton's inauguration as once-in-a-lifetime experience and said, "We did a lot better in that era. Maybe we'll never do that well again." He does feel that Obama already has overcome huge obstacles to win election as the first black president. "It was almost miraculous," he says, "like somebody playing football, down 50-to-nothing at the half and coming back to win."

Danny Kronenfeld led a homeless outreach program in New York and took part in the 1963 March on Washington. He is now 76 and works a few days a week with youth. He is not cynical. Of Clinton, he says, "we came out after the eight years better than we went in." Now he says, "I think people that I deal with day-to-day have been given a tonic of hope, really." He says of Obama: "I never really thought I'd live to see a black man elected president. There was a tremendous kind of next-step feeling" to his election.

Roger Kuttan was an 18-year-old college graduate when Clinton came in. "I was very young and idealistic .. I have kind of lost a lot of that." Now he is 34 and works for a nonprofit. He is still somewhat optimistic as Obama prepares to take office. "When they actually called it for Obama I just started sobbing. It brings back all those memories of hope and looking forward to a lot of change and improving."

Teann Scoggins was a Hillary supporter and is glad Biden is with Obama. She is 56 and retired/on disability but does volunteer work. She also has a history of having worked for Gore's election and is a former Republican. "I do wish him well," she says of Obama. "He's inherited a very difficult situation and, truthfully, I don't think four years is going to be long enough to correct most of what he's going to inherit."

Bill Brierton is 69 and was laid off in 1990 from a Steel company in Pittsburg and was part of a Clinton campaign ad. He says "I just hate to see anybody lose their job, because I know what it's like." He feels like if Obama is able to deliver half of what he's talked about, Brierton says, "I'd be a happy camper. The people at the bottom of the ladder are always looking up and they're hoping maybe this time it'll go, after Obama gets sworn in." he said.

What about people like you and I? We have been through alot as well, and as an American friend in Germany wrote to me today in discussing Bush, "What a long, strange trip it's been!"

I was 40 years old when Clinton came into office and my son was in high school. I had just entered into private practice and was glad to have a Democrat in office. I had not been happy about the first Bush administration and the Gulf War. I thought of Clinton as a moderate but a big improvement over the status quo. I was destined to do well economically while he was in office and to become too complacent that the Democrats would remain in office. The 2000 Supreme Court decision which robbed Gore of the Presidency was my wakeup call, followed before long by 9/11, the Iraq War, the disappointing 2004 election, the financial meltdown and the current disheartening geopolitical events the world faces.

Personally, our family's comfortable middle class status would be threatened significantly, though we did not face the dire circumstances of some of our family, friends and acquaintances, let alone the dire poverty of some in the world. The positive tradeoff for me was the increased intensity of political engagement and awareness forced by two Bush terms which can only be characterized as disastrous.

So I guess I share the deja vu, coupled with the strange mix of hope tempered with cynicism borne of sometimes feeling relatively powerless despite activism and effort, or not knowing where to turn next.

What stories and recollectons do others have and what are your feelings about the concept of "hope"?