Obama Drama

Not everyone loves Obama. Today brought the drama- at least for me. During the discussion in a pretty innocuous class on the lack of participation by "North America" during events following the US Social Forum (heard of that one? yeah, me neither), someone in the class asked the United Stater presenter what he felt about Obama. The presenter declined to comment, showing his uncomfortability and desire to stay true to topic. The class was not detoured- more general comments about Obama led to a small debate about the purpose of the WSF. Enter France into the discussion. Marie, a French woman (who also happens to be our hotel neighbor) expressed frustration, proclaiming that she didn't understand why the group wanted to talk about Obama- "he's a centrist, a conservative- the World Social Forum is about radicals."

I was in a difficult emotional place. I generally don't respond to the anti-U.S., anti-imperialist nature of banners and rhetoric because I see the historical truth to this analysis- especially in light of the U.S.'s atrocious interventionist policy in Latin American politics. And, I generally agree with the lady from France that Obama is a moderate- he is most definitely to the right of many of my colleagues politically. However, my soul was calling for rebuttal. So, I stated that even if Obama was a political centrist, the election of Obama was radical because it was an election of a person from a historically excluded group- and that is what I thought the WSF was about. Although she acknowledged that we were here to discuss inclusion of excluded groups, she said that she was friends with the Black Panthers and that the U.S. voters should have picked the radical.... wait for it.... John Edwards!

I didn't comment again, but in my mind I saw myself asking her if the Africans in France thought that the election of Obama was radical or whether France is anywhere near electing a candidate of African descent. Such a question could have provoked a lively discussion, but it is divisive, no? Instead I told the entire class that they could come talk to me after the discussion if they wanted to talk about my feelings on Obama. One took me up on it, and it was not Marie.

A young Brazilian member of PT, the left-wing socialist workers' party, came up to me and said that at first he was skeptical of Obama, but realized the big change immediately when Obama's first action was to halt the trials in Guantanamo. We had fruitful discussion in which we agreed that the election did in fact constitute a social movement, and that even this moderate president could lead to a shift in the view of the United States from evil imperialist to the more acceptable greedy capitalist. We agreed that what we are seeing is baby steps. For instance, a trade agreement with stronger labor protections is baby steps toward a better world, and we were both hopeful that such a thing is possible now. I'm not known for my love of babies, but any one whose first steps could help to halt the slaughter of trade union activists across the global south requires me to hold him up and protect him.