There is a new Wes Clark video that is very unusual at YouTube. Instead of talking about a candidate, in this case Wes Clark, it speaks directly to Wes Clark. I hope this really does go viral. I feel it has a message that Wes Clark needs to hear.

Beyond that impact on Clark himself I think this is the beginning of the ability of a group, individual or campaign to create their own channel that will talk directly to the candidate or from the candidate to the public…with no press editing. I’ll be posting more on this topic as it can impact local, regional, state and federal races.

The full channel name is YouTube/Polcampaign. There is only one video there at least for the moment. I will be putting this on my blogs. I hope other blog owners and members do the same.

This is not a 100% declaration of support for a Clark candidacy on my part.While most know I was heavily involved in the Draft and Campaign, I’m trying to keep an Open Mind for a couple of our declared candidates as they make their case. But I want to listen to Wes Clark too. I firmly believe he will elevate the campaign once in the game. And I think this video may help in that effort.

If Wes Clark again gets a firm demonstration of his built-in support perhaps it will impact his decision making. While most of us expect him to run, based on his own comments, I believe this is a time to demonstrate his support. Circulating this video is one easy way to make the support obvious..and elevate the campaign discussion at the same time. A great President can only help California, the US and the world. I’m all for having all the good people in the race!

Cross-posted from Turn Tahoe Blue

Themba

In Gogo’s mind, she translated the word “hope” to the zulu word themba. “Themba” means not only “hope” but also “believe.” For Gogo, “hope” is not a possibility but a certainty.
Too often, perhaps, we lose hope because we fail to look for it where we least expect it – among poor black people in a South African homeland or an American inner city, or poor white farmers in clapboard shaks in south Georgia. But there it is.

Hope and believe, or “themba,” that’s what it is ultimately all about. Jason Carter, the son of last year’s Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Jack Carter and brother of blogger Sarah Carter, comes to this conclusion at the end of his book, at the end of two years in South Africa.

Jason arrived in Lochiel, a little settlement on South Africa’s border to Swaziland, on April 8, 1998 – nine years ago yesterday. Lochiel is really just that, a settlement, people were forced to move there when the South African government in the 1970s decided to establish “homelands” for South Africa’s different tribes. The Swazi people in townships outside Johannesburg, Pretoria and other places were rounded up and brought to KaNgwane. However, none of the homelands gained real independence or autonomy. People had to commute outside of their homelands if they wanted to find work and survive. Each night they had to go back to their homelands to sleep without any rights, much less any comfort:

[T]he trucks dropped people off in the middle of nowhere, and the government was not going to provide much assistance. There are famous pictures of the “houses” that the government provided in the “relocation camps.” They look like rows and rows of outhouses, or cube-shaped pens, with sides of corrugated iron and a dirt floor.

In Lochiel, Jason was the only white person among the 200 families living there. At first, the locals were apprehensive but soon got used to his presence. He worked in the local schools helping to implement the government’s new education program.

In post-Apartheid South Africa, Jason was in a unique position. As a white American he had few difficulties blending in the industrialized, rich and white South Africa. Though, oftentimes he felt more than uncomfortable, not only because of the abundant luxury so few miles away from the poor townships and settlements like Lochiel where he spend most of his time, but also, or maybe even more so, because of the blatant racism by many.

One would think that a white American would have a tougher time in a black South African community than a black American. Surprisingly, this was not really the case. South Africa, because of Apartheid, is a very complicated country. Jason soon discovered a tool that put black South Africans more at ease with the presence of a white man – their language. He soon picked up enough quite a bit of Siswati and Zulu to easily communicate with people in Lochiel and elsewhere.

While there were many uncomfortable situations for Jason, he had less trouble than some of his fellow Peace Corps volunteers from the US. African-American men had to endure the racism and frequent bad treatment by white South Africans just like black South Africans did. African-American women had to cope with the extreme macho attidudes against women in South Africa’s black society on top of that.

Yet, these few paragraphs don’t begin to grasp the complexity of the situation in South Africa as Jason also discovered a willingness among both black and white South Africans to cross the racial divide, to overcome fear and prejudice. However, looking at race relations in America more than 140 years after the end of slavery and more than 40 years after the civil rights legislation one has to wonder how long it will take South Africans to overcome Apartheid.

30 years prior to Jason joining the Peace Corps in South Africa, his great-grandmother Lillian Carter, at the age of 70, went with the Peace Corps to India. Her experience there is wonderfully described by former President Jimmy Carter, Lillian’s son and Jason’s grandfather, in the introduction to Power Lines. However, compared to Lillian Carter’s life outside of Bombay, Jason’s was quite different. The so-called first and third world were just a few miles apart. The first world actually drives by Lochiel on a daily basis, as it is situated on Highway 17, connecting Johannesburg and Swaziland’s capital Mbabane, where luxury hotels and casinos lure many white South Africans.

Jason Carter easily manages to capture the readers attention by not just describing his two years in South Africa, but rather by drafting a story and taking the reader along for the ride. By doing so, he takes the reader beyond the usual image of black Africa portrayed in the media – poverty, despair, war and AIDS. He takes us inside the daily lives of the family he stays with, goes along on a trip for a family wedding, treats us to scenes in the family kitchen and takes us to a funeral, and another one, and yet more funerals. For that is the reality of South Africa. The country has to battle with HIV/AIDS and in no other place does the utter despair of this situation become more visible than in the current of funerals:

Saturday, umbgcibelo, is the day of burial. Death became a part of my life to a greater extent than I had ever experienced. In my two years in Lochiel, I went to more than 30 funerals.

However, just as many as died from AIDS-related illnesses, “died from sicknesses and a lack of health care, in addition to car accidents.” And all that in a country where first rate health care is available. But only for those who can afford it.

And yet, there is hope and believe – themba. In this short book review I was only able to capture a fraction of what Jason wrote in Power Lines. I’ll therefore leave the closing remarks to Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his praise for the book:

In Power Lines, Jason Carter writes insightfully of strength, commitment, and idealism, his own as well as that of the many South Africans whose stories he tells.

————-
Power Lines: Two Years on South Africa’s Borders
By Jason Carter
National Geographic Society
Washington D.C., 2002

Power Lines is availabe at Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and Powell’s.

Jason Carter has not only written this book about his time in South Africa. He has come back from South Africa with a set of ideals, a willingness to get involved and themba. He has recently co-founded “Democrats Work” with Thomas Bates. The motto of Democrats Work is “putting our values into action.” Check out their website and find out how you can put your values into action.

(Oh, my! This is terrible. However, we can help by going to The Progressive Connection and helping out one of our own. – promoted by atdleft)

Cross posted at The Progressive Connection

By mid-2005, Jerry McNerney’s second Congressional race against Richard Pombo was shaping up to be a rerun of the first one in 2004. A small core of his earliest supporters was dedicated to McNerney’s campaign in CA-11, but they were struggling to paddle against an increasingly strong current. Ellen Tauscher and the DCCC had introduced their candidate, Steve Filson, into this environment, and many in the district assumed that McNerney’s star (such as it had been) was on the decline. Into this breach stepped a veritable force of nature named Vicki Cosgrove.

Vicki Cosgrove giving Jerry McNerney a hug as the winning votes are found in the Alameda County Registrar of Voters’ office at the end of the recount for McNerney’s write-in campaign in the 2004 primary.

Vicki, who is almost iconic in Bay Area progressive circles, was and is an ardent DFA supporter; she served as the Northern California Field Representative for the Courage Campaign and as a member of the steering committees of California for Democracy and East Bay for Democracy; additionally, she served as president of the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club in Berkeley. She knows everything that’s going on, and she knows everybody. In short, Vicki is the East Bay version of Paul Revere. So when Vicki Cosgrove stood up in the fall of 2005 and said, “I’m sticking with Jerry; he’s my guy,” there was a sudden sea change in McNerney’s fortunes.

Vicki introduced her friend Matt to the race, and he started the blog SayNoToPombo. And Matt, in turn told his friends about the race, friends like Eden James and other bloggers like kid oakland and Howie Klein of Down With Tyranny and FireDogLake. A few months later, a reader of SayNoToPombo, “AC,” made some comments that were published on that blog — AJ Carrillo at first thought that Steve Filson was the obvious candidate to back, but after following SNTP, he began to believe that McNerney might have a chance.

And Vicki Cosgrove immediately moved to draw these people in — by December, AJ was managing the campaign; soon Eden was coordinating volunteers and managing online outreach; then Eden brought in Miles Kurland, whose redesign of the JerryMcNerney.org website was a masterpiece of both readability and high-level functionality. In the meantime, Vicki had turned her eye towards fine-tuning the campaign’s message, bringing in Chris Finnie, a local professional copy writer who volunteered her time to polish McNerney’s ideas. And amidst all this activity, Vicki was using her vast social network to draw scores of committed activists throughout the Bay Area into the race — and they, in turn, activated their social networks. Think of Vicki Cosgrove as Jerry McNerney’s fairy godmother — whenever the McNerney campaign needed someone to fill a hole, Vicki pulled out her wand and managed to produce that person.

As much as McNerney’s election was an incredible combination of powerful forces that combined to defeat Richard Pombo, it all would never have happened without Vicki Cosgrove. In the early days, she worked full-time in McNerney’s office on a volunteer basis. Her husband, John, worked two jobs to support their family so that she could fully commit her energies to progressive activism. In the later days of the campaign, Vicki was brought on as a (minimally) paid staffer, handling scheduling for McNerney.

During this time, Vicki and her family continued to sacrifice so that she could devote herself to the campaign. Vicki started having gallbladder attacks during the months leading up to the 2006 election, but she ignored them so that she could see the McNerney race through to completion. In recent months, however, the attacks have become so much of a problem that she finally decided to have surgery to remove her gallbladder. But in the last few weeks, something has happened that pushed her surgery plans aside. Her husband, John, has become suddenly and obviously very ill, losing 40 pounds over the last month. After tests last week disclosed a growth on his pancreas, John’s doctors scheduled a Whipple procedure for April 18. John is expected to be in the hospital for at least 14 days for this surgery, which will remove his gall bladder and portions of his pancreas and duodenum. The surgery is typically followed by a course of radiation and/or chemotherapy. John will obviously be unable to work for a long time to come, and Vicki is unemployed.

Vicki will be applying for unemployment benefits this week, but that is not going to be enough to pay the bills.

So it’s my hope that the progressive community which has been so well-served by Vicki’s tireless efforts can join together and repay her for all she’s done on our behalf. The Progressive Connection is linking to a PayPal account to raise money for the Cosgrove family, to help them in their everyday expenses until they’re able to get back on their feet.

Please donate whatever you can afford — this is our chance to really come together as an activist community and take care of our own. Because if we don’t, who will?

[Note: This diary won’t accept the html for the PayPal button, but you can go to The Progressive Connection to make a donation. Sorry for the inconvenience.]