Washington Post Ad, November 4th, 2011
There are news reports trickling out saying that Obama campaign advisors have suddenly realized that the White House has alienated a huge part of their base, millennials. If only they could grasp the reality of the situation and that is Obama has alienated much more than the millennials generation. The administration has made a series of blunders from increased deportations dividing immigrant families, gutting lifeline social programs, ignoring the looming job crisis, loading the cabinet with Wall Street yes men, taking little interest in Copenhagen, permitting more drilling in the gulf, allowing stateside tar sands and oil shale development , and worst of all entertaining the oil industry by leaving the Keystone pipeline in the hands of a deeply conflicted State Department.
Key Obama political advisors ignored the game changer, the internet. Americans are more engaged and more enraged than ever before. One only needs to look to their local Occupy encampment to see that.
In August of 2007 I had the opportunity to meet then Senator Barack Obama as he stumped in Park City, Utah. At the time I thought I would support Hillary Clinton but after hearing him address the crowd and speaking to him briefly I was convinced that Barack Obama was the answer. I served on the steering committee for my state in the primaries and the generals. I put in well over a thousand hours on the campaign. When the President was elected I was thrilled that I would finally have a President in the White house that reflected many of my values. I was convinced this was a President that could see beyond his own time. I can still feel the wave of the dance floor under my feet from election night. It was sheer euphoria.
Fast forward to 2011. I am once again packing my bags for DC but this time I am going to surround the White House with several thousand friends. My ‘Environmentalists for Obama’ t-shirt is in my bag. Climate Justice advocates came out in droves in ‘08 for Obama. Look at where we are now. Many of my friends from the Obama campaign are supporting me and cheering me on. Some of my friends now work for the administration and get enraged by what they perceive as dissent.
I am frustrated with the President I helped elect. I feel cheated. I have watched, bewildered by the line of Wall Street cronies appointed to positions in his cabinet. This is not what I worked so hard for.
Environmentalists worked hard to elect the President because we were inspired. We believed he was a visionary. I don’t understand if he ever actually contemplated taking this country into a clean energy future based upon wind, solar and geothermal. Maybe it was all just lip service and Barack Obama is just another politician.
The same people who worked so hard to get him elected are many of the same people who will be surrounding his house on November 6th. We will also be the same people locking arms and chaining ourselves to bulldozers should the permits be approved for Keystone.
Maybe it’s futile, but I still have hope. I hope that the President will fulfill his promises to take us to a livable future. If the President and the leaders of this country won’t do it, we will. We have to.
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