Art said that he had often sought to understand the persistent presence and power of the number 40 in the Hebrew texts. What had begun to be evident to him, he reported, was the fact that while we usually speak in our culture of nine months as the normal time of a woman’s pregnancy before giving birth, the more precise and traditional period is actually given as 40 weeks. As soon as I heard Art’s words it became clearer to me what I had been feeling, sensing so deeply. And I began to try to articulate it for myself and others: Something is trying to be born in America. Again, I’m not quite certain what it is, but the new emerging reality seems firmly related to the visionary calls of King and the earlier urgent hope of Langston Hughes (”O, let America be America again/The land that never has been yet/and yet must be /The land where every [one] is free.”) Suffusing all of it I hear as well the beautiful wisdom and strong challenge of June Jordan: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
So as this year went on, as I sat one August night in Denver among the tens of thousands of on-site witnesses to Barack Obama’s acceptance speech, it seemed obvious to me that my young brother was related to all of this, but more as an opening, an opportunity, a new space. He seems to offer the place where all the “we” people can stop our waiting and carry on our work to create the pathway, the birthing channel toward “The land that never has been yet, and yet must be.” Indeed, as I wrestled with Biblical symbols, the birthing imagery and the calls of Langston, Martin and June (herself the marvelous offspring of Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ann Braden, and Amzie Moore), I could not escape another revelatory metaphor. Not only is something trying to be born in America, but some of us are called to be the midwives in this magnificent, desperately needed and so painfully creative process.
The author, Vincent Harding, then goes on a long rumination on midwifery, and the way he sees the analogy working as a possibility for a confluence of democratic activism and the Presidency of Barack Obama. While the election of our first African-American President is certainly a moment of national celebration, and there were many people who believed that Obama would usher in something new, something promising, a la the Langston Hughes quote, I must confess that I was never one of those who believed that lurking beneath the carefully cultivated public image and record as a relatively moderate state and United States Senator lurked the heart of a real liberal. My own hope lay in a consideration more of the confluence of events at the time of his election - the near-collapse not just of our national economy, but the world economy - and those who would make up his cabinet. That and the appearance of a number of far more liberal Democrats in both houses of Congress might just push his Administration to adopt a far more liberal agenda than he might otherwise be inclined to support. Like FDR, Obama seems always to have accepted all sorts of conventional, received wisdom; unlike FDR, Obama never saw the looming economic crisis as an opportunity to be seized. He did not move with either speed or ruthlessness as Roosevelt did, the latter calling Congress in to special session to deal with the collapse of the banking industry. Instead, he dealt with the "stimulus" legislation much as he has dealt with much else - with a coolness, and even detachment, that has led many to become disenchanted with him before his first year in office is up.
More to the point of the piece in question, I have to say that if the analogy of midwifery is correct, then the hope that many invested in the election of Obama, and many others, in 2008 has really come to very little. While I have defended him, his Administration, and the approach to the Presidency, in the past, I have become frustrated with his apparent belief that time will be on his side. Perhaps; as events continue to unfold, as Congressional Democrats continue to be led by holdovers from the era of Republican domination, as more and more liberals become disenchanted with both the style and substance of his Administration, I can easily foresee a breakdown in what could have been a realignment toward Democratic governance for, perhaps, as long as a generation.
While part of me wants Obama to be right, another part of me is frustrated at his seeming dismissal of a huge group of dedicated volunteers willing to work to further a progressive agenda even as he surrounded himself with men and women far too willing to toe the line on all sorts of issues. His tag line from his campaign - "Yes, we can," - seems to have morphed into, "Yes we can, but we won't". Too sad.
