What next for the Obama Generation?
Despite the somber tone of President Obama's inaugural address yesterday, the mood among the millions who flocked to D.C. for four days of celebrations was the same as the spirit and message that propelled Obama into office last November: Hope.
The upbeat vibe was especially clear among the two most visible groups filling the streets of Washington: youth and African-Americans, who seemed inspired by the possibilities embodied by Obama after eight years of Bush, three decades of conservative dominance and 220 years of racial exclusion at the White House.
I remember going to the inaugural Youth Ball after Bill Clinton's first presidential victory. The mood in 1993 was entirely different: The event felt like a sequel to Clinton doing MTV or playing sax on Arsenio Hall, a shout-out to a useful electoral demographic.
But few of us mistook Clinton as marking any big shift in our political culture -- a skepticism that was confirmed after eight years of NAFTA, welfare "reform," and the disastrous War on Drugs, which by 1994 was locking away over a million people a year, mostly black youth.
In Washington this week, youth and African-Americans -- groups key to Obama's victory -- appeared more willing to hope, and also better organized than they were in the 1990s to realize whatever potential for change Obama represents.
Yesterday I talked with Steven Newmark, national coordinator of Young Lawyers for Obama, a network of nearly 10,000 progressive attorneys in 55 cities who raised $1.4 million for Obama's campaign. I asked if the group was going to keep going now that their man is in office, and Newmark seemed surprised by the very question: "We're already gearing up for 2012," he said.
Newmark and I met at a "grassroots gala" organized by Asian Pacific Americans for Progress, another impressive group that Obama personally thanked and who are expanding the political presence of a group largely excluded from the halls of Washington power.
The sense of hope and possibility was even stronger with Obama's inauguration coming just a day after Martin Luther King, Jr. Day -- a sign that change really is possible. The 1.5 million people sprawling out from the National Mall yesterday to hear Obama's first words as president brought inevitable comparisons to King's speech to the 1963 March on Washington, which brought 250,000 people to the same location.
But the TV networks missed one of the most important threads linking 1963 and 2009. Both King and Obama were, and are, symbols of change -- extraordinary leaders to be sure, but also figures largely propelled into the spotlight thanks to a bigger movement, organized mostly behind the scenes and comprised of millions of people.
In 1963, King was considered a moderate voice in the civil rights movement. The shock-troops of the struggle worked in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, whose direct-action tactics opened up space for King to maneuver and gave him cover to press his case to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. As former SNCC leader Julian Bond notes in a must-read history of SNCC and the movement:
Which raises the question: What will happen when the Obama movement comes face-to-face with the disappointments that will come -- and for some, have come already -- as Obama makes the inevitable compromises and back-steps from his commitment to social progress?
Real change will be possible if and when the Obama Generation -- just like young people did in the early 1960s -- develops the political maturity and self-confidence to realize they don't have to wait on their leaders or symbols to bring about a better world: They can organize and make history on their own.
As Bond ends his story of SNCC:
The upbeat vibe was especially clear among the two most visible groups filling the streets of Washington: youth and African-Americans, who seemed inspired by the possibilities embodied by Obama after eight years of Bush, three decades of conservative dominance and 220 years of racial exclusion at the White House.
I remember going to the inaugural Youth Ball after Bill Clinton's first presidential victory. The mood in 1993 was entirely different: The event felt like a sequel to Clinton doing MTV or playing sax on Arsenio Hall, a shout-out to a useful electoral demographic.
But few of us mistook Clinton as marking any big shift in our political culture -- a skepticism that was confirmed after eight years of NAFTA, welfare "reform," and the disastrous War on Drugs, which by 1994 was locking away over a million people a year, mostly black youth.
In Washington this week, youth and African-Americans -- groups key to Obama's victory -- appeared more willing to hope, and also better organized than they were in the 1990s to realize whatever potential for change Obama represents.
Yesterday I talked with Steven Newmark, national coordinator of Young Lawyers for Obama, a network of nearly 10,000 progressive attorneys in 55 cities who raised $1.4 million for Obama's campaign. I asked if the group was going to keep going now that their man is in office, and Newmark seemed surprised by the very question: "We're already gearing up for 2012," he said.
Newmark and I met at a "grassroots gala" organized by Asian Pacific Americans for Progress, another impressive group that Obama personally thanked and who are expanding the political presence of a group largely excluded from the halls of Washington power.
The sense of hope and possibility was even stronger with Obama's inauguration coming just a day after Martin Luther King, Jr. Day -- a sign that change really is possible. The 1.5 million people sprawling out from the National Mall yesterday to hear Obama's first words as president brought inevitable comparisons to King's speech to the 1963 March on Washington, which brought 250,000 people to the same location.
But the TV networks missed one of the most important threads linking 1963 and 2009. Both King and Obama were, and are, symbols of change -- extraordinary leaders to be sure, but also figures largely propelled into the spotlight thanks to a bigger movement, organized mostly behind the scenes and comprised of millions of people.
In 1963, King was considered a moderate voice in the civil rights movement. The shock-troops of the struggle worked in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, whose direct-action tactics opened up space for King to maneuver and gave him cover to press his case to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. As former SNCC leader Julian Bond notes in a must-read history of SNCC and the movement:
As former President Jimmy Carter told former SNCC worker and authorMary King, "if you wanted to scare white people in Southwest Georgia,Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conferencewouldn't do it. You only had to say one word -- SNCC."Who will make up the SNCC of the Obama Generation -- the independent, organized source of popular strength that can set an agenda and hold our leaders accountable? The faces and optimism on display in D.C. suggest that, for now, millions are investing their hope in Obama himself, the symbol of change.
Which raises the question: What will happen when the Obama movement comes face-to-face with the disappointments that will come -- and for some, have come already -- as Obama makes the inevitable compromises and back-steps from his commitment to social progress?
Real change will be possible if and when the Obama Generation -- just like young people did in the early 1960s -- develops the political maturity and self-confidence to realize they don't have to wait on their leaders or symbols to bring about a better world: They can organize and make history on their own.
As Bond ends his story of SNCC:
For more about what Obama means for change and the South, read the latest issue of Southern Exposure, the Institute's award-winning journal.A final SNCC legacy is the destruction of the psychologicalshackles which had kept black southerners in physical and mentalpeonage; SNCC helped break those chains forever. It demonstrated thatordinary women and men, young and old, could perform extraordinarytasks.
They did then and can do so again.
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Chris Kromm
Chris Kromm is executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies and publisher of the Institute's online magazine, Facing South.