Pages

Monday, November 07, 2005

Obama Was In Town And I Missed It


How could I forgive myself?

I opened up the DFNYC mail on time. But the format was unusual. I just skimmed through it a second time a little while ago, and there was Obama with Ferrer. All the work that I have put into the Ferrer campaign would have been worth it just to be able to spend a little time with Obama. I am sure he got mobbed. And I might only have been able to steal a glance. But, uh. I feel so stupid.

This is not fair. Somebody do something about it.

If I had met Obama today, I only needed to meet Hillary and Amitabh Bachchan, and I would have been content.

What just happened? I am dumbfounded.

It is going to be a long time before an opportunity like this one surfaces again.

Ugh!

This is not good. How could I have? This was the one time when I did not skim through all the topics of the newsletter. The DFNYC newsletter, you are not supposed to read everything. The topics are listed at the top. You skim though the topics, and you click on those of interest.

Ugh. This did not just happen.

Opportunity knocked. And I did not listen.

This was the sweetest thing to have come my way through the DFNYC newsletter and I missed it. I can't freaking believe it.

I own the guy's autobiography.

Obama symbolizes hope itself.

Suddenly everything I did today feels like was a total waste of time. Or rather yesterday. This is past midnight.

Looks like both Amitabh Bachchan and Barack Obama are going to be tough nuts to crack.

What do you say during moments like this? Do you call yourself names? I am at a loss of words.

This is not good. Whatever happened to my email reading skills?

(I hear Bono's voice in the background. Usually that is a consolation, but this is not one of those times.)
*(3) Campaign for Freddy with Sen. Barack Obama, this afternoon at 8th Ave & 19th St*

Join U.S. Senator Barack Obama, Democratic Mayoral Candidate Fernando
Ferrer and supporters today in Chelsea

When: Today (Monday, November 7th) 2:15-3:15pm

Where:  S.E. corner of 8th Ave. and 19th Street in Manhattan

The group will be walking up 8th Ave to 23rd Street.

Contact: Dorcas Castro (646) 839-4947

Dean-Hillary-Obama Ticket
DFNYC Research And Advocacy Group
at No comments:

French Society: No Easy Solutions


Sick Sarkozy
Riots In France

Opinion: Europe's Lost Future Deutsche Welle, Germany ..... The previous socialist cabinet set up neighborhood police departments focused on dialogue, but was unable to take back lawless enclaves. ........ Current Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy tried the law-and-order approach, but after 11 nights of police crackdown more and more cars are burning in more and more regions of the republic. ........ Sarkozy said these things even though he has realized that "liberty, equality, fraternity" has lost its luster. He's been fighting for affirmative action against the president's resistance. He wants to give Muslim immigrants preferential treatment in the hiring process for the civil service and do away with the principle of equality.

Dialogue alone will not do. A single-minded emphasis on law enforcement alone will not do. A few social and economic programs thrown like bird feed alone will not do.

These young people are destroying the very infrastructure that is their limited ladder to upward mobility. Most of the cars they are burning are cars of their neighbors. Muslim clerics are not in any position to mediate. Muslim groups with reputations of being extremist are actually busy calming things down, with little success. There is no Al Qaeda grand design. This is alienation, disaffection, poverty, racism saying enough is enough.

Citizenship papers alone don't solve problems. Ultimately it is about societal attitudes. The socio-psychological reality itself has to change and become more accepting of people of "other" backgrounds. The social space has to expand or there is implosion.

Ultimately it is an issue of addressing multiculturalism. Institutional racism can feel like a glasshouse of mirrors.

"We are not looking for minorities. We are looking for the best officers."

Does that explain why the French police are not ethnically diverse?

That reflects a society in denial. That is a police department that is ethnocentric in its basic orientation, and that can not continue on.

France as a society has failed these young people. France has to reimagine itself as a society and a country.
at No comments:

Sick Sarkozy


Sarkozy Is Sick, He Needs To Resign, Never Run For President

Riots In France

I wish the riots in France would calm down, but they sure have helped me learn things about the French society I did not know. Peaceful channels for protests and empowerment have to be created. So violence is not the effective option. And obviously the French police are not ethnically diverse.

Europe needed immigrants for cheap labor, said another contributor to the BBC forum, Housam of Swindon, who was offended by French interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy's description of the rioters as "rabble."

This Interior Minister guy Sarkozy who is one of the two people who might become president of France in two short years is a nutcase. If the social alienation of these young Muslims, born and bred in France, was the gasoline, Sarkozy has been the spark to the riots. This is an irresponsible person. He is sick in his mind. He is racist. He is a panderer.

Mr. Ajir, a 29-year-old social worker, lives in La Courneuve, a suburb north of Paris where an 11-year-old boy was killed by a stray bullet earlier this year. During a visit to the projects where the boy was shot, Mr. Sarkozy vowed to clean them with "a Karcher," the brand of a German-made high-powered hose. Some observers say that comment, which got widespread coverage in the French media, planted the seeds of the current violence.

I just did a search on him on Google Images Search, and the guy also looks predictably dumb. He might give Dan Quayle a scare. How did this person end up in the cabinet in the first place? This does not reflect well on the French.

"The indigenous Europeans always want it all: they want the immigrants to do the menial jobs they hate but they are not ready to deal with them on equal grounds as human beings. Indigenous Europeans still live with the colonial mentality of superiority. When the French revolution started against inequality, rioters were also accused of being "scum".

Chirac has talked of restoring law and order, and that is acceptable and desirable language but incomplete, as it does not give a sign that he intends to tackle the riots from many different angles. In a private meeting with the Latvian prime minister Chirac did discuss the alienation theme, but he should be doing it on national television, if only to counter the incendiary, racist remarks by Sarko.

The deaths proved a flashpoint for the frustration and fury of second- and third-generation north and black African immigrants, and spread nationwide, fuelled by the hardline interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, calling the rioters "yobs" and "scum".

To the politicians, the political solution should be the weapon of first choice, but so far that has not been the case.

"Put this in your notebook ... ," said a third, rattling off a string of obscenities about France's tough-talking interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy...... The target of their rage is Sarkozy, who angered many in the suburbs by calling neighborhood toughs "scum." ..... "If they fire Sarkozy, we'll head straight to the police station and pop champagne with them," said Bidou, 22, his baseball cap cocked to the side.
at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)