by Margot Pepper
1.
The night of November 4, 2008,
when Barack Obama was declared the first Black man
to receive the key to the White House,
we danced and sang in the street to stars beyond storm clouds.
Drivers honked and cheered each other through open windows;
pedestrians hooted back, slapped palms,
Families spilled out of porches and driveways
and it didn’t take a ballgame.
We could have been in post-apartheid South Africa,
after Mandella was freed and elected president
or in the streets of post-fascist Spain after Franco died.
“It’s like we’ve been released from jail,” I said
to the old man with stern eyes
who lives at the end of our street.
Finally, after years of failed attempts to engage him, he busted up laughing,
safe in his new awareness that most latinas, even gringos are actually on his side.
That first week, as many fences came down,
many of us shed tears of incredulity and relief,
as though at long last emancipated and witnessing an impossible birth.
I’m going to savor these 77 days of possibility and imagination
overlooking his invitations
to advisers with ties to wealthy corporations,
and what I know of the machine,
grinding officials into middle-men for corporate elite
or rendering them political hamburger meat.
Barack Obama becomes one of the superheroes
casting off his cabinet and
declaring himself the socialist proclaimed by his foes.
He’ll proclaim an end to the War on Terror,
replacing it with a peaceful “War on Error.”
First off,
he’ll paint the White House chocolate,
its cupola, mocha mousse.
Then after his children have a word with him,
he’ll change it’s name from the Brown House to the People’s House
or the Get Down House
and put it to better use.
He’ll pardon Peltier, Mumía, Assata and economic refugees as well,
putting perpetrators from the previous regime in the empty cells:
CEO’s from HMOs,
pharmaceutical, petrol companies and banks.
Then, before dismantling Guantánamo,
he’ll pack it with Homeland Security war criminals as an April Fool’s prank.
He’ll multiply by twenty, the tax on corporations
and impose late penalties of nationalization.
He’ll rebate our hard earned tax dollars and clout
by nationalizing our share of banks in the 700 billion dollar bailout,
giving us windfall royalties from our joint ventures with Chase and Wells Fargo.
By capping CEO salaries, then dismantling Star wars and the Cuban embargo,
he’ll build homes instead of jails and subsidize universities and health care for old and young
and appoint judges who’ll declare choice and marriage safe for everyone.
He’ll halt production of all facets of the war complex and its propaganda
thereby shortening the work week from six days to three
and desisting in the dismembering of toddlers or parents overseas.
By then, his three female family members will have put pressure on him
to form an equalitarian collective which includes them.
They’ll make sure next time during the presidential tour of the House,
the boys pick out chinaware while the gals discuss foreign policy ins and outs.
Infused with a new balanced rationality,
the Obamas, once and for all, will lead in abolishing the post of the presidency.
Replacing it with the collective of WE!
2.
Oui! Oui!
People!
Lovers of the dream!
This fairy dust that materialized after giving up on our miracles cannot turn to tears
as long as we’re aware that the man who alone throws his wrench in the machine,
will often lose his arm in a matter of years,
unless he has an army of people slowing the gears;
and as long as we recognize inevitable attempts to divide us when they appear.
Thus the next four or forty years
depends upon us, not he:
We,
who’ve had enough of seeing our grandfathers clad in Dark Ages rags
picking in garbage outside windows boasting palatial banquets or exorbitant price tags;
enough of our children and grandmothers slumbering in sleeping bags
stained with rain
because Mommy signed crooked mortgage papers
or needed chemotherapy again.
Enough of seals washing up on shores next to lovers.
Enough of one kind of people feeding, housing and pampering the other
without being able to feed and house themselves.
Enough of having our limbs blown off to get a college education.
Is it too much to ask?--
To be safe and healthy enough to learn, laugh and love
in the world’s richest nation
without breaking our backs?
To elect a leader who will walk his talk?
We, the invisible,
without whom there’d be
no César Chávez, no Rosa Parks,
no Mandela, Malcolm X, King Jr.,
nor Barack.
We, the little folks, not the Goldman Sachs.
We the People who hold these truths to be self-evident.
We, who embody the dream.
We who hold the real reigns of power.
###
Born in Mexico City, Margot Pepper is a journalist, poet author and bilingual educator whose work has been published internationally by the Utne Reader, Counterpunch, Znet, the Monthly Review, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Rethinking Schools, City Lights, Hampton Brown, and others. Her memoir, Through the Wall (Freedom Voices, 2005), was a finalist nomination for the 2006 American Book Award. http://www.margotpepper.com/ and http://www.freedomvoices.org/pepper/index.htm
