A Party United

By Patricia Wilson-Smith

In the coming days, we Democrats will no doubt have to endure a delulge of criticism from political pundits and Republican hitmen anxious to diminish the overwhelming show of unity demonstrated at yesterday’s DNC Convention – but if you ask me, they’re going to have to work overtime.

If you were in the Pepsi Center Wednesday night when President Bill Clinton delivered his phenomenal speech, if you felt the rumble of thunderous applause that filled the stadium and seemed to go on forever, you already know – the Democratic Party has managed to do in three days what noone thought we could - become a model of unity.

Republicans should be afraid – very afraid.

The people who’ve attended the Convention this week, and those who will likely fill Invesco Field to capacity tonight are all going to leave the experience with a new passion, and a new drive to see Senator Obama take the oath of office in January. I know that for myself, I can already feel a new well of energy that I can’t wait to put towards doing even more towards achieving that goal.

Senator Obama and his campaign have been masterful in making us, all of us, celebrate his vision. In his brief remarks last night, he said it himself -  from day one, his goal has been to take back this country by creating a groundswell of expressed discontent over our nation’s broken politics, and not from the top down, but from the ground up.

But someone in the media put it best – by opening the last day of the convention to over 70,000 non-conventioneers, the Obamam Campaign is creating an instant well of new soldiers to take up the cause of getting Senator Obama elected, and re-energizing the existing base to get them to gear up for the last leg of what has been an amazing and historic, but hard fought journey.  The people who will be lucky enough to snag a ticket for tonight will call and text their friends, brag to their families, and talk endlessly for days about the experience. They’ll also encourage other people to get involved, and when that happens, John McCain’s hopes of swift-boating Senator Obama into defeat will be gone with the wind.

The sense of unity that the American public saw in the Pepsi Center last night was hard, and though we all stood together, side by side to cheer our party and its new leader, one on one, we debated the past several months, we listened to each other’s individual anxieties, and we talked through the doubts and remaining questions. And when it was over, we were all, Hillary supporters and Obama supporters alike, in fact, able to stand together without reservation and sing “Love Train” like our lives depended on it.

It was incredible to watch, and be a part of, and it will be even more incredible to see how the combined strengths of the Clinton and Obama supporters will move our party to victory, not only for Senator Obama, but in races all over the country.

A party electrified is a party united.

Rosalynn Carter

By Patricia Wilson-Smith

I suppose as someone who is a member of the post-civil rights era, it may be a testament to the progress that has been made that I’ve always taken for granted that there was nothing standing in my way as a woman in the workplace or in society. Nonetheless, I have been endlessly amazed at how much I do not know about the important battle women have had to fight over the years to achieve equality in this country.

Not that my existence has been free of gender discrimination. As a black woman, I have had my share of what amounts to double discrimination, especially professionally, but it has taken this historic journey to Denver to fix my perspective, and make me aware of how truly blessed I an that there are so many amazing women who have come before me that have worked, sweat, and suffered injustices that my generation could never even imagine, all so that I would have the opportunities as a woman that are my right.

Yesterday, here in Denver, some of the most prolific female activists in our nation’s history gathered to mark the 88th anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment that gave women the right to vote.  The event was held at the Doubletree Hotel here in Denver, and included political and civic luminaries like Dorothy Height, Rev. Bernice King, Mayor Shirley Franklin, Ms. Xernona Clayton, Mrs. Valerie Jackson (wife of the late Maynard Jackson), and a host of other strong, intelligent Democratic women.

The event, called “Celebrating Democratic Women”,  included video tributes to two women who in different ways have done more to further women’s rights and human rights in general, than any others - First Lady and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and First Lady Rosalynn Carter.

It was an historic and emotional look at the women who blazed the path of opportunity for the women of my generation, including Shirley Chisolm, the first black woman to place her name into nomination for President of the United States.  Hosted by Ms. Clayton, the Founder and CEO of the Trumpet Awards, the event included musical entertainment by the female members of the Rocky Mountain Children’s Choir of Denver, featured local Denver VIPs and concluded with an address from Rosalynn Carter. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee spoke on behalf of Senator Clinton who was not able to make the event.

One has to assume that Senator Clinton was elsewhere, perhaps putting the finishing touches on the amazing speech she would deliver later that day. It was probably no accident that her speech was scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of the historic vote, but it is no more moving that such an important milestone would be punctuated by a speech given by the woman who did in fact put 18 million cracks in a ceiling that most women have found themselves under. I for one, will forever be grateful to her, and to all the women I’ve had the honor to meet here. We have a very long way to go before we can say that as women we are truly treated as equals, but thanks to courageous women like those who attended the event yesterday,  for me, the fight is not nearly as hard.

Part of the problem, they said, was that they had been at the convention for two days and we were the first Obama delegates to reach out to them. More than the speech, it was the individual contact, asking questions as opposed to delivering orders and open dialogue that would determine whether or not the convention succeeded in uniting the party. At the end of the day, they will probably be right. It will not be about any single candidate or any single speech, but an aggregate of those interactions among Democrats.

That reality has a ripple effect that stretches all the way back to Atlanta. Coming through the security line in Hartsfield-Jackson airport the woman at the first checkpoint looked at my ticket and immediately told me to “make sure you get him elected.” Later, three women from the airline virtually extorted a promise to bring them Obama buttons before they would scan my ticket and let me board.

The flight itself looked like an Obama rally in an aluminum tube, with passengers draped in buttons, hats, t-shirts and anything else you could print the letters O-B-A-M-A on. I struck up a conversation with the brother next to me only to realize that I was talking to Anton Gunn, the political director for the South Carolina primary. I interviewed Gunn back in June for the book I’m writing on Obama and black leadership. More than anyone else I spoke to he symbolized the impact that the campaign was having on people far outside Washington’s inner corridors.

Gunn was a 33 year old community organizer when he picked up Audacity of Hope in an airport. “I spent the next 6 hours reading the book,” he told me. Gunn’s background in community organizing gave him an appreciation for the ways Obama was attempting to apply those same principles to electoral politics. He simply called the Washington office and said that he was a community organizer who wanted to meet Senator Obama. The two men met at a booksigning, Gunn told him that if he ever ran for President he wanted to be part of the team and a few months later he was the South Carolina political director — despite the fact that his background was in organizing, not politics.

Gunn saw Obama as part of the hip hop generation (“He’s three years younger than Russell Simmons, he has to be hip hop”) and approached the campaign as if he was marketing an emerging artist. They deliberately avoided the pay-per-vote brokers swirling around the state capitol. “Lots of people thought we would win South Carolina after the Iowa Caucuses, but I knew we would win here in July,” he told me.

A few minutes after I sat down on the plane, I opened Time magazine and saw a profile of Gunn, who is running for the SC State Legislature, as part of the groundswell of political activism that the Obama campaign is creating. It brought to mind the impact that Jesse Jackson had twenty years ago. Back then — before the paternity drama, before he started feuding with rappers and offering manual vasectomies, people used to refer to the “Jackson Effect.” His ’88 run opened the doors for folk like Alexis Herman, Ron Brown and Donna Brazile along with scores of local black candidates who benefited from the millions of voters Jesse brought into the process.

We are already talking about an “Obama Effect;” the fact that two black men who had never held political office were sitting next to each other on the way to the Democratic Convention is part of it. But I’m certain that it will be much, much bigger than we even imagine right now.

Barack Obama watch: It’s time for change and for twenty bucks paid to the brother in the parking lot, you can count down the hours until to nation’s first gospel brunch/presidential inauguration

Obama Playing Cards: $9.95 per pack, 3 for $25 — *** Cheney is the joker, (Michelle is the Queen of Hearts!)

“I Like My Presidents How I like My Coffee” t-shirts — $20 outside the convention center (and that’s before you work your I-remember-you-from-Howard-University personal discount angle.) Non-delegates have to find it at: www.prez44.com.

John McCain Condoms: Free from Planned Parenthood, lists the aged Arizonan’s pale voting record on reproductive rights. Helps prevent pregnancy by conjuring the thought of John McCain in that most intimate of moments, making it far less likely that any actual intimacy will take place.

Obama 2008 Beer: Free at the Colorado Convention Center. Here’s the downside: you cannot take liquor out of the building so your auntie has to drink at least six of them so she can bring the bottles home as souvenirs for the family.

Jimmy Carter

When Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter strolled across the stage at the Pepsi Center on Monday night, you heard more than one person in the Georgia delegation complain that the former president should have had a speaking role at the convention. That view was echoed by others who saw in President Carter not only an important Democrat who endorsed the nominee, but also the elder statesman of the party and a man who still holds a great deal of influence in American politics.

If anything, President Carter only reinforced the idea that this was a missed opportunity when he spoke at the breakfast meeting of the convention. He highlighted the historic significance of this race, pointing to his own childhood in which all his playmates were African American and the largely black community he grew up in. He talked about his time in the Navy and the discrimination he witnessed and the significance of President Harry S. Truman’s executive order desegregating the armed forces.

But he didn’t dwell solely upon the nation’s racial history. He offered a word of caution: “I am the world’s foremost expert on divided parties,” he said. The division within Republican ranks in 1976 helped ensure a Democrat would win that year’s presidential election. But the sharp divide between the Carter and Kennedy wings of the Democratic Party did the same thing for Ronald Reagan’s campaign in 1980.

At the end of the day, he suggested, the presidency was too important to allow a disunity to offer the GOP a clear path to victory in November.