Inaugurate This: Let's Celebrate the Grassroots That Sent Obama to the White House

By Danny Schechter, AlterNet. Posted January 17, 2009.

They were small-d democrats in the sense that they showed us that grassroots democracy still has "legs." They were people who moved into high gear for many reasons -- many because of a desire to end the war, or because Obama knew how to communicate with young people, or out of racial pride, or just plain disgust with the Busheviks and McNasties.

Some were political. Many were not. There was a wellspring of creativity. Fifteen hundred videos were made by the campaign and probably twice as many by independent filmmakers, animators and musicians. There was a rock musical, the Obama-girl phenomenon (Yes, eat your hearts out (smile) I met her, too), Amigos De Obama, the Great Schlep, comedy, paintings, stickers and endless e-mails. The social networking power of the Internet was tapped with blogs, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and texting. By the time it was through, Obama had built a database of 10 million names. No one has ever done that. Half of his large war chest was raised on the Internet in small donations.

More importantly, many of the campaign groups are still meeting, still organizing, still committed to the values Obama invoked. The world is waiting for Obama. I know many progressives, myself among them, are disappointed by many Cabinet picks and cagey statements. I fear that many of the activists who have already opened up on Obama -- who want him to be Hugo Chavez , not the centrist he is -- risk alienating his supporters who have to be encouraged to stay engaged and press for the changes they worked for. Obama will need that kind of pressure, even if he won't always welcome it publicly. There will be a learning curve for all of us.

The democracy scholar and Demos fellow Ben Barber told us: "The world awaits Obama, there's no question about it. Everywhere I go, everyone I talk to, the expectations are just sky-high. And the sense that this is going to be a new kind of American president, a new face, a multicultural, a black face, a diplomatic face, an internationalist face of America is ever, so much so that you will certainly be disappointed."

I then asked, "Is there something about Washington, about politics, about special interests that is like a swamp, no matter what your intentions are, no matter what changes you wanna make, you get sucked into this vortex of a certain way of dealing, deference, playing to the power people, governed by the rules and protocols. I fear that no matter where you coming from, you end up trapped in this machine."

He replied:

"Cynics will tell you that Washington is a swamp and no matter where you come from, when you get there you get muddy, you're gonna get mired, you're gonna, get quicksand. Your gonna end up is dirty as everyone else … "

(However) if you are a historian, you also look and say: Wait a minute, some people have come to Washington and have done better than others. Even the swamp can be changed, you can drain the swamp, you can spray the swamp, … you can dehydrate, there is a lot of things you can do about a swamp other than get sucked up by it, and there have been presidents who've been more successful and less successful doing it.

Will this be a period like the aftermaths of the Civil War, like the New Deal, where America remakes itself, where it drains the swamp and fixes it, and the answer to this is: it could happen, it could happen, we will see."

I will be sharing more of our insightful interviews as I cover the inauguration and its aftermath.

See more stories tagged with: liberals, obama, grassroots, progressives, change, center, political engagement

Danny Schechter writes a blog for MediaChannel.org. He is the author of Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception: How the Media Failed to Cover the War on Iraq (Prometheus).

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