President Obama -- take a lesson from Lincoln!

By Dan Beauchamp

We have seen enough of President Obama, on the campaign trail and in the early days of his administration, to suspect that he holds two theories of political reform, two theories that unfortunately can be at war.

The first view is that better, more high-minded, bipartisan politics and values produces better, more high-minded, bipartisan policy. A new politics creates new policies.

The second view stands this idea on its head: new policies create a new politics, not just the other way around.

Political change as massive as, say, health care reform requires a new civic institution and policy that gives the citizenry more voice and power in politics. This increase in the public's power and expectations will bring major changes to our politics and to both political parties.

Usually the opening for major institutional innovation occurs when a crisis arises and offers an opportunity: a war, a Great Depression, an assassination of a president coupled with a huge electoral win by his successor, as with LBJ and the Great Society.

Surely President Obama knows that we are in another battle for the body politic and that he needs to seize the opportunities the crisis offers to forge a new body politic and politics.

Certainly the Republicans know this. This is why they stonewall Obama. The Republicans know he will try to use the crisis to take the body politic into new territory, territory that will be hostile to Republican political fundamentalism.

To better emphasize my point let's consider health care reform.

One of the most important and seldom-discussed features of universal health care is that, properly designed and implemented, it will change our politics, big time.

This is because security in health care for all Americans will prove popular with the poor and the middle class together and the result is that the party that achieves reform will be broadly supported at the polls and in power for a generation.

Conservatives deeply fear a scheme of universal health care precisely for this reason: it will reward the Democrats in the short and mid-term and it will warn off the Republican party from attacking the new program, much as they learned again under President Bush the dangers of attacking Social Security.

A well-designed national health care reform plan and set of institutions or one that creates a clear path to that new institution will likely change the Republican party more than any other single thing that Obama does by emphasizing bi-partisanship. Republicans today resist and fear that change.

I think Obama knows this. With many in Congress resistant to the new politics that will come in its wake, he made Tom Daschle his first pick to lead the reform battle that is looming.

But Obama also believes that a better, cleaner, and more ethical politics will also produce better policies; hence his new ethical standards for office-holders and his reluctant willingness to let Daschle go.

I also think we need a more ethical yardstick to measure political appointments.
But Obama needs to decide which of these two theories of political change is the more important, and here is where he has a difficulty.

You see, newspapers love the ethical view of politics to death. They know their readers will too. This is because it is easier to understand. "If I pay my taxes, why shouldn't they?" Or worse, "If he [Timothy Geitner, the new Secretary of the Treasury] can't manage his own finances, how can he manage the nation's finances?"

Daschle and Geitner should have paid their taxes but if they are as good as they are reputed to be, we badly need them in office to produce the new policies that will change our politics, in the long run.

Make no mistake: Obama needs not only national health care reform but a new economic and social policy for America that will set our politics on a new course.
But when Obama let The New York Times run off Tom Daschle with its high-minded editorials Obama may have encouraged the media to focus endlessly on the ethical conduct of those making policy and far, far too little attention on how policy like health care reform works and can change our politics, and who’s tough enough to put those policies in place.

There is a famous story about General Grant and President Lincoln.

Rivals to Grant complained that he was a drunk. But Lincoln is supposed to have said, "If drink causes him to fight, then find out what he drinks and send a case to my other commanders."

Lincoln was my kind of politician. He knew that sometime the important thing was the resulting policy. He needed a tenacious, ruthless general relentlessly pursuing a military policy that took full advantage of the superior industrial power and population of the North.

Lincoln knew that only the military defeat of the South would deal a fatal blow to the "Slave Power" of the South and its hold over American politics, a hold so important that the South seceded and led us into the Civil War.

Unfortunately, Lincoln was assassinated and Reconstruction was ended before the South's politics was utterly changed by giving African-Americans more equality at the ballot box and help in achieving economic independence.

But the principle that we sometimes need new big policies to bring big changes in our politics, rather than the other way around, still stands today.

President Obama, an ardent admirer of President Lincoln, ought to take a lesson from his hero and find his generals to help him bring his own party together for the chance of a generation.

Dan Beauchamp, a health policy expert who now lives in Bisbee, Arizona, worked as a health official in the New York State Department of Health under the Cuomo administration. He led an effort to design a new health care reform proposal that attempted to create a de facto single payer system using clearinghouse technologies for checks much like the Federal Reserve system and using what we today call the Internet.

"You'll be a man my son!"

By Brian Saltern

One day when I was five years old, Dad and I were in the back yard on Hay Street sprucing up for spring. Suddenly he issued his command: "Brad, go under the house and turn the water off to the hose."

The hard-to-reach spigot lay beneath the back of the house inside a small trap door. Proud of being entrusted with this important chore, I dropped to my knees and crawled through the opening. Immediately the mangy, dirt floor space sprang to life. Daddy long-legs darted for darkness, wasps and hornets buzzed from nests, spiders scurried up webs affixed to crumbling plaster walls, slithering snails slinked away as I struggled to turn the rusted metal faucet.

As the spigot slowly budged, the sound of rushing water grew louder. Confused, I turned in the opposite direction. Again, the garden hose sounded like it was gushing harder. Back the other way.

"What are you doing?" Dad yelled. "What the hell's taking you so long?"

Perspiration stung my eyes making them tear as I tried moving the spigot in the opposite direction. The roar of water sounded like Niagara Falls. Anxious and panicking, I struggled to reverse direction.

Dad had a very short fuse. "TURN THAT DAMN SPIGOT OFF!"

As cobwebs tickled my ears and bees circled menacingly I grew more flustered, more confused. Finally, dad stooped down, pushed me aside and reached through the opening turning the spigot off. He grumbled loudly to himself, "the damn kid can't even turn a spigot off! I cringed in embarrassment.

Dad never let me forget that day. In Little League baseball, whenever I made an error, loud and relentless razzing roared up from his seat in the bleachers.

“Hey major leaguer, you can’t even turn a spigot off.”

It happened so often that LLB officials eventually barred him from attending my games. But during midget football games torrential bursts of his criticism from the sidelines would make me cry in the huddle.

A "B" in math, a glass accidentally breaking, tripping down the stairs, no matter what mistake I made, dad summed my abilities with that same caustic refrain: “He can’t even turn a damn spigot off.”

In high school even though I had become a star, it still continued. In the midst of co-captaining our championship basketball season one day after school, Dad confronted my basketball coach, Dick Eckert, and in a fit of rage demanded he take my uniform away. The coach not only refused but also chastised him for even suggesting it. Still, anytime Dad determined that I'd played poorly, the next day a terse note would appear on the kitchen table: "all privileges revoked... no allowance... no use of the car." A

And all too many mornings, with my bedroom over the kitchen, I’d hear him curse to my mother, "the damn kid can't even turn a spigot off!"

*****

A week before my high school graduation I was rummaging through old term papers when I came across a crumpled, smudged index card. I had written down a list of goals the summer before seventh grade -- a skinny, 80-pound, 12-year-old boy's fondest hopes and dreams for the years ahead.

Amazingly they'd all come true: I was MVP of one of the best football teams in Wilson High School's history, nominated for All State honors. Member of the Honor Society. Popular as part of the school's ruling clique. And since that first day in seventh grade, Suzie Clarke, the cute co-captain of the cheering squad had been my girlfriend.

The next morning, Friday, June 7, 1963, I bounded down the carpeted stairs of our modest half-double home only to find Mom standing at the gas stove, red-eyed and visibly upset. Before I could ask, she angrily blurted out, "Your father hasn't come home!"

I inhaled a large portion of fried eggs and crisp bacon. "What do you mean? Where is he?"

"I have no idea. The bastard went out last night and hasn't returned," she swore through clenched teeth.

I stopped eating. "What? You don't know anything?"

"No, not a damn thing. I hope to hell he stays away for good."

In spite of my protests, my mom sent me off to school and commencement rehearsal. As classmates laughed and traipsed around the school auditorium, I remained in a stupor, stunned and confused. Had Dad finally done it? Just split and fuck the consequences. When rehearsal ended, I hurried home.

As I turned onto Hay Street, Mom drove up in our '57 Chevy and parked in front of our house.

Dad exited the passenger seat looking drawn, ashen-faced and sheepishly hurried inside padding upstairs to his bedroom. "What happened?"

"The rotten bastard spent the night in jail," Mom replied.

"What? Why?"

"He was arrested last night on a morals charge downtown in the circle. Let the bastard himself tell you what happened." She refused to say anything more.

Hearing about his night in jail, my sister Janie screamed, "What... how could he… oh my god … our lives are ruined … everyone knows us… how can I ever face my friends?"

Mom, cursing under her breath, stormed up to her bedroom (she and dad hadn't shared a bed in years). I plunked down on the front porch and wondered. Was my sister right? Were our lives totally ruined?

All afternoon dad remained secluded in his bedroom. Though desperate to learn what he'd done, I avoided upstairs like the plague. When I was 13, he’d caught me leafing in wide-eyed wonder at pictures of scantily-clad women in one of his "men's" magazines. I was sternly forbidden to do so again. But I had noticed the way my Dad’s eyes would sometimes follow a well-endowed female walking down the street and it embarrassed me to no end.

Later that afternoon the local daily, The Easton Express, landed with a thud on the front porch. I quickly paged through it, hoping there'd be no mention of his arrest. It didn't take long to find the article. My heart sank. On page 8, the bold type announced: "Wilson Man Arrested on Morals Charge" - a headline anyone merely glancing through the paper would jump to read. It didn't mention what he'd done.

That night I had a date for a prom. Lou Ann, a leggy, pretty, blonde cheerleader from Easton High School had asked me and every day since would pick me up after school in her new, baby blue, Triumph convertible and drive me home (Dad stated that he couldn't for the life of him understand what she saw in me).

Because of this scandal, I certainly did not want to go to the prom and told my Mom I was going to cancel my date.

Mom sternly replied, “ I won’t hear of such talk. You are going and we are living our lives as if this never happened."

Yeah right. She wasn't the one who had to face everyone.

I tiptoed to the top of the stairs and turned to enter my room to get dressed when Dad’s faint voice called out, "Brad, come here. I want to talk to you."

"I can't. I have to get ready for the prom."

"Well, get dressed in here."

I reluctantly gathered up my rented tuxedo and entered his room. Dad lay curled up in a fetal position like a helpless child on his bed. He asked me to sit down and grabbed my hand.

"I'm so sorry. You know I'd never willfully do anything to hurt you. You're all I have left. Your mother and sister will never forgive me. I want to explain so you won't be scarred by this for life."

At the mention of being scarred, my body trembled. But when Dad sobbingly told how he'd contemplated suicide all night in the jail cell but couldn't get up the nerve, my eyes misted. He needed to explain, hoping his actions could be forgiven, or at least understood.

As I started to get all dressed up in my tuxedo, Dad began his story…

Well, so, later, I remember picking up my date, handing Lou Ann a wrist corsage of yellow carnations (Mom refused to buy anything more expensive) and heading to the prom. But the rest of the night will forever remain a blank in my mind. I traveled to some far-off place while someone else on autopilot went through the motions.

Coming home later that night I discovered my high school yearbook (the signing party had taken place earlier) that my buddy Tilly had wedged between the front doors to my house. Drained and depressed, I collapsed on the front room sofa.

On the dark blue cover of our yearbook, "Les Memoires," large gold, embossed letters triumphed - "If you can meet with triumph and disaster..."

I opened the first page to the yearbook's theme: "The keys to understanding." Through a cut-out "key" stood the poem,"If," by Rudyard Kipling:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too…

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a man my son!

As I slowly read the poem, all the pent-up emotions and hurt came pouring out in waves. I read it over and over, tears streaming down my face. Eventually I cried myself to sleep. Innocence was gone. Becoming a man lay a long ways off.

Writer Brian Saltern is a former All-State Athlete, Haight Asbury Hippie and ‘60s Political Activitst, NYC Nightclub Promoter, Fundraiser, Recovering Addict and Spiritual Seeker. He grew up in Easton, PA, and today splits his time between New York City and Millerton, NY. He recently completed a coming-of-age memoir. This story is an excerpt from his book.

HOW YOU CAN HELP SAVE 49 LIVES!

photo credit: Joe Athialy


By David Seth Michaels

How do you feel about helping to save 49 lives that now hang in the balance?

Now that the nation has a new Attorney General --Eric Holder was sworn in yesterday-- it is vitally important that the Department of Justice immediately re-evaluate all of the federal cases in which the death penalty is presently being sought.

And it's important that if these cases do not meet their professed higher standards for imposition of the death penalty (this is an oxymoron, standards that allow state killing cannot be high), authorization to seek the death penalty should now be withdrawn. This may save 49 lives and prevent state killings from being carried out in our names.

Remember John Ashcroft? He who left the AG's office at the end of 2004? He who wanted to "federalize the death penalty?" Ashcroft's plan was that the Attorney General in Washington and not the local United States Attorneys, who would prosecute the crime and were located where the crime was alleged to have been committed, should decide which cases were appropriate for the federal death penalty. It wasn't right, the argument went, that in some places the death penalty was eschewed. So the feds would seek to have it imposed in federal courts in places like Michigan, Vermont, New York, places where the states had no death penalty. Then, the argument went, the death penalty would be more uniform. It wouldn't be an event occurring solely in the Southern Death Belt. That was supposed to be a good idea.

Ashcroft was succeeded by Alberto Gonzalez. He who wrote grotesquely inadequate memos to W about Texas death penalty commutation requests. He of the poor memory. He of the politicization of DoJ. He who explained so very little. Gonzalez, of course, continued to make decisions about the cases in which the feds would pursue the death penalty, and in which they wouldn't. And so did his successor, Michael Mukasey.

In response to questions from Senator Feingold, in June, 2007, DoJ laid out the entire history and all the numbers since 2001 here (pdf). In sum, there's a procedure for deciding what cases are death eligible. The procedure is basically a series of recommendations from lower to higher prosecution officials, but ultimately, the AG decides what should occur. That decision cannot be reviewed. How he makes the decision is never revealed. It's essentially a secret. And the criteria by which this decision is ultimately made have not been explicitly stated. If you're a judge or a defense lawyer or a prosecutor, you can ask that this incredibly important decision be reconsidered. And sometimes it is. But in general, the buck stops with the AG, who then acts like the Sphinx.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there are now 51 prisoners on federal death row in Terra Haute, Indiana. According to CapDefNet 23 federal death penalty cases are now on or awaiting trial, 5 are awaiting re-trial or re-sentencing after appeal, and 21 cases are now on appeal or seeking post conviction relief. In other words, 49 people have pending federal death penalty cases in which the Bush DoJ's decision to seek the death penalty, the decision made by Ashcroft, Gonzalez or Mukasey, makes the defendant eligible for execution.

These cases should all be immediately re-evaluated by Eric Holder and the Obama DoJ to determine whether they remain death penalty eligible. 49 lives stand in the balance.

There's no reason to believe that the criteria the DoJ initially applied in deciding to seek the death penalty in these cases, particularly the obviously political one of "federalizing" the death penalty, would meet the criteria Holder and/or Obama might require in these cases.

It is not clear what the present criteria for death eligibility might be or how they would be applied. Holder, for example, has said that he personally opposes the death penalty but has pursued it as a prosecutor and he told Congress it should "feel very assured that ... those statutes that have death penalty provisions will be fully enforced by me." And "Obama wrote in his recent memoir that he thinks the death penalty "does little to deter crime." But he supports capital punishment in cases "so heinous, so beyond the pale, that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment." I have no idea how these subjective measures might be calibrated and applied to the pending cases.

I am personally opposed to state killing in all cases. If it were up to me, I would withdraw death penalty eligibility in all of the pending cases, and I would instruct prosecutors never to seek the death penalty. I know the present administration doesn't agree with me about this. Fine. There is nevertheless the possibility of saving 49 lives. This does not mean releasing people who should be imprisoned. It means choosing a penalty, if they are convicted, that includes life without parole but not death.

This is not a small difference. It's a step toward ending the barbarity of state killing. It's a step toward joining virtually all of the rest of the world by ending state killing. Please join me in urging the administration to review all of the pending death eligibile cases and to withdraw the request for the death penalty in each of them.

There are essentially two, easy, quick ways to tell the administration your views about review of these federal death penalty cases. First, you can send a 500- character email to the White House at Whitehouse.gov">http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/">Whitehouse.gov. For suggested text, go here.

Second, you can sign a petition to AG Holder requesting a review of these cases.

Please join me in requesting that these 49 cases be reviewed and that these lives be spared.

Writer David Seth Michaels is a criminal defense attorney who lives in Columbia County, New York. He has written extensively --and passionately-- in opposition to the death penalty.

Photographer Joe Athialy's work can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeathialy/

By Victoria Vickers

The calls were flooding in.

Media outlets all over the world wanted to know why he did it -- I did too. So when Joshua Karp answered the phone 4:05 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 27, I immediately began firing questions at him. But all he had time to tell me was, "Its been a crazy day today. I'd be happy to answer your questions and talk to you at length tomorrow. I've been handling calls from national press outlets all day," said Karp.

When I called back the next day, at 1 p.m. Chicago time, Karp's phone was still ringing non-stop. Just about every caller wanted to know why, at a time when newspapers are laying off and going under, Karp launched The Printed Blog. Yup, it's exactly how it sounds. Selected blog posts, pooled into an 11x17-inch, full-color, eight-page, print newspaper. The Printed Blog hit the streets in Chicago and San Francisco on Jan. 27.

"I don't believe that newspapers should go out of business, or will go out of business," Karp said. "I believe the model has to change."

The Printed Blog is chock-full of posts and photos extracted from a variety of blogs including the national, political blog Daily Kos, as well as, lesser knowns like Baster Life, which offers dish on steamy topics of the bedroom variety. The paper is distributed twice daily -- in the morning and evening and offers commuters and readers who prefer print an opportunity to read blog-form writing. It's also downloadable in PDF format from the Printed Blog Web site.

What's the journalistic process like? "For the first issue, we laid out the content starting at around 7 p.m. in the evening, sequenced it at 2 a.m. and were proofing at 7 a.m.," Karp explained. "We have a reasonably automated process. It really doesn't take all that much. We are distributing by person right now because it gives us attention. We just need a printer and to flip the switch on our Web site."

How much does it cost? "Right now it's difficult to study the numbers because it's going to work so different in the future," Karp said. "Our prediction is $1,000 per week in each location. Right now it's weekly, but soon it will be daily."

The stories featured in the The Printed Blog are selected based on reader-generated comments and local appeal. There's a little bit of everything, except hard news. It's more of an eclectic collection of musings ranging from thought-provoking to entertaining to, well, provocative. There are also lighter features like the daily play-list of suggested songs to sample. And a profile of "a unique person." The ads and a small social events calendar are also weaved in.

Karp and his staff sought out bloggers for the first edition, but all that changed as soon as the first edition was printed.

"At first we did have to approach bloggers that we liked and then after the New York Times article came out and the first issue came out, bloggers are approaching us. One every few minutes," said Karp. "Even [while we're] on the phone right now, I'm seeing people sending their blogs. I just got one from Mexico. We're getting requests from all over the world, inquiries from all over the planet."

Experience is not a criteria for The Printed Blog bloggers, they need only have a voice that people want to hear. "We have some national bloggers and some people who are writing in their basements. There is no minimum experience," said Karp. "We're less interested in the mainstream bloggers and more interested in the individual."

However, reporters looking for a gig, don't get your hopes up. Bloggers do get a portion of the revenue from ads that run next to their posts, but traditional benefits aren't on the horizon.

"We're going to stay away from offering benefits," said Karp. "We're trying to be a lean organization. We're paying [our bloggers] because they're taking the time to do the writing and we're respecting that effort. Bloggers are writing for a different reason. They're not writing because they want a job, they're writing because they have something to say."

Photos courtesy of the New York Times.

Writer Victoria Vickers is a graduate student in journalism at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Kirsten Gillibrand, sitting in my den, way back when....

By Claudia Ricci

It's official, Kirsten Gillibrand, a "Blue Dog" Democrat from upstate New York, has been appointed to fill Hillary Clinton's U.S. Senate seat.

Like so many others, I'd been hearing rumors that the little-known Congresswoman was on Governor Paterson's short list. But still, it comes as a bit of a shock to learn that Kirsten's going to get Hillary's job.

Less than three years ago, on a winter Sunday afternoon, she sat in the den of my 1850s farmhouse in upstate New York, contemplating her very first run for office. She was there with her husband, and as I recall she took the leather sofa. My husband, a political activist, took the rocking chair by the stone fireplace. He spent the next couple of hours offering Kirsten his best insights, and his encouragement and advice on how to go public with her campaign.

I would like to say that my reaction to Kirsten that afternoon was love at first sight. But honestly, I found her a bit cold. And even, a little frightening. She was certainly friendly, polite, upbeat and completely enthusiastic about the prospect of defeating then cong John Sweeney, a rather vile Republican who held the seat.

But in the course of the meeting, she spoke about the work she'd done as a high-powered corporate attorney defending cigarette companies. I sat there in my own rocking chair feeling that she would certainly be a big improvement over Sweeney, but she wouldn't be my first choice for a candidate.

What is amazing is how that meeting in my den began to transform Kirsten into the candidate that would win a seat in Congress. She confessed to us that afternoon that as a female lawyer, working in a tough and largely male corporate world, she felt compelled to project that very cold hard persona I saw. She said that she couldn't do her work without embracing that facade.

My husband, wisely, advised her to take an important step: embrace a new public persona, that of a strong woman who could speak to the powers that be, but one who would still reflect her heart and soul, and even, her femininity.

Well, so, she did that. (And she has publicly acknowledged my husband's role in helping her realize that she needed to make the change.) She defeated Sweeney that November in a tight, and somewhat ugly race. (My youngest child, Noah, then a senior in high school, volunteered on her campaign.) I voted for her, and she became our Congresswoman.

Her last election, this past November, was expected to be a tight race, but lo and behold, she blew her opponent, Sandy Treadwell, a ridiculously rich businessman from the Albany area, away. Her success at this last run demonstrated her extraordinary fund-raising ability, and, her popularity with her largely rural upstate constituency.

For my part, I've come to like her. I respect her hard work on the job. I respect -- and marvel -- at the fact that she manages to balance a very demanding career with her mothering. She's done right by us, and she deserves her success.

And while she's still a "Blue Dog," her voting record has been liberal.

While she will have her detractors for sure, Gillibrand is poised to play an important role in the Senate as part of the Obama era, and she is well positioned to be a force for change in Congress.

One Gigantic Shining Moment

By Claudia Ricci

It was way before sunrise when celebrants began to converge on the Mall to form the human quilt that stretched from the Capitol to the Washington Monument and way beyond.

How many of us were there? Two million? Three? Looking out at the sea of people, it looked like a red throbbing blur. Later, I spoke to people who despite their best efforts, actually never made it to the Mall. Three women from Iowa who had toiled hard back at home to get tickets for a good standing room perch by the Capitol told me that they ended up waiting four hours in a tunnel to get to the mall.

Sadly, police closed the entrance before they -- and thousands like them --were able to get in.

But even in that case, according to these Iowa women, there was, remarkably, no one pushing or angry or swearing, even after they were turned away. This was a day for gentle and upbeat celebration, despite the many challenges. Waiting in long, long lines, and in numbing cold, we joked and smiled and made endless chit chat. We fell into impromptu conversations with complete strangers as we walked miles, and waited hours, and watched the festivities with the press of bodies all around.

What we found was a huge spill over of emotion.

In the moments immediately after Obama was sworn in, I turned to an African American woman standing behind me and we just hugged, celebrating in that tight embrace the collapse of racial divide. We shared too what everyone out there was enjoying: a renewed sense of pride in being able to call ourselves Americans. A renewed hope that our new President can lead us through very scary and challenging times.

The spirit that took over Washington, D.C. this week will go down in history as one gigantic shining moment. A high point when we came together to celebrate our belief as Americans that anything is possible. That all dreams have their moment.

This inauguration is surely one such moment, and a wonderful launching pad for the Obama Presidency. Part street festival, part carnival, it exuded a spirit of love and cooperation, hope and possibility, that I have never associated with political events. Yes, it was a cold, cold, day, but the warmth of the people attending, and the inspiration of the leader being installed on the podium, fired us up. Gave us the heart and the heat and the hope that we indeed are witnessing a sea change in history.

No matter what disappointments lie ahead, and naturally there will be some, for now, we are glowing and so connected. We know what it means to act -- and to celebrate-- as a diverse American nation. We are convinced that we've chosen a man to lead us, to bring us together, a man who can inspire us to have the courage we need to face these very scary and difficult times.

Millions and millions of us were out there on the mall. We formed a crowd like none the nation has ever seen before. We were a long and throbbing sweep of human beings, a pumped up crowd that was at once elated and energized, screaming and cheering and waving Amerian flags, but at the same time, completely peaceful - astonishingly, Washington police made not a single arrest all day long.

It was a good, good time, and no one who was there will ever forget it. I know I won't forget the joy I saw all around me. One image carved in my mind: a jubiliant young African American man stepped off a curb and started leading his own impromptu parade, calling all of us to chant with him at the top of his lungs: O- BAM-A, O-BAM-A.

The party ends, but maybe the chanting --and the belief that we've found a leader-- can continue

The day after inauguration: MARCH FOR IMMIGRATION FORM

By Claudia Ricci

Whether we are one of the millions converging on the Mall in DC, or we are sitting in the living room in South Dakota or Saint Lous or Denver or Detroit glued to the TV, we are all riveted on Tuesday's inaugural events. We are a nation waiting for an extraordinary chapter in our history to unfold.

But once Tuesday's excitement comes to a close, there will be Wednesday, January 21st. And that's the day when our real task begins: changing the way this nation has governed for the past eight years.

One event that deserves our attention -- and that of the Obama admininstration -- right after inauguration, is immigration reform. Toward that end, there is a march in DC on Wednesday, January 21st, organized by a group called the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, or FIRM.

FIRM is a project of the Center for Community Change, a national network of local and state community organizations. Their aim: "just and humane" immigration reform. Toward that end, the group has organized a march on the offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in DC. Their intention: to host "a ceremony to cleanse ICE of 8 years of repressive policies."

So if you are still in DC on Wednesday, and you want to say something important publicly about an issue that is crying to be fixed, join the folks converging on Benjamin Banneker Park, 10th & G Sts. SW, Washington, DC. The group will march to ICE's national headquarters at 500 12th St., SW, and from there, will proceed to an afternoon forum on immigration reform at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 400 I St.

As President-elect Obama has said, the election, and the inauguration, provide an extraordinary opportunity for change. The real work for change begins in the days after.

"Open Mic, the Best Medicine"

By Camincha

Arriving full of frustration, headache. Alba smiles feebly in answer to Big Hello from Reading Host, and swallows an aspirin. Looks ‘round for Julia.

The host starts the reading.

The two Features are women: The first one has PIZZAZZZZ. Cadence in her words. And that delightful sound, what is that instrument?

Ahhhhh, it's her right hand beating against her large, well-built thigh. What a sound it makes! No wonder! She’s reading a love poem:

Your manly beauty,
resplendent, covering me
along side me, behind me...
thump, thump, thump, pan, pan
The second Feature is reading about a friend she’s just lost:

I miss you in small quiet ways
When I look at the geraniums under
the front porch and find your smile
floating among the red and white petals...

Alba is paying attention. Listening. Absorbed, she forgets her headache, all those frustrations.

Julia walks in. They embrace. I'm so happy to see you! Alba smiles.

Me too, Julia whispers in her ear, her long ripe-wheat-honey-blonde-hair falling, brushing her knees.

Tear Drop––Alba’s favorite regular––is on. He pummels his words with raised fists, his thumbs high up in the air for punctuation. He’s passionate. No wonder, he’s reading about his favorite subject, defending the homeless:

Holding his plastic bag
he reaches 11th and Folsom, one
more corner, just like all the
others he’s passed tonight, empty.

All doors are closed
No lights at the windows
No one’s waiting for him...

Alba’s headache? What headache?

And Alba doesn’t feel frustration anymore.

Camincha, a regular contributor to MyStoryLives, is a pen name for a writer living in the Bay Area of California.

Lost Identity

By John Ryan

During my three-day journey home from Iraq in 2006, I never prepared for the familiar-yet-oddly-estranged America that awaited me. I envisioned embraces with family, beer-filled reunions with friends, and a much needed close-to-a-war-torn romance.

My travel ended instead with a “Welcome Home” ceremony in a gymnasium at Fort Hood in Texas. There I proudly stood in front of the Master of Ceremony, under finger-painted banners. I felt the whir of adoration from the tearful audience. Once dismissed, I collided with my mother on the gym floor where she wrapped me in her arms, and together, to the auspicious lyrics of Kool and the Gang, we exited the buzzing gym. Ce-le-bra-tion. Boy was I glad to be back.

In the parking lot outside the gymnasium, I received the first of what would be hundreds of questions regarding my experiences in Iraq. My father, who had stood silently behind my mother in the gym, came forward and asked, “So, how does it feel to be back home?” followed by a cautious “And how was it over there, anyway?” My paltry answer sufficed at the time, although I can’t recall its details. It didn’t seem to matter much. What seemed to matter to him was that I was standing unscathed at his side. Of course, not everyone else would be so appeased, but his brief, although unscrupulous, questions alerted me of that. It was a startling revelation. Gone were the simpler days of, “Sir, Lieutenant Ryan reports as ordered!”

I was not my usual outgoing self during the first few months after my return. Frankly, I was a social introvert, who when pried, lashed out with a clipped army tongue. A beloved aunt asked me for my thoughts on the war, and I startled her with the sharpness of a radio transmission, “I don’t know. Don’t want to talk about it. Eliminator 21 out!” Even the most casual conversations besieged me. When a Maytag man, who came to fix my dishwasher, asked about my service in Iraq, I darted to the bathroom, fearful of his political acumen. I was anxious, irritable and, although I didn’t want to admit it, lonely.

Before I could answer anyone’s questions, I needed sometime to untangle my thoughts and emotions. Following a few Google searches, my self-diagnosis was a mild case of social anxiety with a twist of lost identity, caught somewhere in the Kübler-Ross cycle of grief. It dealt me spats of denial, anger, and bargaining, which evoked insecurities that were once disguised by my rank and perceived importance in Iraq. I was suspicious of everyone I met, pinned down by anticipated rhetorical attacks and the ubiquitous subject of a 20/20 interview.

A year after I arrived home, and once I accepted the eternal smudges on my self-esteem, my symptoms receded, revealing the affable demeanor of the high school senior of my past. Kübler-Ross’s final stage of acceptance had finally emerged. I found myself entertaining questions like, “Is it really that bad over there?” with short-but-somehow insightful paragraphs that left my lips with a smirk of contentment. Soon thereafter, I was nudging into conversations at dinner parties to explain how traumatic brain injury occurred in Iraq, and as I did, I felt my own synaptic realignment hasten its pace.


Armed with a new and optimistic outlook, I pontificated why we had invaded, where we went wrong, and how it all could be corrected; and in each case, I shared an anecdote that supported my assertions. I spoke with the uncanny cadence of a down-south drawl and stood with a straight back. It was the first time in a long time that my life outside a uniform and in my own skin was a happy one.

The torrent of my expression swept me into unexamined happiness. My stories streamed like montages from CNN and Fox News; they were cogent upon witness yet they remained single snapshots in time, certainly not indicative of the whole Iraqi tale. My narratives had succumbed to entertainment, and this acknowledgement returned a feeble inner voice. My tongue again knotted and my spine again sagged -- a year and a half of healing for naught.

Through all of this, I discovered that life often leads back to familiar quandaries; problems that re-emerge dissembled, baffling us again. Maybe in the coming months, I will speak openly about Iraq again. Maybe I’ll stop attempting to elucidate thoughts that I know will take years to dismantle. Or perhaps, in the luckiest case, a bolt of clairvoyance will change my life for the better. Until then, all I can do is embrace my family, enjoy a few drinks with friends, and court a new love. Indeed, I don’t feel my best and probably never will, but I’m no longer in Iraq. It is good to be home.

Former Army Captain John Ryan was honorably discharged in 2008 after five years of service. He served in Iraq in 2004 and 2006 and was awarded the Bronze Star for his actions. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2003.

Letter From Beijing

By Susan Chen

Ni men hao~

Greetings from Beijing! As I write this update on my life abroad, away from the comforts of Stanford University, I cannot help but comment on the white "snow" floating outside my window: pollen from the nearby poplar and willow trees. Welcome to Spring in Beijing!

I arrived here on March 30th, greeted warmly by faces familiar and new in a dorm that could easily be mistaken as a hotel. Over the next few days, I gradually adjusted to the unique Beijing way of life: weaving through speeding cars in a cars-before-passengers traffic system, always carrying napkins with me as these seem to be luxury items hardly available anywhere, applying never-too-much lotion to counter the dry and dusty weather. Speaking of dusty, Beijing's reputation as an ultra-polluted city is far from fiction.

Still, Beijing University (Bei Da) and the city itself have a lot to offer. Over the last couple of weeks, I have taken a variety of classes from outstanding Bei Da professors. The native students are extremely bright, hard-working, and modest in behavior and thought. Their educational careers are strict as it is very difficult to change majors and exams are frequent; some even take place on weekends. Student dorms are crowded and unpleasant. Outside the harsh academic environment, Bei Da is dotted by gorgeous magnolia flowers and cherry blossoms, and filled with historical and modern architecture alike. Small rivers and bridges weave through the city, which is animated by thesounds of students and frequent notable visitors.

Supposedly, the Prime Minister of Sweden presented a talk yesterday. Outside the campus, I have had the wonderful opportunity to explore the city in all its magnificence: I took Stanford-sponsored trips to the Summer Palace and Forbidden City, enjoyed a Peking Opera, and spoiled myself with a wealth of delicious cuisine and frequent trips to shopping districts. The 7-to-1 currency exchange rate can render one easily tempted to take out the wallet again and again, and again.

Certainly, Beijing (and most of China) is modernizing. The "New Beijing" is a hallmark of skyscrapers and materialism. The architecture is indeed aesthetically interesting but living in this city has made me more concerned with its psychological effects on people, in how modernizing efforts shape individual behavior and society. Whether urban development should be embraced is not a question with a simple answer. There is massive construction going up on every corner of Beijing (some were in preparation for the Olympics) but most for urbanization within the greater context. It is difficult to stare at brick ruins and hear the sounds of motors running without questioning what was there and what will be there. The displacement of innocent civilians and the overtime labor of construction workers are heavy prices to pay for the sake of a lofty goal to "modernize."

Beijing is changing the course of its history, for better or for worse. China is no longer the weak nation of the past but falls short of "greatness" as is commonly conceptualized. I am fortunate to be a part of this important historical era, knowing that what I see and hear today may not be here five or ten years from now. Conversely, I am very pleased to experience the source of China's pride in its rich history and culture. I eagerly anticipate my planned trips to the Great Wall, Inner Mongolia, Shanghai, Guangdong, and Hong Kong. A lot has changed since I left China more than a decade ago, and I am excited to reacquaint myself with my homeland, and get to know its priceless Chinese culture better!

Zai Jian!

Susan Chen is a junior at Stanford University, double majoring in International Relations and Asian American Studies. She immigrated to the U.S. from China at the age of seven and is very interested in US-China relations. This piece, written in April, 2008, is part of her "China Blog."