Notes from Riko's Diary
November 23, 2008
10 pm
I'm exhausted and ready to die right this minute, somewhere in Bucyrus, Ohio - a city that's unknown even to many Americans. The area where I'm in has made its living in planting soybeans, and hogs and cattle are the largest generators of farm livestock income for this area for decades.
I'm just ready to drop from chronic fatigue syndrome but I can't. I have one e-mail to send before my bosses finally allow me to close the headquarters of the Obama volunteer campaign headquarters in this part of town.
Don't get me wrong. I'm as Pinoy as patis and bagoong, and I take my scholarship in the Graduate Program for Religious Studies at Yale seriously, often studying way into the night and early morning, writing papers and reading tons of stuff on Franco-German existentialism, theological ethics, phenomenology or Anglo-American moral philosophy and other esoteric stuff. Heavy stuff. What keeps me awake is listening to the Good Times radio show at their website, and the heavy reading becomes lighter as I laugh my self silly listening to Mo, Mojo and Grace Lee.
I was happy as it is studying and just maintaining the status quo, but one fine day, a group of my buddies, a couple of nerdy Yalies like me, asked me to volunteer for the Obama campaign last year. At first I thought I had nothing to give, but they said everyone had something to contribute and I signed on with trepidation. I'm glad I did it.It's been a hell of a ride, but the sacrifices are all worth it.
A group of us were assigned in Ohio, and let me tell you, we worked like dogs night and day, but by election day, a group of volunteers have knocked into a million Ohio homes to talk to some reluctant and undecided voters about Barack Obama.
The faces behind the doors sometimes are wary of opening up their doors for me, and one tactless man asked whether I was American.
"Oh no, Sir. I'm from the Philippines, studying on a scholarship in Yale..." I smile even if my heart was pounding like I was in a race for the Olympic 100 meter dash finish line.
"So why are you pounding on my door even if you're not American?"
I stop and still smile, remembering my hero Barack Obama's preternatural poise amidst heckling by John McCain, and I don't answer in anger. And so I begin...
Why did I vote for Obama?
I was listening to the Good Times show this week as I usually did to keep myself awake, often tuning in to this great website to hear an audio download of the show.I enjoyed Beatbox Tuesday last November 18 and Gwen Garci's Forbidden Questions last November 19 but Mo mentioned Obama twice: once in his November 17 show (when Binay called himself Jobama), and another time, in the November 20 show, when Mo mentioned that we should really start retiring the old faces in Philippine politics like Enrile, who led the ouster of Villar.
To tell you the truth, I almost choked on the burger I was eating when I heard that Jejomar Binay called himself Jobama. Professional Heckler blogger said that supporters of Makati City Mayor Jejomar Binay are comparing him to US President-elect Barack Obama because they're both from the opposition, they’re both “black,” and they’ve been both snubbing President Arroyo.
I can only say a few things to make my point. As you can see from the pictures above, I don't even think Binay could do a chin press like Obama. Binay is 66 years old and rumored to have cancer.
Obama can't even change his shoes even if it has holes. According to those who know him, Obama is not a 'man of appetites'. He is abstemious, and regularly ate the same dinner of salmon, rice and broccoli night after night from some half-forgotten town, trying to talk to voters all around the country. While other Presidential candidates gained an average of ten to fifteen pounds, Obama lost ten pounds while campaigning.You can say that his enormous discipline to withhold from food reflects how he handled his campaign because he is one of the first Presidential candidates to throw away the practice of giving 'walking-around' money to grease the pockets of the locals to help get the vote.
And one important thing, it has been reported that Obama had "refused on principle to hand out walking-around money" to any of the local politicians before, during and after election day.
Are there any Philippine politicians who can really say that they won without giving their 'walk-around' money? Most of our politicians won because they bribed and bought the vote.
Now you know why I almost choked.
There are many things I still want to say about Obama. Many things I want to relate about voting for him even if I am a Filipino. But it's Pico Iyer who hit the bull's eye in a recent November 14 Time article:
" (Obama) was so much like the kind of people we meet in Paris, in Hong Kong, in the Middle East: difficult to place and connected to everywhere. Like the air of his home island (Hawaii: not really Eastern or Western, but a vibrant mingling of the two), (Obama) spoke for the dawning global melting pot of today.
"It has become part of the familar story now, repeated so often we can barely hear it, but anyone who steps out of the US today, in any direction, quickly sees that the American Century has become the Global Century and that where a generation ago much of the globe was rying to look like America, now it's America that needs to get in tune with the rest of the globe.
"You could, in fact, say that it is the questions that he draws from his experience that are as important as any answers he may come up with. How to make peace between the black and the white inside him (or inside our cities and countries)? How to do right by our relatives in Africa without dishonoring the grandparents from Kansas who raised us? How to bring the modest Muslim school in Java together with Harvard Law School? The questions Obama has been thinking about all his life are the very ones that dominate the world today. And the mounting economic crisis only make the construction of a wider identity- and conversing across the waters - more urgent, not less so."
We live in a global society, and whatever we are experiencing in the Philippines affect everyone, including Obama. Imagine how Obama would react to the way we do politics in this country where corruption is endemic in our culture. Are you still surprised that Obama has snubbed our own President? How does he reconcile reality with his concept of an ideal world?
"Hey, it's time to lock up. It's over. We won." Alethea Arash, Obama campaign head for Ohio loomed in front of me, holding the keys of the headquarters. It was the last hour of the last day of our makeshift headquarters, and it was time to go.
But is it over? As long as there are pockets of corruption around the world, then it's not anywhere near over. It's just the beginning, and whatever I've learned here, in this campaign, I'm sure to use it when I get home.
It's time to get involved, in your own little way. It doesn't have to be a big gesture. Remember Obama - he was this poor, black community organizer in the ghettoes of Chicago twenty years ago. He strove hard to get inside Harvard Law, then the Senate and made it. But deep inside, he had a dream for change, he wanted to make a difference. And he did, one slow step at a time.
A tiny step, that's all. The world shifts when you make that tiny step towards change. It really does. Try it and see.
(Postscript: Many of the topics were mentioned in the show from November 17 to 21 : Jobama, the Beatbox contest, the Gwen Garci interview and Villar's ouster by Enrile.
I was struck by Mo's comments about Binay comparing himself to Obama, and I imagined a volunteer for the Obama campaign choking on his food upon hearing that. I imagined a Pinoy volunteer, a studious scholarly nerd from Yale who knocked on a lot of doors to make sure that his candidate won.
Even during the Democratic Party primaries, I knew Obama would win against the formidable Clinton machine. Why? A lot of reasons, some of which are written in this blog.
I just wished that we could have a politician in the Philippines who had the same idealism as Obama.
Could we be as fortunate? Wise men have said that we get the leaders we deserve. Do we get the kind of leaders we have in the Philippines today, because few are brave enough to run for office and seek the changes truly needed by our society?
This blogger would like to apologize for not updating this blog last week. I was in Singapore, and while I was there, I wanted to weep when I saw how the Singaporean people never stopped trying to improve their country to perfection. I've observed that their city state looked like the set in the 'Truman Show', a perfect first world city, but still retaining its Asian flavour and zest.
Notes from Rikko's Diary is a work of fiction, and comes from the imagination and point of view of this blogger. Good Times!!!)
