Jack & Jill Politics

[Intro from Jill – please welcome Ali Savino, our first white guest blogger. We figured it might be time to integrate…just a little.]

Hi, I’m Ali, and I’ll be your first token white person here at Jack and Jill Politics. Now I may be out of my depth here, so I’ll try to resist the urge to list off all of my black friends so that y’all know that I’m down. But I have been fortunate enough to know both Jack and Jill well before they started up this little endeavor through mutual connections in the netroots world. Since jumping on the Dean campaign in 2003, I’ve been a proud active member of this sliver of life where internet meets politics. The political bloggers have been kind enough to embrace me as one of their own even though my work has been mainly behind the scenes, most recently helping start up the Center for Independent Media that trains, supports, and underwrites state level bloggers who have made a big difference in this election.

For me, this feels like a long, dark crawl out of a crumbling mine shaft and I just made it out of the hole to breath fresh clean air for the first time in 8 years. Part of me never thought we would make it out alive. For my entire political life, since 2003, we have lived under the oppressive, backwards regime of George W Bush. Us progressives have finally been freed of our political prison.

This is something we have been fighting for years as progressives. But I can’t imagine how good it must feel as a black American who has been fighting for this moment in time for

generations. I imagine it must feel euphoric to win a battle this long in the making.

And sure this is just one battle, and there is still many battles left to fight for equal pay and equal opportunity and everything else that goes with it. But it’s a victory, and a huge one at that, and I for one am so happy for your community. In a way, I’m jealous. I wish I knew what it was like from your perspective to experience this incredible moment in history.

I would like to think that it is also a victory for us whites, in that maybe in a

small way we have left a little bit of the nasty legacy of racial intolerance behind. It’s progress, and that makes me proud.

On MSNBC, Monday night, someone just said that this election has made 34% of Americans more proud of their country. That’s an amazing number given the recent apathy of our electorate and the negative and vicious campaign we just witnessed. There is something in the air. You can feel it all around us. This mantra of change isn’t just a stump speech refrain or a platitude. You can see it embodied in the campaign. You can feel it with their volunteers and political activists across this country. You can sense it within the America population as a whole. People are ready for change. Real change.

I am so proud of our country right now. Proud that we are finally turning the corner on the horrible, racist, Southern Strategy that the Republicans have wielded to divide our country. Proud that we have ended the reign of old white dudes that headed our country but did not reflect our diverse culture. Proud that in many ways this race was not about Race but rather about choosing someone who speaks to our collective future. Proud that we took a chance to hopefully move forward..

We have turned a corner in America. We have taken a huge step to move beyond the stupid cultural divides that have defined recent elections. And we have hope. We have hope that we can be better, that America can do better. The world is watching, and we finally have a leader that can do us proud.