About Steve

Viewpoints from the Publisher's View

Yes We CanDecember Issue, 2009, Potrero View

By Steve J. Moss

While president-elect Barack Obama didn’t outright say it in his election victory speech, there was unmistakable echoes of an earlier young president. In his inaugural address John F. Kennedy called on Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.” Setting aside all of the bad things that happened in the decade that ensued – the assassination of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, and JFK himself – President Kennedy’s call for individual action arguably ushered in a new era of civic engagement. His administration launched the Peace Corp and what’s now called Americorps; programs that continue to capture young adults’ desire to directly assist people who they don’t even know and who often live in places most of us wouldn’t want to visit. More profoundly, Kennedy’s simple call for individual action helped propel the civil rights, environmental and anti-war movements, which in turn led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Roe v. Wade, and, ultimately, to the election of our new president.

Kennedy’s call was answered throughout the world, by farmers in India finding ways to grow crops organically; hippies in Northern California learning to live communally and “off the grid;” and women, African-Americans, and gays marching for their rights. But in the decades since this burst of individual and collective optimism and action, the steady drip-drip of government lies, greed, and incompetence has encouraged many of us to turn inward. Watergate, Contra-gate, the Iran War, the response to Hurricane Katrina, and, let’s own it, even President Clinton’s silly indiscretions wore away at our faith in government, and in each other. Get quick rich schemes on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley, and in the housing market distracted us from more meaningful pursuits. Gated communities replaced communes; consumerism has been mistaken for political action.

Now, three and a half decades later, Obama’s victory has turned Kennedy’s question squarely back to us: what will you do to create positive change? How do you want to live in the new reality?

Each of us, on our own, will have to struggle with and ultimately answer this question. Collectively our responses will determine whether “Yes we can” transforms into “Yes we will” and finally “Yes we are.” Will we resume our insatiable quest to patch the empty spaces in our hearts by buying cheap plastic goods from China, or try a different path? San Franciscans are already learning how to re-use, reduce, and do without; how far are we willing to go? Aside from food, everything we need to be comfortable may already exist in our community, or can be developed. My seven-year-old daughter, for example, has perhaps 1,000 toys, 800 of which she rarely plays with; I have shirts and shoes I never wear. There’s already an active trade in baby items on the Potrero Hill Parents Association’s listserv; raising this activity to another level would address a multitude of problems, from satisfying individual needs, creating community, and addressing our environmental problems.

Will we finish our civil rights agenda, by finally and firmly allowed gays to marry, and ensuring children have access to quality education and health care? The post-Proposition 8 marches have already begun, but so too has the dull drumbeat of impending budget cuts for our public schools. The (temporary) set back from the initiative’s passage, and the threatened budget cuts, must be brushed aside if we are to continue our journey towards the change we’ve called to create.

Will we continue to build on a more localized environmental movement? Already there’s a steady flowering of community and rooftop gardens, street meridian greenings, and community-based approaches to managing our energy and transportation systems. Our urban habitats could be reclaimed, by uncovering buried creeks and streams, and by understanding that our backyards are home to thousands of creatures who have no place else to go.

Change doesn’t come from Washington, Obama told us, change comes to Washington. Said differently, change doesn’t happen to you, it happens because of you. Barack Obama was elected on the backs of thousands of $100 checks, and millions of telephone and in-person contacts, contributed by Americans who saw that their aspirations could come true with the right leadership in place. Barack Obama’s election isn’t an end, it’s a beginning. It’s up to each one of us to decide what happens next.