About three weeks behind schedule. I’ve been pretty much walking in a daze for the past couple of weeks, pretty much just walking, blending in with the New York City landscape. I’ve been waiting for that big bang, for that monumental moment…I should say positive big bang, for that positive monumental moment, that would lead me to say “is it 2009 yet? Well fuck, yes it is 2009! About damn time!”

To the average person with a lukewarm grasp of politics, it might seem a little silly to be emotional and overwhelmed by this change in administration. However, as one who has been involved in social and political causes since the start of the 2000 presidential campaign in 1999 (particularly centering on issues that Bush and like-minded folks just love to zoom in on), it has somewhat been…umm, what’s the word that I’m looking for here? Oh, yes, HELL:

Comprehensive sexuality education vs. abstinence only education, unwillingness to discuss comprehensive immigration reform, the DREAM Act failing in the Senate, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE raids, the five-year bar on public assistance programs for recent immigrants, the lack of serious discussion around healthcare reform, Bush’s first executive order: the reinstatement of the Global Gag Rule, the attempt to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment and federal-funded marriage promotion programs targeting low-income women, the delay on expanding access to emergency contraception, cuts to Medicaid, the “Partial Abortion” (which is not at all a medical term) Ban, Alito and Roberts, refusal to release yearly funds to UNFPA since 2001, the recent midnight regulation expanding health personnel’s (in pretty much in all capacities, from administrative to direct service providers) ability to deny healthcare services to patients (particularly reproductive healthcare service, surprise, surprise) on the basis of “conscience.” **

And this is just the shit that I personally have some connection to only at the federal level, I’m definitely missing many things, and it’s not, by any means, all the things that has pissed me off. I really don’t think I have the time to list everything out. All I can say really is that it’s been an exhaustive eight years.

Part 2: What I Realistically Expect

Coming up next!

*I will edit/add on to this throughout the day.
**At the moment, I have not linked the listed items to appropriate sources, but I will later on today and tomorrow.”

From the 1/18 edition of New York Times Magazine:

(Click the image below to head over to the online gallery)

[...] 52 full-page color portraits of the vice president-elect and the incoming president’s advisers, aides and cabinet secretaries-designate (some of whom may have been confirmed or may have withdrawn by the time you read this), along with those legislators who are likely to prove influential in helping to usher into law what the new administration sets out to do. (President-elect Obama declined to pose for a formal picture.) The portraits were taken in mid-December and earlier this month in Chicago and Washington.

Click here to continue reading “Behind ‘Obama’s People.”