By fightinfilipino
you know, i least expected Ralph Nader of all people to trigger this weird brain renaissance i’m suddenly feeling. yes, that Ralph Nader, the same guy whose soporific voice and oft-oddball stances inspired…dozens…of voters to head to the polls and hesitate oh so much in marking the checkbox for Barack Obama. but i had the chance to see Nader speak at a conference in D.C. this last weekend, and aside from guilt tripping all the law students in the room for even considering big firm jobs, he also recognized that the most challenging problem for more civic-minded law students was keeping the drive to do good things in the world.
these last few months, i think i lost that drive without realizing it. i had been just skimming along in classes, a bit disconnected from the real. but in D.C., i hung out with a metric tonne of very cool, very amazing folks who are all doing impressive and important work in politics, social work, employee rights, healthcare…you name it. and as i spoke with these folks, and shared ideas and talked shop with them, and even played a few rounds of pool and Connect Four with them, i began to remember what it was like to actually think and apply outside the classroom, to take all this accumulated legal knowledge and solve actual important problems, not slog through rarefied hypos. dammit, Darth Nader was right. that was the fire in the belly i needed.
and today, i was already on a good mood streak, but i saw a film at the San Diego Asian Film Festival that really drove the point for me. the film, 9500 Liberty, was a documentary on the undocumented immigrant debate raging in Manassas County, Virginia. the film showed a story becoming all too familiar in a lot of US communities: influxes of immigrant populations of color into traditionally-white-and-affluent neighborhoods, and the ensuing fight by locals to push these “darkies” back out. but if the basic premise is (sadly) one that seems mundane, the documentary was anything but. the film took things a step further by not only pointing out the myriad parties involved in this struggle, but also the intense conversations and arguments taking place between folks from the community, police, politicians, pundits, business owners, and the whole country. this was also one of the first documentaries i’d ever seen that took advantage of technologies like youtube to show the conversation developing naturally as the film was shot. the filmmakers took great pains to eschew the omniscient viewpoint and instead capture the organic and volatile nature of the immigration conflict from first-person perspectives, from the people actually involved.
my views on immigration would take a whole post by itself. but i think what i realized at the end of it all is that i’ve missed being a part of that tumult, being a voice for others who might not or cannot speak out in the struggle over immigration reform and enforcement. and i have a clearer idea of how i want to get back in there and be a scrappy fightin’ filipino once again. i really really need to finish this law school thing first, but my brain is hatching schemes all over the place how even law school will help me get back to the path.
who knows, maybe i’ll actually update this blog more frequently, too 
By fightinfilipino
the fine folks at Newsweek seem to believe that Obama’s election is going to spark a baby boom. truly Obama is our country’s next saviour (note the grauitous usage of the British “u”).
i’m starting to think that this was part of Obama’s plan all along. during the campaign and in his election acceptance speech, Obama recognized that this election wasn’t his alone, or was even his to begin with. the election really belonged to the American people (as it rightly should). and in this recognition, Obama called all Americans to help serve, do their part, contribute to democracy. sure, you’d think at first that Obama meant he wanted to see Americans of all walks of life to get involved in their communities again, to shed the parochialism championed by Bush’s GOP. it’s a reasonable assumption; from the time he wrote Dreams from My Father, Obama has valued democratic participation of American citizens. this is a philosophy completely distinct from the specter of the socialist interventionist government with which the McCain campaign tried to scare voters.
from his writings and his policies, Obama clearly values the kind of government that doesn’t belong to the government, but to the voters. it is an idea completely American, and i really think no other country has come close to articulating it as the U.S. has, even with many of the U.S.’s flaws. however, to enable citizens to vote, to have the skills and knowledge needed to take part in the shaping and nurturing of their communities, you need strong support and open access for education (and i mean a complete education, including sciences, social sciences, the arts, music, history, and global topics). you also need to help Americans have a strong foundation on which they can stand: things like more open healthcare and home ownership help. i don’t think that these should be given for free; like Habitat for Humanity’s philosophy on helping poor folks own their own homes, we should help people gain access to health care, homes, and other basic necessities, but each person needs to put in “sweat equity” too. fortunately, Obama’s general policies seem to favor all of these things.
but we’re really here to talk about another kind of “sweat equity”, aren’t we?
do i make you randy baby? do i?
yes, that’s Obama in a cowboy hat. why this did not win him Texas will confound historians for centuries to come. but, hell, i’m a straight man and i can honestly say that that’s hottt. now imagine election night, when the election results came in around 11pm EST. right there you have prime party starting time. i’m sure you’ve already seen the numerous articles and TV news reports about the raucous celebrations that broke out all over the country once Obama secured those 270 EVs. people were dancing in the streets, in bars and clubs, at house parties, and even in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. men and women alike all had Obama in a cowboy hat on their brains, not to mention the Change and Hope flowing through their veins and from numerous bottles of fermented beverages. if those aren’t aphrodisiac conditions, i don’t know what else would be.
we know that Obama’s campaign has probably been one of the most disciplined, carefully orchestrated political efforts our nation has seen in a while. Obama had the community organizing ground game down to a science. every action the campaign took was one of, yes, calculation. Obama is after all a politician; he has been and continues to be able to accurately read the ley lines of American opinion and feeling. so it’s not a far of a stretch to say that during the last year and a half, Obama’s campaign also “seeded” America for an Obama Baby Boom. and why not? baby booms have historically strengthened the economy, driving retail sales, tax revenues, and a whole host of other things that help the GDP. right now the US could use a monetary boost, and an Obama administration would be able to reap the benefits and the accolades for presiding over a recovery.
what i’m saying is that Obama had another kind of stimulus package in mind this whole time. and i’m certain that Obama’s plan is to keep up American optimism, give young Americans regular shots of Change and Hope and Yes We Can every once in a while, to create the kind of optimistic environment where people will, quite frankly, get it on. if this helps America regain that optimism and can-do spirit we seemed to have lost in the last eight years, i’m all for it 
By fightinfilipino
really?
i understand the need for good clothes and all (as i am a closet metrosexual), but to purchase a wardrobe for your entire family using your staffers’ credit cards and donations ostensibly made for your Presidential/Vice Presidential campaign?
By fightinfilipino
c’mon, you vote in droves for Barack Obama, but you also vote Yes on Prop 8?
what part of Change and Hope didn’t translate during the campaign? where did people miss the idea that allowing marriage for homosexual couples doesn’t force religions to change their beliefs? and who the hell proclaimed that the term “marriage” was exclusively owned by one segment of the population? did people really buy into the despicable fear campaign claiming that schools would be forced to “teach” gay marriage to kids? and quite fucking frankly, would it be so bad for kids to learn that, yes, there are people out there who love someone of the same gender?
separate but equal is NOT equal. while some parts of the South didn’t get the memo, our country worked that out at the end of the 60s. but more fundamentally, banning marriage for gay couples while ensconcing civil privileges and benefits for straight couples is directly in opposition to the Equal Protection clauses of the State and Federal Constitutions. when you have contradicting bits of law in the overarching ruling document of the land, you know for a fact there’s going to be problems.
this thing is going to go to the SCOTUS. i have no doubt in my mind. i’m just hoping that by the time that happens, Obama will have already made judicial appointments to replace Stevens and Ginsburg. but to even think that this has to go to the SCOTUS to determine basic human rights is incredibly shocking and shameful. Obama’s victory is really dampened by Prop 8’s passing.
edit: i just found out that Prop D in San Diego also passed, banning alcohol from San Diego’s parks and beaches. completely unfair. there are people who will cause trouble, true. but goddamnit, just like with gay marriage, the solution isn’t to ban it outright.
i thought i was moving out to CA because people were a little less ridiculous around here. looks like i’m going to have to bring out my inner Masshole once i get out of law school *cracks knuckles*.
By fightinfilipino
“BLUE TEAM WINS”
“I think that it was Forms 10:40 that said: ‘And lo, Abraham gazed upon Isaac and stayed his hand at the Word of the Lord, who spoke gentle kindness and said, “If you kill him, dude, you’ll have one less dependant.” And Isaac crapped his pants, for verily, that was a close fucking call.’”
“I’ll have two Obama-ramas and an Old Fashioned Biden.”
“Yes we DID.”
“President Barack Obama!”
