Patrick-Obama Part I

by Dax-Devlon Ross

The Kindred Rise of Obama, Patrick

From the Associated Press
 BOSTON — Early in Deval Patrick’s run for governor, when few Massachusetts voters had heard of the maverick candidate with the odd first name, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama stopped by Cambridge for a class reunion at Harvard Law School.

Obama extolled the virtues of Patrick, a fellow Harvard Law School alum who, like Obama, faced better known and better financed opponents.

“He recognized that there was something very special about Deval and there were similarities in their experience,” said Cassandra Butts, an Obama classmate who attended the reunion. “He wanted to give Deval the chances that he didn’t have early on in his Senate race.”

As Obama campaigns for president and Patrick works to shake off a rocky start as governor, observers are seeing in the two old friends the new face of black political leadership — figures as comfortable in the boardroom as on the picket line who can appeal to large swathes of white voters.

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Patrick-Obama Part II

by Dax-Devlon Ross

Patrick, Obama campaigns share language of ‘hope’

From The Boston Globe

By Scott Helman, Globe Staff  |  April 16, 2007

Of all the things Deval Patrick’s Republican opponent threw at him in last year’s governor’s race, one charge that stuck in his craw was that his speeches were more fluff than substance — that they were, in Patrick’s telling, “just words.” So he devised an artful response.

” ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal’ — just words,” Patrick said at a rally in Roxbury right before Election Day. ” ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself’ — just words. . . . ‘I have a dream’ — just words. They’re all just words.”

The crowd erupted as it got Patrick’s point about the power of language. But perhaps no one at the rally understood the point better than Barack Obama, who had joined him on stage that night.

Not five months later, Obama, his presidential campaign gaining steam, had this to say about legendary Chicago organizer Saul Alinsky in The New Republic: “Sometimes the tendency in community organizing of the sort done by Alinsky was to downplay the power of words and of ideas when in fact ideas and words are pretty powerful. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men are created equal.’ Those are just words. ‘I have a dream.’ Just words.”

In the midst of his improbable run for office, Obama and his advisers have evidently studied Patrick’s up-from-nowhere victory in Massachusetts and are borrowing themes, messages, and even specific lines for the presidential campaign.

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Does Mayor Fenty Want to Have his Cake and Eat it Too?

by Dax-Devlon Ross

Last week was a busy one for D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty. In the span of five days he marched on Capitol Hill with 3,500 residents, won control over the city’s beleaguered school system, completed his first 100 days in office and saw the House of Representatives pass a voting rights bill for the District of Columbia. Amid the flurry of activity there was praise – he made 162 appearances in 100 days, including numerous to under-served communities and community board meetings – and criticism – the active schedule has led some to wonder whether he’ll be able to “focus on the harder parts: spelling out the details for improving the 34,000-employee bureaucracy, improving the schools, reducing crime and narrowing the economic divide.”

While most, including me, consider his first 100 days a success, I nevertheless found myself fixating on an episode that took place during last Monday’s rally at Capitol Hill. It seems as though a group of teachers and parents decided to conduct their own protest. Carrying a banner that read that read: “Democracy Starts at Home: Referendum on the Schools Takeover,” this small cadre attempted to bring their gripe with the Mayor’s school takeover plan to the table but were summarily shoved aside by voting rights activists.

Although The Washington Post story covering the protest only briefly mentioned the referendum protestors, however I couldn’t stop thinking about them for the remainder of the week. Did they have a point? Is there something contradictory in the Mayor’s position regarding D.C. voting rights vis-a-vis his school takeover plan? If so, what does that mean? What does it matter?