Gasoline Dreams: 10 Years since the Iraq Invasion

10 years ago last week, I was sitting in my dorm room wondering what Washington was going to do with Baghdad. I sat there worrying that we'd be going to war and if Saddam Hussein really did have these things called weapons of mass destruction. Then my roommate turned to CNN and we saw an OutKast song come to life.

I wanted to immediately post an away message on AIM saying Bombs over Baghdad. But instead, I was scared. So was my roommate. I saw somebody post a message saying "Let us pray" so I went ahead and posted something more thoughtful like that. Because I knew that we were in for something and had no idea how it'd end.

At the time, I was thinking "Okay go ahead and get them before they get us". I didn't realize that there was already shaky logic leading us to Iraq and I remember Saddam expressing sorrow and condolences after 9/11. But fear is a powerful force and like Hermann Goering said at the Nuremburg trials, it can move people to do anything in the name of safety.

It's a sad anniversary that many have already spoken on but for me, I like to think about how in less than 18 months, that was a loud chorus of opposition that I had never seen before. Between March 2003 and the summer of 2004, we saw a lot more information that unraveled the story that Washington sold us.

Election Day Jitters (2012 Edition)

Today is Election Day and I’m realizing that this is the first time I’m going to be in a relatively calm environment for a presidential election since 2000.  Yet I can’t shake the feeling of being nervous like I always am.

If you’ve noticed my blog posts, tweets, Facebook posts or anything in the past year, you know who I’m voting for tomorrow. I should be fairly confident that things work in his favor tomorrow but despite my warnings on avoiding all distractions, I can’t shake a feeling that not everybody is that intelligent to parse through the crap to make a smart vote on their conscious. But Election Day nerves aren't new to me

1992: 8 years old. My school had a mock vote for President George Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot after each grade had to “support” a candidate in a presentation at school (I remember my 3^rd grade class had to support Perot). After we took the vote, Bill Clinton won by an overwhelming margin and we all cheered throughout the school. I remember coming home to see Clinton won and feeling pretty happy.

Katrina 5 Years Later

Thanksgiving weekend 2004 - my family was in New Orleans for a day to watch the Battle of the Bands. We walked along Bourbon Street and watched a step show along with the Battle between Southern and Grambling's bands inside the Superdome - the pinnacle of Southern Black culture. With "Nolia Clap" and "Go DJ" played non-stop in the arena and surrounded by Black Greeks, it was a wonderful time.

That night we watched Black folks celebrate in downtown New Orleans. While I was dreaming of regretting that decision not to apply to Morehouse, I felt like I was getting a taste of the South that so many of us in Cali don't see.

9 months later, that memory was replaced by something else. I remember moving in my senior year of college and hearing that a hurricane was coming to the Gulf Coast. It didn't hit me just how huge this was gonna be. I remember as an 8 year old kid seeing how bad Hurricane Andrew was in Florida so I figured it would be close to that but nowhere the devastation.

Next thing I knew, we saw the Gulf Coast submerged under water. People floating in boats and standing on roofs. Houses nearly covered in water. I'll never forget seeing the chilling photo of a dead woman face down in a pool of water splashed on the front of the NY Times.

My uncle and cousin had to move to Atlanta. The Superdome became a home for the displaced. My dad's hometown was a living waterpark - with poor folks who looked like me struggling a terrible evil.

Looking back on it, I remember these feelings and the lackluster government response. It was a reality to a lot of folks that like John Edwards said, we lived in Two Americas. George Bush watching that response from Air Force One said it all - an America detached from the painful reality of the poor, working class.

(I always wondered what he was thinking. Like his reaction on 9/11)

I was so confused about my feelings of despair and anger that I wrote this blog on MySpace. I didn't want to blame the government at first but that later faded.

Katrina was indeed a hurricane of class and racial issues that this country forgot about. Those issues came up when White with supplies were called surviving and Black faces were called looters. They came up recently when we discovered that officers had the green light to shoot looters at will. It comes up when Bourbon Street and the Superdome have been rebuilt and refurnished while most of the lower wards are still in recovery mode.

And by the way, what about Mississippi and the rest of the Coast? You may hate Kanye West for what he said on the telethon but I admire him for having the balls to say what many of us were saying privately and still needs to be said. David Banner forever earned my respect for not just organizing a concert for Katrina relief, but performing this great poem on Def Poetry Jam reminding us it's not just about New Orleans.

5 Years Later, Katrina reminds me of the outpouring of love we have, the feeling of detachment when it doesn't affect you personally, and a reminder that the federal and local government show who they really care about. I think about what would my Dad have done if he were alive to it and how much he would have given.

This spring, I watched David Simon's new show "Treme" on HBO, which captures a slice of post-Katrina New Orleans for musicians. To me, it not only captures the wide range of emotions after Katrina but it's a reminder that there's resiliency in the area and there's hope. When I talked to a former coworker last year after she returned to NO, she told me the same thing. People are struggling but they aren't giving up -when others forgot about them, they show the same spirit they had beforehand.

Katrina opened my eyes a bit more and it's a bigger reason why I'm passionate about injustice.

In the worst of times, we often see the best of humanity but we leave that memory behind as we move on. Never forget the lessons we've learned and are still learning. That would be a tragedy as well.

One day I'll return and make a pilgrimage to my Dad's birthplace. Reflect and learn again from the city that showed me a great time and exposed me to a new side of my culture.

Here's a great link from the BBC on how post-Katrina New Orleans looks like.

2004 - Politics (Seeds of Change)

The first presidential election I watched as an adult was a crazy time in America. You had waves of protest music and it was then that I realized as a country we were turning against George Bush for good and his policies. Like I said a few posts ago, "American Idiot" was the soundtrack of that year and people were waking up - myself included - to a B.S. war in Iraq that felt futile even then.

Anyways, the election was probably one of the most galvanizing events of my lifetime and probably one of the most charged since the 1960's but from it we saw some interesting things.

The 2004 DNC introduced us to a Senator candidate from Illinois with an African name and an idealistic attitude. A stirring speech about coming together under one name - American, not broken down by party affiliation. A message of upholding the country to its ideals and an audacity of hope. It's a shame I missed it because of Youth Group - although I did see Bill Clinton's stirring speech the night before.

By the way, that Barack Obama guy turned out pretty well. The shine from that night I think is still shining somewhat right? I remember writing a blog on Myspace in 2006 saying it was foolish to rush him to the Presidency so soon but he was easily the biggest political rookie to make an impact since Bill Clinton. I was shocked then and I am now.

Crazy enough, John Edwards to me was ill-suited to be Vice-President. He should've been the Presidential candidate - a young, energetic man who believed in the cause of the working poor and the declining middle class. He was way better than John Kerry IMO - but thank God he didn't win the nomination because he screwed himself over with his infidelity becoming public four years later.

The mind-boggling thing to me about it all was how George Bush earned re-election by a fairly comfortable margin. I remember talking to peeps on Instant Messenger and them being nervous that night - especially my sister on the East Coast. I still can't believe he won the popular vote and I think we were nervous about what would happen next.

Alas, he won and we all know what happened next - the mishandling of Hurricane Katrina, his Cabinet abandoning ship, and eventually the near-crash of the American economy as we plunged into a recession.

But 2004 was politically an interesting year mainly because it was the rise of Barack Obama as America mostly supported the reign of George Bush (at least percentage wise). And honestly, I think that's when I realized how divided our country was. I noticed coverage that was slanted in one way or the other and things became more polarizing than ever.

Maybe it was my coming of age to see how dirty and messy politics were. But even in the muck, something can at least temporarily unite people.