My Meeting with Senator & Presidential Candidate Barack Obama

By Sydney Kamlager-Santner

Los Angeles – June 24, at 3:50pm, I waited at 1st and Grand to cross the street to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to see Barack Obama. At that moment, a LAPD led motorcade zipped across the street, book ending three black SUV’s, one of them with the windows down – far enough for me to catch a glimpse of Reggie Love, Obama’s body man, and the democratic nominee himself, Barack Obama. Things were looking up.

I crossed the street, full of hope and questions for the candidate. How much time would he have for the assembled reporters? How many questions would we be able to ask? I had so many questions to ask and answers that I hoped I would hear.

Let me first tell you what I hoped to hear and then I will tell you what I actually heard from the candidate’s event. How will he lead a capitalist society that has to wrestle with a growing energy policy, knowing that alternative energies may not support the kinds of profits that oil companies have been accustomed to earning? The answer I hoped to hear was that an energy policy that supports alternative energy should be as important to him as putting a man on the moon was to Kennedy. I hoped to hear that Obama was considering initiatives that would encourage transparency when it comes to oil pacts and financing, and energy companies and regulations; provide subsidies to households to allow them to purchase hybrid or electric cars; mandate production of high energy efficient cars as well as hybrid and electric vehicles; and authorize an urban planning study of the ten largest and most congested cities in an effort to develop customized responses to underdeveloped or utilized public transportation systems. These initiatives would initially cost, but in the long run, they would ease our oil dependency, incentivize companies to focus research on alternative fuel, and retrain our collective brains to think harder and longer about conservation.

How does he plan to deal with the economy of the middle class? The answer I hoped to hear was that the United States needs to seriously rethink NAFTA and recommit to an infrastructure that supports vocational training. Policies like NAFTA have helped decimate small towns and cities. As a result, we owe it ourselves to attack the dissolution of blue-collar industries. Dependency on white-collar jobs and service industries has made us vulnerable and put us at a disadvantage. This is especially disheartening considering during the 50s and 60s we had a lock on labor and on quality. Now, we just need to reconcile those two concepts with value. I also hoped to hear that the country needs to make personal savings accounts as important and sexy as joining the Peace Corps was during Kennedy’s term. We have blearily condoned becoming a debt and consumer-driven economy. We now need to buy what we need and can afford, without a credit card or our home equity.

My last question would have to do with the Middle East. How do we support concepts of human rights when Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians are vilified and killed on a daily basis? A difficult question, I know. Always dicey to talk about the Middle East! I hoped to hear him admit that the United States and the Middle East have a complicated history and relationship, but that “change” must also touch that issue. I hoped to hear him agree with President Sarkozy and encourage a frank discussion on the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Palestine. I hoped to hear him suggest that all humans – Israeli and Palestinian – have a right to live in peace and safety and that one ethnicity is not more important that the other, that we cannot risk the safety of all nations at the behest of just one. I hoped to hear him say that peaceful, humane coexistence within the Middle East is a priority and that economic sanctions and threats represent ‘old politics’, while engineering new relationships and expectations with the Saudis, Iran, Syria, UAE, Israel, Jordan and Egypt is crucial and represent ‘new politics’. The world is waiting and its attention has turned to the Middle East and Asia.

As luck would have it (or not), I walked up to the event doors, only to hear from an Obama staffer that press would not be allowed in the event (does he no longer like reporters?). Ouch. Not quite what this cub reporter from Chicago was hoping, or expecting to hear from a supposedly inclusive movement and candidate. I would be relegated to the press pit. From Maria Elena Durazo, to Bernard Parks, Eric Garcetti, Jerry Brown from the politico world, and Will.i.am, Ken “Kumar” Penn, Don Cheadle, Zooey Deschanel, Sugar Ray Leonard, Lisa Ling, and Kerry Washington from the entertainment world, high rollers and political heavy-hitters giddily strolled inside the Pavilion, wearing Tod’s, Balenciaga, Pucci and Kors (after all, this is still Hollywood). Pro-life activists held up posters and chanted anti-abortion slogans to a rather sedate pro-Obama group of supporters, only to be rallied by Tony B. Conscious, a local Obama volunteer with equal amounts of positive energy and Obama T-shirts for sale. It was part Oscars, part circus, but no Obama.

By the end of the event, I still had no answers from Obama. But I still have hope. Hope that at some point, Obama will answer the questions that I have and in a way that will continue to help me have the hope necessary to be the change that this world needs.