Truest statement of the week III

I want to say something else, because this has had a real impact. We have to confront this. The Nation came out with an open letter to Barack Obama. And a lot of very courageous people who have rightfully earned the respect of the people for their stands against the war and the Bush program signed this letter and this was a mistake and it’s done harm. This letter says, among other things, that there are many, many people who gave grown alienated from politics-as-usual who have found hope again in Barack Obama, and the letter casts this as a good thing. This is not a good thing. People are right to get disaffected. The question is not how do we get people to believe and how do we use our anti-war credentials to make Barack Obama more palatable. The question is, how do we go out to people and tell them the truth about what it's really going to take to stop all the things that made them alienated in the first place.Including the fact that Obama is not going to stop this program. Sure, he's different in some flavors or varieties than McCain. I'm not contesting that. But those differences are about how to run an empire, that’s what he's auditioning to do. And it's time for people to confront this reality. We do not bridge this gap by going with the grain, appealing to the false hope that he's capturing people in. We deal with this by going against the grain, by telling people the truth that they need to hear: that Obama doesn’t represent the change you need, he represents the change that the system will allow you to believe in.

-- World Can't Wait's Sunsara Taylor ("The world could be radically different and it’s time we start talking about real change," Revolution).