(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
It's too thoug to call, says one of the shirt-clad types in the world's most important stock exchange street.
He has not decided what to vote for the 4. November, but he knows what the most important thing is:
- Taxes!
We can't do much more until Robert has bought his coffee and steeled himself for more financial turmoil. He also disappears before I get the surname.
Josh Bernstein, who works in currency sales at one of the big banks on Wall Street, has better time. He says he will support Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Election Day, and that the most important issue is America's failing reputation.
- Current President George W. Bush has been a disaster. If Obama wins, his background could give the world a different impression of America, he says.
The election campaign has been about finances. Republican presidential candidate John McCain believes Obama wants to be a socialist "redistributionist in Chief," while Democrats believe McCain should talk about "Joe the Hedge Fund Manager" rather than "Joe the plumber" – America's answer to "the man in the street."
The rhetoric has turned on and overshadowed at times, as Josh Bernstein points out, and that makes Tuesday's election historic: the United States may get its first black president. Or at least a president with a Kenyan father, a white mother and an upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia.
"The great unknown"
The whole of Obama's position exudes a desire to transcend the historical contradictions the United States has been marked by. In the borough that has been the center of African American culture and politics for a century, this implies a promise that no positions in American society are out of reach anymore.
It takes half an hour with the Harlem subway. Along the way, you can read that the Wall Street Journal, like so many other American newspapers, is scratching its heads about the significance of Obama's background. In a comment one week before the election, Washington's bureau chief, Gerald F. Seib, writes that this is "the great, sometimes unspoken question that hangs over Campaign 2008."
He does not want to rely on opinion polls, and a similar election campaign has never been seen before. All the number-breaking political commentators simply lack a basis for comparison. The best guess is that covert racism is unlikely to deprive the Democratic presidential candidate of victory. The result can still be that he loses a few percent support.
On 125th Street, also known as Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and is Harlem's most important cross street, even shoe stores, bars and barbershops have Obama posters in the windows. Here is the legendary Apollo Theater, where greats like Billie Holliday, Stevie Wonder, James Brown and Lauryn Hill have laid the foundation for their careers, and here is the Harlem Studio Museum, which is «the nexus for black artists locally, nationally, and internationally, »According to the purpose clause.
Whether the shop assistants with a supply of Black Power literature at the intersection of Malcolm X Boulevard support Obama is likely, even if they do not show it and perhaps think he is a little boy. But a few hundred meters further down the street there is no longer any doubt. It is the headquarters of the Harlem Children's Zone, a 100-block non-profit initiative that provides comprehensive social, educational and health support to 7400 children so they do not fall outside. Initiator Geoffrey Canada has advised Obama on education issues, and the Democratic presidential candidate has promised to spread the project to 20 other major cities if he emerges victorious from Tuesday's political basket. Recently, there was also a critically acclaimed book about the project.
Harlem for Obama
Just a few blocks further north, on Frederick Douglass Boulevard between 132nd and 133rd streets, and well within the organization's coverage area, are the grassroots activists in Harlem4Obama.
As New Time crawls past an entrance area teeming with posters, Chief Chet Whye is organizing bus trips to the swing state of Pennsylvania on election day. There you need all the strength you can get, he says.
- To bring out the vote, as he says.
In the room inside, Whye shows how to call older voters to make sure they get to the polls. While Ny Tid talks to Obama supporters, they get in touch with someone who needs help. The person in question is put on a list, and will be picked up when it is time to go to the polling station.
There is too much at stake for Whye and the other volunteers for them to be interviewed.
- It is irrelevant from now until November 4, Whye says.
But his press secretary is happy to answer. Her name is Makeba Lloyd and she believes an Obama administration will be a powerful symbol of the progress the United States has made in the relationship between African Americans and whites.
- Obama's candidacy is carried on the shoulders of civil rights activists. And we are very grateful for that. The campaign has also engaged many new voters – both young and old, she says.
Among the volunteers, there is one who shows us a music video on the website youtube.com. It's from the Louisiana countryside, and is called "Oui, on peut" (which is a translation of Obama's slogan "Yes, we can!"). The video shows something as unusual as pro-Obama country in French.
But the story of the radical pastor Jeremiah Wright of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago showed that not everyone shares Obama's desire to transcend the antagonisms between African Americans and other Americans. The edition of the Wall Street Journal that was picked up on the subway also says that two neo-Nazis from Tennessee have had concrete plans to kill Obama, in addition to 102 other African Americans.
- How important is racism in this election campaign, and how do you think the candidates relate to the relations between African Americans and white Americans?
- That Obama is black is perhaps important in a few areas in this country, and that is how it will probably continue to be. But first and foremost, this is something that gives the media something to talk about. The serious problems facing the United States are too many to be reduced to relations between different groups. And Obama is the best at dealing with them, says Lloyd.
For Harlem, she believes that poverty reduction and affordable access to good education and health services are crucial.
Read more in this week's issue of Ny Tid
