Making the case for Obama

My friend Brian Siebel, who is an attorney with the Brady Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, recommends this piece from the Huffington Post as making a strong case for an Obama presidency. Excerpts and a link follow.

PROGRESSIVES FOR OBAMA

by Tom Hayden, Bill Fletcher, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Danny Glover

This call has been drafted for immediate circulation, discussion, and action.

All American progressives should unite for Barack Obama. We descend from the proud tradition of independent social movements that have made America a more just and democratic country. We believe that the movement today supporting Barack Obama continues this great tradition of grass-roots participation drawing millions of people out of apathy and into participation in the decisions that affect all our lives. We believe that Barack Obama's very biography reflects the positive potential of the globalization process that also contains such grave threats to our democracy when shaped only by the narrow interests of private corporations in an unregulated global marketplace. We should instead be globalizing the values of equality, a living wage and environmental sustainability in the new world order, not hoping our deepest concerns will be protected by trickle down economics or charitable billionaires.

By its very existence, the Obama campaign will stimulate a vision of globalization from below.As progressives we believe this sudden and unexpected new movement is just what America needs. The future has arrived. The alternative would mean a return to the dismal status quo party politics that have failed so far to deliver peace, health care, full employment and effective answers to crises like global warming.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-hayden/progressives-for-obama_b_93399.html?view=print