I woke up this morning, early, for the first time in a week, to get in early, to skip lunch, to leave early, to buy Obama/Biden buttons from the SF street vendor outside the BART, to vote, to get food and to go to Katie’s election night gathering.

And you have to understand something when it comes to hanging out with Katie and Erin — they are a witty, fast, talkative pair. To be certain, their friends (many of whom I met for the first time) are likewise fun girls.

I played bartender, pizza was ordered, and a good, loud time was being had by all, until the polls closed in California

And MSNBC called the election for Obama.

I hope never to forget it. We looked at the screen like, “what?” — we didn’t know what to think. We checked Fox News, figuring that if they agreed, it had to be true.

It was.

The room was dead silent.

And we waited. A few snarky comments here and there, as McCain conceded, and waited. We were shocked; we couldn’t quite believe it. And as Obama gave his victory speech, becoming President-Elect, we collectively teared up.

No, that’s not a point of shame, it’s a point of pride.

For every election since I’ve considered myself politically aware, I have not known what it feels like to believe in my country. Every time, I get hopeful. Every time, my hopes are dashed. Prop 22, a precursor to tonight’s Prop 8, I think, was that first election; when I believed in something and felt it was wrong.

An interesting fact about me: I have never once said the Pledge of Allegiance under the Bush administration. Nor have I saluted the flag during the national anthem; I stand in respect for the latter but refuse to recite or salute. For 8 years, for a large portion of my life, ever since I was 14, I have held the firm belief that my government did not represent me. When I marched for peace on February 15, 2003, my government called me a ‘focus group’, and went to war anyway. When I voted for Kerry in 2004, my country, to my chagrin, decided on four more years of corruption and lies. I have felt my civil liberties corroded. I cried in frustration the first time I had to deal with airport security after 9/11; that my bags could be searched without warrant or cause, that I had no right to protest; it seemed that every last right I had as an American citizen was hampered, taken away, or simply ignored.

Except the right to vote.

(And let it be known that’s no cakewalk either — officially, today, I voted provisionally because my polling place moved)

And as I sat there, watching Obama give his victory speech, the tears I felt were hopeful. Which is a weird feeling to those who have never felt it. No, things aren’t perfect. No, I don’t expect Obama to fix everything with some wave of a magic wand. But I feel, for the first time, his first hundred days are going to be my hundred days. That government that I have chosen is coming to be.

That is empowerment. That is why Obama carried young voters in a landslide.

And after the tears, cheers and disbelief was over; after the cheap champagne had been poured and the party began anew, for tonight, our government worked.

As I drove home, both Telegraph and Shattuck were filled with people celebrating. I hear the City is even more crazy — Twitter tells me of spontaneous celebration filling the streets. Scott Beale (@laughingsquid) summarizes it best: “San Francisco is erupting with spontaneous patriotism”

San Francisco and the Bay Area has always been patriotic. We’re crazy, but contrary to the Bush administration, we’re not terrorists. Or communists. Or godless atheists. Or hippies. Or homosexuals. Or Asians. We are all and none of these. We are Americans.

After Obama is sworn in on Jan. 20, 2009, I will again say the Pledge of Allegiance. I will again salute the flag.

My country, tis of thee.

It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten fired up about politics.

Aside from local skirmishes here and there, such as the tree sitters, I haven’t really given a damn since 2004. Even 2006 and the Dems winning back Congress was sort-of nice-but-not-interesting.

I’ve become complacent in being a Berkeley moderate. Which is to say; relative to students here I fit in quite well. The opposite was true through high school — as many of my old friends can recall, I was the one always turned to for the liberal opinion. I’d get fired up, rail on, and generally try to stand out. In some regards, it’s easy to see where I burned out; I protested war since Jan. ‘03 — and yet it happened, and only now does the majority of the country agree with me. I hoped for change in the 2004 election — and then felt shafted.

Tonight, that’s a bit different.

Since he came onto the scene in 2004, My name’s been a decent barometer to measure Barack Obama’s popularity in the Bay Area. When I introduce myself (“Hi, I’m Barak”) most people will guess it’s Eric-with-a-B, but a growing percentage have tried to remember it through association with Barack Obama. Even Prof. Zakhor last semester would call me “Obama” as sort of a mnemonic. And since he announced his candidacy, that number has been increasing slowly.

Those who’ve talked politics with me in the past may have noted I loosely supported Obama — but until tonight, I held a bit of reservation. I didn’t know if I was ready to throw my full support behind any candidate. The extremist in me liked some of what Ron Paul was saying, the pure mercenary in me liked Edwards (as an electable Democrat) but on the whole, I liked Obama the best — but was uncertain if supporting him was a pipe dream.

Tonight was very interesting, not only in that he won by a (large) 8 point margin, not only because a conservative state voted for an African-American, but most interesting was the fact that nearly twice the number of Democrats came out to vote compared to the caucus in 2004. Twice. Most of them new voters. Pundits will assert, and I largely agree, that he has the youth vote, and a percentage of the female vote; but rarely has anyone been able to convert popularity with those demographics (esp. the youth) into actual votes. The Republicans drew record numbers too, but came almost to half as many Democrats. This is unusual.

So when Obama speaks to the desire we have for change, I’m starting to believe him. When he speaks of hope, I’m starting to believe him. The rabid liberal of my youth, now tempered with some age, is beginning to get excited again.

People have been comparing the “feeling” of the Obama campaign with that of JFK. Thanks to the power of the internet, we can compare JFK’s nomination acceptance speech to Obama’s Iowa Victory Speech tonight. I see sort of what they mean now. You can feel JFK trying to break the stagnation and the fear of the 50s, just as one could say we have fear and division in the 2000s.

In that JFK acceptance speech, the following passage rings out as true today as it was 48 years ago:

Perhaps we could afford a Coolidge following Harding. And perhaps we could afford a Pierce following Fillmore. But after Buchanan this nation needed a Lincoln – after Taft we needed a Wilson – after Hoover we needed Franklin Roosevelt…And after eight years of this Administration, this nation needs a strong creative Democrat in the White House.

For me, that Democrat is Barack Obama.

The Daily Cal’s version of the Open Letter that Prompted My Response

IMO, the whole thing is kind of an emotionally-charged psycho negotiation. But at heart, it’s a negotiation.

As pointed out, this is a demand letter disguised as a letter for dialog. While I do support bringing influential parties from both sides to the negotiation table, what’s screwy about this letter is that, in fact, the last thing the tree-sitters want (given their demands) is an honest negotiation.

The first rule of negotiation is knowing what you really want; and this is where the tree-sitters are blinded by rhetoric. That money-quote chasingred described (equating trees and humans or whatnot) is merely a result of that; I doubt they actually believe that human life is equal to a tree (or hope they don’t?). Mainly, in their minds, they have painted anything less than full capitulation by the University as failure. The real money-quote of the letter is, as pointed out, “help save the oaks and build the new training facility in an alternate location” — this is their sole victory condition.

On the University’s side, they would very much like to build the facility in that location. They have money for it (private, whatever — that’s a whole other kettle of fish) and it is, in fact, their land. It was their land when they planted the trees in the first place.

IMO, the legal high ground is entirely on the side of the University. Even free speech has it’s limits; I’m not up on my constitutional law, but an argument could certainly be made for the tree-sitters posing a clear and present danger or even imminent lawless action, especially now that the courts have gotten involved and ruled that the tree sitters should leave. IMO, they by all means have the right to stomp around campus, distribute flyers, write open letters like this one, etc… content should be free, they should push the limits of where and how they distribute it — and they did! (kudos from a free-speech perspective) — but they’ve clearly crossed the boundary here.

So really, the negotiation comes down to a moral argument instead of a legal one. Again, I’d say the tree-sitters are blinded into a false dichotomy. What they don’t realize is that they could “win” the moral argument without keeping the trees. And this is where the negotiation could take place — hammering out some environmentalist agreement, limited mainly by their imaginations and staying within reason. Revitalize the Eucalyptus Grove (and make it safe — hell, with all the UCPD watching the tree sitters….). Negotiate a UCB effort to study some environmental problem. Get some money thrown toward rainforests (as someone suggested). Hell, transplant a few of these so-called old-growth trees to somewhere else on campus. Any number of possibilities.

And I betcha the University would come to the table on that one, because let’s consider the weapons for each side:

Right now, the tree-sitters have:

• Endurance
• A higher “moral” starting ground from the public opinion
• Scare tactics, threats
• Liability/Danger Threats
• Position (they’re called tree-sitters for a reason)

The University has, in broad terms:

• Money (ours, some of it)
• Influence
• UCPD
• A growing public opinion
• Time

What I’m suggesting is that the tree-siters give up their threats and position for money and influence. Everybody wins, noone gets hurt, the building goes up in a legal way, and the tree sitters win a moral victory.

As suggested, the tree-sitters will lose in the long run if they maintain their current strategy. The UCPD will attrition them out of the trees (ancient art of siege) and the people will shun them, and favor the resolution of the conflict in favor of the university and the public interest.

When they sat in the trees for a month, they had a much higher public opinion than they do now, after being in the trees a year. That would have made their bargaining position better, had they gone for the moral victory as soon as the legal one was even tipping to the side of the University. Now, the more scary they become, the more blind rhetoric they spew, the more trouble they cause, the more the public will come to distrust them. It’ll seem as though the tree-sitters are against progress, their moral argument shattered.

They should negotiate while the negotiation is good, because it’ll be a smaller and smaller victory as time goes on.

(Disclaimer: Personally, I started pretty neutral; I don’t like the idea of so much emphasis being put on throwing a ball around, but then again, it doesn’t affect me too much. The trees are nice, sure, but the rhetoric around them is kinda nuts. I was okay with a protest and tree-sitting until it became a problem (a line crossed a long time ago))

This toast is a little nerdy, so you’ll have to excuse me.

Groans and laughs of expectation

There’s an old saying that goes “May your house always be too small to hold all your friends.”

Aww.

Now as we know from thermodynamics:

Laughter

Given a constant volume…

I gesture to the living room…

and a growing number of friends…

…which is absolutely filled with people.

The only way to keep the pressure down is to keep the temperature down.

So I say:

“May your house never explode by knowing only cool people”

The half of the room that gets it immediately laughs. The other half soon follows.

To Mari and Evelyn!

Cheers.

( The best response, moments later, came from Patrick:

Barak, that was absolute zero.

Laughs and groans )

Dayquil fucks you up. I went to class sooo strung out — feeling better, but loopy. I’m sticking to straight Tylenol from now on. It currently seems to be working.

Hopefully I’ll start feeling better by this evening. Cause dancing is important to me.

So I resigned from the CSUA the other day. It was about time. It’s no longer fun for me; yeah, if I want to hang out, it’s none too bad, but I don’t feel as motivated to. We have so much fresh blood that it’s sort of gone the other way. It’s not an exclusivity thing, it’s a purpose thing. I kid, but we should almost apply as a Greek organization. A very nerdy, very open and inviting Greek organization, but the days of hacks and hackers seem far away. Of course, it’s not like they’ve been near for a long while.

So this marks another shift in my priorities. Namely, something else I believe in — dancehacking. Which is the concept title of the for-fun dissertation I still want to write. I’ve been compiling a handful of notes for it; perhaps I should mindmap it and then write it out.

Which sounds terribly like applying a compiler approach to thoughts. Where the mindmap is the AST. Yay 164 for further fucking with my mind. (Though in all actuality, it’s the most fun I’ve had since 61C)

Anyway, If I want any more sleep than the 3 hours I’ve already accomplished, I’d better get to it.