Nicki's Blog - Archived Entry

I was just reading Leighton's incredibly articulate and educated blog, and all I could think about was swaying in the aisles with my arms around my friends singing "Revolution" along with Tracy Chapman at the benefit concert she threw for us this weekend. For me, "revolution" is a word that belongs to the liberals now. Everyone has been freaking out about the polls and the impression that Bush is leading everywhere, and I keep telling them, "You don't realize how many new progressive voters there are out there! The polls don't even consider all of the new voters in their estimates--we are going to nail them with an unexpected avalanche of new progressive votes in November. They won't even see it coming!" Over the past 3 days, the lovely NYTimes has validated this point, arguing about the bias in polling and the upsurge of new voters from "tons of little voter reg projects popping up all over the swing states." Eh hem. . .driving votes, anyone???
And if I ever doubted that this movement had meaning or purpose or value, holding hands with the friends that I drove across the country with, smiling ear to ear with tears streaming down my face, belting out lyrics to songs about new beginnings and empowering ourselves and revolting against hate and tyranny, I looked around me at the intimate Century Ballroom this Saturday night as Tracy Chapman cooly mixed song with activism and realized that little pipe dreams can go a long long way. The mixture of purpose and passion and people is a compelling and contagious one.
One of my friends was visiting that night and got to ask Tracy, "why Driving Votes? Why did you decide to help them?" And even though I was appalled at the bravado of her question, I delighted in Tracy's answer: "Because they were explicitly partisan, and I wanted to work with an intimate group that was reaching out to the underrepresented and was not afraid to speak out against Bush." Lucky us for being so loud and little. Thank you Tracy for believing in us and our cause and celebrating with us this weekend. Thank you for singing songs about Revolutions and then telling the crowd to go register voters with us in the morning. Thank you for your damn fine heart, mind, and voice.