Marching for science – and for culture – on April 22

In the last couple of months, much has been written about the upcoming March for Science to take place here in Atlanta and around the world on April 22. And a lot has been said about what makes science great. But, in my mind, not enough has yet been said about how science makes us great.

I am the executive director of the Atlanta Science Tavern, a grassroots public science forum organized on Meetup.com with over 6,200 members. We produce and promote science-related educational events and activities in the Atlanta area.

In the time that I have led the Science Tavern, the most prized compliment that I have received has been, “your group is one of the things that makes Atlanta a great place to live.” The reason that I like hearing this so much is that it implicitly recognizes that science, like art and music and theater, is an essential part of the cultural fabric of our wonderful city.

Now, I wouldn’t for a second downplay the amazing practical benefits that science has brought us.

• Vaccination, a resounding public health triumph, has saved hundreds of millions of lives and fought back the timeless scourge of commonplace childhood mortality.
• The physical sciences, with their mastery of light and matter, have given us the ability to process and communicate vast quantities of information in the blink of an eye, allowing us to form a web of human connection spanning the globe.
• Scientific investigation of the Earth and its precious atmosphere has made it possible for us to understand the role we play in altering our environment, providing us with guidance on what to do to safeguard the well-being of future generations.

But beyond these many marvelous useful things, science has also served to ennoble us. And it has done so by helping us to cultivate a sense of wonder about ourselves and the world around us.

• How did the universe grow from a microscopic knot in space-time fourteen billion years ago into the one we now observe, brimming with dark matter and dark energy?
• Did life on this planet originate, perhaps as Darwin speculated, in a warm little pond, and might we discover that it has arisen elsewhere in our solar system, perhaps beneath the surface of one of the icy moons of Jupiter or Saturn?
• How did we, around two hundred thousand years ago, come to be the clever, social primate species that we are today, one capable both of acts of heart-lifting compassion and of heart-breaking cruelty?
• Is it possible for us to explain how the workings of the tens of billions of neurons in the human brain give rise to our inner experience and even to the phenomenon of consciousness itself?

If you think that we can reap the practical benefits of science without the drive of pure, curiosity-driven research, think again; it is the timeless draw of these profound questions that sparked the scientific revolution four hundred years ago, and they are what continues to propel scientific advances of all types to this very day.

Looking at science in this way, namely as an integral part of our culture, helps make sense of much of what we see going on on the political scene. The same forces that are trying to undercut science also have the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities in their crosshairs. Along the way, they intend to eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Contrary to what our Philistine opponents believe, we do not live by bread alone – although some among them would deny even that to our schoolchildren. Our human spirit is nourished and elevated by painting and poetry, by music and dance, by theater and film, by philosophy and history, and, of course, by science.

This time around, though, it appears that we will not enjoy the opportunity to speak out as they come for each of us in turn; this time around, they are coming for us all in one fell swoop. So, as we march for science on Earth Day, we must also march for the arts and the humanities and for the libraries and the museums. We must march for all the strands in the glorious tapestry that we call culture. We must march for all these things that make us great.

The peace monument in Atlanta's Piedmont Park: four dates and a funeral for racial justice

"Cease Firing - Peace Proclaimed"
monument at the 14th Street entrance
of Atlanta's Piedmont Park

Until recently, I had never paid much attention to this monument at the 14th Street entrance to Atlanta’s Piedmont Park. It is a larger-than-life sculpture that portrays an Angel of Peace stilling the hand of a Confederate soldier about to fire his rifle. It bears the title “Cease Firing - Peace Proclaimed.”

I had always assumed that it was not much more than a conventional memorial to the end of the Civil War, that was until I took a closer look at the plaque on its side. Depending upon your point of view, either God or the Devil lives in the details. In the case of this monument, I think that a convincing argument can be made for the latter.

Four dates are involved in telling the tale of this peace monument.

The earliest date is April 30, 1861, which marks the incorporation of Atlanta’s Gate City Guard into the Confederate Army, little more than two weeks after the firing on Fort Sumter lead to the outbreak of the Civil War. According to the plaque, they did this “in the conscientious conviction of their duty to uphold the Cause of the Southern Confederacy.” This so-called “Lost Cause” rationale was the Confederate retelling of history that transformed their shameful fight to uphold the institution of slavery into a noble struggle in defense of states rights.

A second date is that of a ceasefire somewhat disingenuously alluded to in the monument’s title. As far as I can tell, there was no formal declaration of “cease firing” that marked the end of hostilities of the Civil War. While it is true that Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, not everyone got the memo. And many of those that did get the memo ignored it. There was no shortage of Confederate dead-enders, as Donald Rumsfeld would have called them. Fighting continued sporadically for months. And a formal end of the war was only declared by President Andrew Johnson on August 20, 1866.

October 6, 1879 is the third date commemorated on the memorial. That was the date that the very same Gate City Guard “went forth to greet their former adversaries in the Northeastern and Eastern States, inviting them to unite with the people of the South to heal the Nation's wounds in a peaceful and prosperous reunion of the States.” Sick and tired of the bloody opposition to Reconstruction in the South, by 1876 the nation had decided to abandon its commitment to transform the political landscape of the former Confederate States. Although the Gate City Guard’s mission was, on its surface, a mission of reconciliation, it was, in many respects, a celebration of the Confederate triumph when it came to matters of race.

The fourth and final date associated with the memorial is October 10th 1911, the date of its dedication. Almost thirty-five years after the end of Reconstruction, a prosperous and resurgent South had been brought back into the Union.

Georgia Governor Hoke Smith attended the dedication. Although Smith was a member of the national Progressive Party formed by Theodore Roosevelt, fulfilling a campaign promise, he led the adoption of a constitutional amendment that effectively disenfranchised black Georgians. This revision marked the final nail in the coffin of any hope for racial justice that had propelled the Union during the Civil War and postwar Reconstruction. All gains that had been made in that regard had been turned back. Jim Crow reigned supreme.

Atlanta’s most unexpected Civil War memorial and a farewell to Reconstruction

Monument to Union General James B. McPherson in East Atlanta

Without a doubt, the “Death of McPherson” monument in East Atlanta has to be the most unexpected Civil War memorial to be found in the entire city.

First, it's not located in a large public space or on a notable battlefield, although, truth be told, all of Atlanta was a battlefield when Sherman's Union forces encountered the city's Confederate defenders in the summer of 1864.

Instead, the monument occupies a small enclosure at the intersection of McPherson Monument Avenues, nestled in an unassuming neighborhood shorn decades ago from the rest of the city on its northern side by the unforgiving concrete knife of Interstate 20.

What is also surprising is that, unlike the myriad of other plaques and statues which commemorate famous battles or once-revered Confederate leaders in this region, this one memorializes the death of James B. McPherson, a Union general who was killed only a few blocks from the site while attempting to escape capture by rebel "skirmishers."

McPherson was the second highest ranking Union officer to die in combat in the Civil War. His young age at the time of his death, 35 years, is a reminder that wars fought at the level of ferocity of the American Civil War quickly become pitiless, but efficient, meritocracies.

But how is it that a Yankee general came to have a monument erected in his memory so deep in the heart of Dixie?

It is utterly inconceivable that a memorial like this one would have been undertaken by the citizens of Atlanta at any point in time during the hundred years or so following the conflict which some Southerns called the War of Northern Aggression.

It turns out that the authors of “Death of McPherson” were none other than U.S. Army engineers. They erected the monument in 1877, shortly before all Federal troops were withdrawn from the South as part of the deal struck by the incoming Rutherford B. Hayes administration to bring an end to the fraught period in this country's history known as Reconstruction.

Although little discussed today, Reconstruction was a failed attempt to bring about genuine political transformation in the vanquished states of the Confederacy. Equal protection under the law and universal enfranchisement (of men), promises of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, went unfulfilled. And that “special institution,” slavery, abolished in name by the Thirteenth, was soon exchanged for the apartheid regime that came to be known as Jim Crow.

A dozen years after the end of hostilities, little about the political facts on the ground had changed. As late as the the election of 1876, hundreds of black men were being massacred while trying to exercise their right to vote as members of the Republican Party. It is a sad irony of history that it is this same Party of Lincoln now pursues the suppression of the African-American vote in the states of the former Confederacy with the imposition of unjustifiable voter identification laws.

So, in a premonition of the futility of military occupations to come, the U.S. government gave up on its plans for “regime change” in the South. Instead, in order to extricate itself from an open-ended, bloody mess, the Hayes administration declared Reconstruction over based upon the scant facts that slavery had been eliminated and the Union restored.

But what also makes the monument to McPherson unexpected is its design: a bare cannon barrel elevated skyward, with its short trunnions projecting to either side suggesting, perhaps, a meager cross, but a very meager one, if that. That it is a brazenly phallic goes without saying.

Maybe there is some subtle war memorial iconography at work here, but I doubt it. With the dispiriting circumstances of Reconstruction in mind, it's hard not to imagine “Death of McPherson” wasn't intended to be a defiant farewell by departing officers of the U.S. Army to Atlanta and the South, a profane gesture marking the end of a hopeful project to transform the world that ended only in more spilled blood and profound disillusionment.

The Bet that Financed Atlanta's BeltLine Pedestrian-Bicycle Transit Loop

View of construction from the Atlanta BeltLine Eastside Trail (Marc Merlin)

Although Atlanta's BeltLine, a pedestrian-bicycle-transit loop circling Georgia's largest city, was a vision described by Ryan Gravel in his master's thesis while a student in architecture at Georgia Tech in 1999, what made it a reality a dozen years later was some visionary creative financing.

Where would the BeltLine supporters find the money for the project? There was no way on Earth that the City of Atlanta would be able to come up with the billions - yes, billions - of dollars that it would take to make the BeltLine happen. And there was no way in Hell that the State of Georgia - which had never deigned to give Atlanta's struggling transit system MARTA a dime - was going to pitch in to help out.

The solution, called a Tax Allocation District or TAD, involved placing a bet on the BeltLine's success.

The property around the proposed BeltLine route was not being put to much use - which is part of what made Gravel's idea feasible in the first place - and, as a consequence, was not generating much tax revenue. Yet, school systems, among others, had claim to the meager taxes that were being collected.

If the BeltLine turned out to be successful, the property values in its vicinity would increase significantly. No one had claim to the corresponding increase in property tax revenue, at least not yet. The TAD was a way for the BeltLine to stake that claim.

Since the way school systems are funded was implicated in this kind of financing scheme, there were legal hurdles that had to be jumped. It was decided that TADs required an amendment to Georgia's constitution, which in turn required the approval of its citizens in a statewide referendum. TAD supporters were mobilized and the amendment passed, although not by very much.

All it takes is a walk along the Eastside BeltLine Trail today to witness the amount of renovation and new construction completed or in progress to see how handsomely the TAD wager has paid off. It stands as a reminder that all sorts of creativity have to be brought to bear to make visions for large-scale public projects like the BeltLine a reality.

The TV Tower that Saved Atlanta's Freedom Park

This bit of Atlanta history is a departure from my usual blog posts about movies, politics or science.

Building at the base of the WSB-TV Tower (Marc Merlin)

Ever wonder what's at the base of the broadcast tower that looms over Freedom Parkway near the Carter Center? Well wonder no more.

Many Atlanta residents who arrived here in the last twenty years or so may not be aware of the critical role that the WSB-TV Tower played in keeping a stretch of interstate highway from taking over the land that The Path and Freedom Park occupy today.

Original plans had called for the complex that includes the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum and the Carter Center (completed in 1986) to connect with the rest of Atlanta by an interstate spur, in part elevated, which was to run to the downtown connector in one direction and to Ponce de Leon Avenue near its intersection with Clifton Road in the other.

WSB TV tower with guy wires (Marc Merlin)

Opposition to the project was fierce - the powers that be wanted to put a freeway through a white neighborhood for a change - but supporters of the Ex-Pres-way, as it came to be called, included both President Carter and his one-time UN-ambassador, Andrew Young, who had served a term as mayor of Atlanta after leaving the Carter administration and was a force in local politics to be reckoned with. After several years of protests and legal challenges, the tide seemed to be turning in favor of the interstate proponents.

Then it occurred to some clever adversary that the guy wires from the WSB-TV broadcast tower would cross over the proposed roadway and that any ice falling from them as a result of winter storms would pose a hazard to the traffic passing below. Addressing this problem frustrated progress on the interstate plan, adding another considerable delay.

By the early 1990s most of the legal obstacles to the original project had been cleared, but its backers realized that time was running short if the city was to be fully prepared to handle the crowds expected for the 1996 Olympic Games. So, believing that any sort of road was better than none, they relented and agreed to an alternate plan, the shorter, street-grade parkway that, along with The Path and Freedom Park, we use and enjoy today.

The seemingly pointless tunnel that bestrides the parkway just south of the Carter Center stands as a reminder of this, the best-known of Atlanta's "freeway revolts," and as an ever-present defender against winter ice falling from the guy wires of the WSB-TV Tower above.

Model Darwin Day Proclamation for the City of Atlanta

This is a draft proposed proclamation for Darwin Day 2013 that will be presented for adoption by Mayor's Office of the City of Atlanta sometime in the next few weeks. I offer it here for comment and with the hope that it might serve as a model for similar proclamations.

The idea for a proclamation originated with Atlanta Science Tavern plans to commemorate Charles's birthday with a public celebration, the first that I know of here. Visiting the International Darwin Day Foundation website in order to register our event with their worldwide list, I saw that a proclamation might be a good way for us to extend our outreach and our impact. I decided that the maximum effect here would be achieved by a proclamation that emphasized the numerous profound, enduring benefits that have been realized as a result of Darwin's pioneering theory.

Updates will follow as the process of transforming this proposal into a real proclamation takes place. In its final form, if adopted, it will be presented with a list of supporting institutions and individuals from the Atlanta area. Please let me know if you would like to be included. Other feedback is welcome as well.

---

Draft Proposed Proclamation

City of Atlanta, Georgia

Office of the Mayor

Kasim Reed

WHEREAS, Atlanta is a great science city and the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, first proposed by Charles Darwin in 1859, stands as one of the great theories in the history of science; and

WHEREAS, Charles Darwin was born 203 years ago on February 12 in the year 1809, sharing that birth date with our great president Abraham Lincoln; and

WHEREAS, Atlanta’s teachers and educators at all levels of instruction rely on Darwin’s theory to communicate to their students the wondrous relatedness of all living things; and

WHEREAS, Atlanta’s internationally-recognized colleges and universities are guided by Darwin’s theory in their search for a better understanding of the origins of our own species and of others; and

WHEREAS, Atlanta’s world-class biotechnology industry employs Darwin’s theory to develop cutting-edge products and services that contribute to our local economy and benefit society as a whole; and

WHEREAS, Atlanta’s medical institutions and research centers turn to Darwin’s theory to help them determine how diseases arise and how they can be effectively prevented and treated in order to reduce human suffering and extend human life; and

WHEREAS, Atlanta’s first city-wide Science Festival, scheduled for March 22-29, 2014, will feature many of the accomplishments made possible by Darwin’s theory; and

WHEREAS, the Atlanta Science Tavern, Atlanta’s premier grassroots science forum, will be celebrating the occasion of Darwin’s birth with its first annual Darwin Day Dinner Symposium.

Therefore, I, Kasim Reed, Mayor of the City of Atlanta, do hereby declare that Tuesday, February 12, 2013 is

DARWIN DAY

in the City of Atlanta, in recognition of how this great man’s theory has been so successfully used by Atlanta’s teachers and scholars, researchers and healers to advance our understanding of the biological world and to improve the quality of life for people here and elsewhere.

Sustainable Transportation Forum: Swiss Hit, Swiss Miss

As a committed transit bicyclist and an occasional advocate for pedestrians in Atlanta, I was eager to attend last week's Sustainable Transportation Forum hosted by Georgia Tech and the local Consulate General of Switzerland, a 2-day public policy symposium which promised "to explore solutions to Georgia's growing traffic congestion."

I enjoy going to these kind of symposiums, and I imagine the excitement that I feel about them is in some way like the excitement my father felt at the prospect of making the trip from Atlanta to visit the City of Tomorrow at the 1939 New York World's Fair.

After attending the better part of the first day of the forum, I could confidently report that I had seen the future, and it was the Swiss national transportation network.

But like the Futurama of the 1939 Fair and similar exhibits at later world expositions, this is an elusive future, always beckoning, but forever out of reach; a tantalizing future city, draped in a facade of technological hopes but unanchored in any foundation of social and political reality, at least as far as transportation in metro Atlanta is concerned.

Representatives of Swiss rail and transportation agencies had been enlisted to introduce the "gathering of regional planners, advocates, policy makers, business leaders, and political decision-makers" to the remarkable Swiss transportation system and to highlight some of its most significant engineering and logistical achievements as the central parts of the program.

First and foremost among the featured projects was the Gotthard Base Tunnel, currently under construction and expected to open in 2018 at an estimated total cost of $8.7 billion.  When completed, at 35.5 miles in length, it will be the longest tunnel - of any type - in the world and will not only cut passenger travel time between Zürich and Milan by an hour, but also significantly reduce the amount of through-traveling truck traffic on Swiss roads.

No less impressive than how well the Swiss have built their transportation network is how well they operate it.  By manipulating the times trains arrive and depart and the speeds they travel between stops, Swiss Federal Rail is able to insure that trains leave regularly every half hour and are synchronized with not only other trains, but also buses, at some 28,000 stations around the country.  An integrated national timetable stitches together all publicly- and privately-owned transport services; everything from high-speed trains to sight-seeing ships is included in this schedule.  The level of planning required to coordinate the operation of this system, which functions as precisely as, shall we say, a fine Swiss watch, is phenomenal.

Ironically though, the most significant words spoken with regard to the reality of the future of public transportation in the Atlanta region were not those of the Swiss representatives in their technical presentations, but of Michael Meyer, Professor of Civil Engineering at Georgia Tech, a member of the introductory panel, and the person who had been asked to characterize the transportation problems to be addressed by the symposium - that is, the current and projected levels of traffic congestion in the Atlanta region - in order set the stage for the discussions to follow.

Having completed his assigned task with a few minutes to spare, Dr. Meyer struggled - out loud - with a difficult personal decision:  should he wrap up and keep his commentary within his limited charter or should he take the opportunity to say important things that needed to be said, even at the risk of offending his hosts and souring the optimistic mood established by the opening speakers.  Erring on the side of integrity, Meyer chose to speak his potentially discordant truths.  It was like watching the story of a minor "profile in courage" in the making.

Professor Meyer began by noting that he had lived in Atlanta for more than 20 years and that, during that time, he has seen many fine transportation plans come and go.  Indeed, he said that he had contributed to a number of them, and that, truth be told, had any of those plans been fully adopted, we would not be in the transit mess that we find ourselves in today.  Finally, he concluded that the sad fact of the matter was that we had failed at providing citizens of this region with a quality transit network not because of any lack of good planning or shortage of technological know-how, but because we have lacked the leadership and the political will to get the job done.

What Meyer had to say with these cautionary words was an unexpected, but an oddly appropriate, kickoff for a transportation forum that could otherwise well be described as a dog-and-pony show for Swiss good planning and technological know-how.

Interestingly enough, the better lesson that the Swiss had to offer Atlanta and, by extension, the United States, was how central the principle of mobility as a basic human right is to the success to their national transportation enterprise.  Each of the speakers touched on this point, but one in particular, Michaela Stoeckli, the general manager of the Swiss Rail Industry Association, spent some time with the issue.  She explained that, because it was long agreed among the Swiss that residents, regardless of their level of income should have access to the kind of transportation services that support them in their practical and leisure activities, transportation initiatives, even expensive ones, were routinely approved in popular referendums by overwhelming majorities.

Now, admittedly, convincing Georgians that mobility is a basic human right - given that they and other Americans are hardly persuaded that access to life-saving medical care is a basic human right - is a hard sell.  To add to this challenge, it is especially difficult for "outsiders" to participate in our national debates without being perceived as either patronizing or condescending.

But, as Professor Meyer observed, all the proposed engineering solutions for our transportation problems are for naught, absent the political will to follow through with them, and, it would seem, that progress here must start with a reorientation of our values.

In this respect, it is interesting to note that this particular forum was part of an ongoing program to promote exchanges of know-how between the U.S. and Switzerland called ThinkSwiss.  Perhaps that is exactly what we need to learn how to do - "think Swiss"  - and by that I mean recognize the benefits in store for us if we promote the right of mobility for everyone - so that we can once and for all realize the promise of the City of Tomorrow for transportation in the Atlanta area.


Sustainable Transportation Forum: Swiss Hit, Swiss Miss by Marc Merlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at thoughtsarise.blogspot.com.

Victory Lap for the Obama Obicycle

Thanks to my friend and fellow bicycle advocate, Sara Fuchs, she I and the Obama Obicycle were strategically positioned at the election night party at Manuel's Tavern. Among the revelers and news hounds snapping our picture was Jessica McGowan of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, who got a photo of me with the bike included in this Atlanta Reacts Tuesday photo-stream (number 23, last time I checked).

Although work for the campaign is thankfully done, I decided to outfit the Obicycle with a last celebratory sign and do a victory lap or two around intown Atlanta. It will be a fitting tribute to the Obicycle before it's retired at the end of the week.

Congratulations to us all for being part of this historic victory!

Also, very special congratulations go out to my niece Hilary and her husband Javier who welcomed their new daughter, Luna Eden Fernandez, into this world last night at the exact moment polls were closing on the East Coast, making her, perhaps, this nation's first Obama Obaby.

Yes we did!

Obama Obicycle to the Obarricades

We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes. - Henry David Thoreau

I guess I'm just going to have to disagree with Henry David on this one. Tomorrow is election day and if the Obama Obicycle stays dressed up as a partisan campaign counter-puncher then any area within 150 feet of a polling place would become a no-fly zone, so to speak.

So it's back to fair-and-balanced, stealth operating mode for me. That way I can let people know that there is a non-partisan hot line number for them to call (1-866-687-8683) and a website to visit (www.866OurVote.org), if they encounter any resistance while trying to cast their ballots. These resources are offered gratis, thanks to the hard work of folks at the Election Protection coalition. (A big thank-you goes out to Nettie Bernard for putting me on to this wonderful organization!)

Your polling place opening late or closing early? Then give 1-866-OUR-VOTE (same as the number above) a call. Faulty equipment or voting machines there? Do likewise. Challenged because of lack of photo ID or mix-up on the registration rolls? They can help. If the circumstances warrant, and if one is available, an election protection volunteer will be dispatched to your precinct to try to resolve the problem.

One thing to keep in mind according to the experts at Election Protection,

Provisional ballots are a LAST resort because they will only be counted if the county clerk can verify your registration status before the election is certified.

So it is a priority is to find a way to vote coventionally or by paper ballot, if at all possible.

We all have come this far with registration and campaigning. Now it's time to make sure that our precious votes - and those of our our friends and neighbors - are counted.

Please, share this information with anyone who may need a hand tomorrow.

Obama Obicycle a Witness for Hope in Georgia

It's been particularly fun tooling around town on the Obama Obicycle in the run-up to Tuesday's election. The excitement here is truly palpable, and, as recent riding companions Joy Rousso and Chester Perry can attest, you can't travel far with the Obicycle without being greeted by the honking of a friendly car horn or a proudly raised arm sporting a big upturned thumb. Chants of "Oh-Bah-Mah" are not uncommon, as well.

So what does all this mean for the Peach State? Is Georgia likely to cast its electoral votes for Barack Obama?

I've been asked this question a number of times while out on my bike - both in its deceptively-bipartisan, under-the-radar, register-to-vote costume and in unabashed, taking-the gloves-off, fully-partisan campaign regalia.

I always answer frankly. "No, it's a long-shot," I say, trying to suppress my heartfelt disdain for the Electoral College system.

[People who get upset about how votes for president are counted should keep in mind that, in considering each and every piece of legislation that comes before the U. S. Senate, the voices of the people of Wyoming - population 522,830 (2007 estimate) - weigh in on a par with those of the people of California - population 36,553,215. We are cursed with this echo of the Electoral College every day of the year.]

But I also remind them that a strong turnout for Obama in this state puts Democratic Senate candidate Jim Martin in striking distance of upsetting Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss, a George W. Bush yes-man, if there ever was one. This is an outcome that no one considered even a remote possibility as recently as two months ago.

More importantly - the Electoral College be damned - the votes for Obama will count, if he wins the election, however Georgia commits itself in the official constitutional tally. What I mean by this is that the Georgians who cast their ballots for Obama will feel as if they have genuinely contributed to his election and, as a result, will see themselves - some for the very first time and others for the first time in years - to be part of an revitalized progressive political process in this state and in our nation.

This is the hope that an Obama victory brings to traditionally-red states, such as Georgia. This is why I believe that a Georgia vote for an Obama victory will count, no matter what. This is a change that I can believe in, because it's happening right in front of me, right now.