THE
IDEALISTS
In January, Obama denied a
permit for the pipeline, which
would have linked a vast oil deposit in Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. The
lesson was clear. “It really made
people realize that you need to
push the president to be great,”
Radford said.
With comprehensive immigration reform legislation evidently
off Obama’s agenda, immigration activists switched gears. “We
launched a campaign to really
push the administration to use its
executive authority to protect immigrants,” Bhargava said.
The biggest push was by and
for “Dreamers” — undocumented
young people who were brought
to the U.S as children, and who
would be granted a conditional
path to citizenship under the proposed bill known as the Dream
Act. Dreamers outed themselves,
committed acts of civil disobedience and led protests.
Unable to get the bill through
Congress, Obama nevertheless
announced on June 15, 2012, that
he had ordered a stop to deportations of the Dreamers.
“That was a huge high,” Bhargava said, “and it actually spoke
to me of the lesson of the last four
HUFFINGTON
11.04.12
years which is that politics has to
meet social movements for us to
get good outcomes.”
Some activists remain hopeful that Obama will embrace their
causes more enthusiastically in
a second term, since he will be
thinking more about his legacy
and not about getting reelected.
“I’m optimistic that the banner
will be taken back up on a lot of
these issues,” Lisa Gilbert said.
And certainly, despite their
disappointments, public-interest
advocates still see Obama as much
more promising than GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
“I’m not actually entertaining the thought at the moment,”
said Bhargava.
“It’s the fear that’s driving me
to tell whoever I can: However
[much] you’re disappointed in
Obama, the alternative right now
is far worse,” said Faux.
But even if Obama is reelected,
the past four years have taught
public-interest advocates a lesson. “What we’re all going to
have to do over the next four
years is organize and mobilize,”
said Robinson.
“Sometimes we need to relearn
these lessons,” said Aron. “Obama
is not going to be the hero. If work
needs to be done, we need to do it.
We need to be the heroes
in our story.”