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From SeeingBlack.com The 411
After three unsuccessful attempts to find a meeting room, he started the meeting anyway, “I have just been hired by the [Obama] organization,” he said sitting down yoga-style on the floor of a hallway in a nearby Howard dorm. “I submitted my two weeks notice on Friday,” he said, smiling ear to ear. Since May 2007 he had been communications manager at the Telecommunications Industry Association, a leading trade association for the information, communications and entertainment technology industry. After serving as chairman of D.C. for Obama since October of 2007, he was moving to Philadelphia, Pa. on March 14 to begin his duties as out-of-state volunteer coordinator for the organization. He described his new role as the “flip-side” of his current job. “As chair I organize to send volunteers to other states,” he said. “Now, I will be trying to reel people in and encourage them to come to Philly.” He said he would be in Philly for seven weeks, seeing that Pennsylvania’s primary is not until April 22. After Philly, he believes the organization is going to send him to North Carolina and then maybe, hopefully, Puerto Rico. Then, he stopped talking and waited. As if he were anticipating me asking him the obvious question: Why had a man with a Hispanic last name and heritage, who appeared to be of predominately Anglo-Saxon descent, work as unpaid staff for an African-American man running for president? But I was more interested in exposing similarities Martinez shared with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), than pointing out apparent differences. Martinez, 28, is bi-racial and was abandoned by his father at a very young age, just like Sen. Obama, who was born to a Kenyan father and a White American mother on Aug. 4, 1961 in Hawaii. “I recognize the superficial similarities Obama and I share, but I am not going to support him because he is bi-racial too,” Martinez said. “He is the man. And he gives a lot of people hope and he unites them. I have seen a lot of Black, Puerto Ricans and gay people working together during this campaign. They went from people on the outside trying to get in, to being right in the middle of the action—helping. Plus, I can’t even compare my life and accomplishments at 28 to those of his at this age.” When Obama was 28, he was a first-year law student at Harvard University. One year later, he made history when he was elected the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated from Harvard magna cum laude in 1991. Earlier he had received his bachelor’s degree in political science from Columbia University in 1983. Martinez also attended an Ivy League institution. He graduated from Princeton University in 2001 with a bachelor’s in English. In August of that same year, he moved to Washington, D.C. in pursuit of his master’s degree in English at Georgetown University. Two weeks after arriving in D.C., Ian experienced the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in his home-state of New York. He was born in Long Island, N.Y and spent the majority of his pre-college years there. “My second week in D.C. was the week of September 11,” he said. “And for the first time in my life I was completely alone and also fundamentally made aware of the world of wars, politics, oppression and extremism that I had lived fairly outside of throughout most of my life. “I was clearly disgusted with the Bush Administration's mismanagement of the country and the world,” he said. “After almost two full terms of anger and discontent, I chose to throw my support behind Senator Obama because I was tired of being against something, and wanted to be for something.” Last summer, Martinez got involved with D.C. for Obama, a grassroots organization in D.C. aimed at raising funds and awareness for Obama. In September, Martinez was elected successor of Adam Barr, founder and former chairman of the organization. Barr said in an interview that he had to step down for personal reasons. “The length of this primary season is very long,” Barr said. “Things came up. I got engaged and I was doing a lot of traveling for my job. It just seemed best for the group. I built up infrastructure and when I stepped down it was at a point when I knew the organization was running efficiently.” He added that Martinez has done a really good job as chairman. “I was so embarrassed,” Martinez said of Barr’s recommendation of him as chairman. He said Barr announced his nomination of Martinez in a “kind of clever way…and they didn’t even ask me to leave the room as they voted.” Although Barr is no longer chair he said he has maintained his involvement in the organization. In January, Barr and Martinez went to South Carolina with hundreds of other volunteers and worked fifteen hours per day, which included training and talking to residents of the state about Sen. Obama. Martinez said D.C. for Obama was instrumental in sending more that one hundred Howard University students, in addition to students from other colleges, to South Carolina over the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend. He spoke of Se. Hillary Clinton’s attack on Obama when he won South Carolina. “She tried to say it was the Black vote,” he said. “People thought he was going to be a one-hit wonder after Iowa. Then, he won South Carolina and the Clinton camp tried to spin it and say it was because of race. But Barack said, ‘this is not about Black versus White, this is about the past versus future.’ “While race is not something I think is a major deal in this election, at least I know that Barack Obama is someone who understands the variety of life in American culture, rather than just the same old typical White American experience.” Although, he said he “won't claim never to see color” he said “the individual's character is the ultimate basis on which [I] define that person.” His personal life speaks to that philosophy as he is currently in a romantic relationship with a woman of African and Asian heritage. Martinez went to Ohio in February. While there, he worked with more than 300 volunteers from D.C. for Obama, and other supporters from across the country. “[We were] knocking on doors, making phone calls, [collecting] voters contact information,” he said of the weekend. Keith White, one of 300 volunteers who went to Ohio with Martinez spoke of Martinez’s leadership abilities. “This guy is selfless,” White said. He said he feels like he works with Martinez and not for him. “He gives us our marching orders occasionally. But we mainly arrive at our decisions together. He brings a lot of energy to the campaign and to the organization and his energy is contagious. I don’t know anyone who works as long and hard as he does. I wake up the next morning and I have emails that he sent out one, two and three in the morning about strategy, planning, and executing. I wonder when he goes to sleep.” Martinez said he and other Obama volunteers and staff members work so hard and “have been so wonderfully dedicated because they follow [Obama’s] example.” He talked about the attention Obama has received because he wore traditional Kenyan garb and because his middle name is Hussein. “John Kerry was accused of being soft, being this, being that,” he said. “Al Gore too. Bill Clinton took his share of hits, many of which were true, like the affairs. Nonetheless, he was victorious. The right wing will attack whoever [the nominee] is. And I feel very strongly that Barack's race, religion, and background are assets, not liabilities, on this front. “Barack shows you can be from a different mold, cut from a different cloth and still be a leader,” he added. “Not just a black leader or a Latino leader. But, a leader with no conditions or adjectives before it, just leader. Although, the word hope may be a little busy right now. He does give people hope.” Martinez pulled out his BlackBerry, to check the time. It was late. He looked up and said he had to leave. Before he left, he invited me to watch the results of Super Tuesday II on the next night with some members of the organization. I agreed. At 10 p.m. the next night, he arrived at Busboys and Poets, a trendy, progressive coffeehouse and bookstore located not far away on the historic U Street corridor. . He walked through the crowd and greeted friends, constituents and colleagues. Then he saw his close friend, Keith White. White, a Black man, stood under the archway that separated a private room in the back, from the rest of the restaurant. The two men, dressed in suits with their top button undone and ties loosened, hugged and shared an inaudible joke. Moments later it was back to business. Martinez and White checked their BlackBerries as they entered the room of the café, where more than fifty staff and volunteer members of D.C. for Obama, along with local supporters, were gathered watching MSNBC on a large projector. Martinez scanned the room. He saw Andy Shallal, owner of the bookstore-café, and walked over to say hi and to thank him for his dedication to D.C. for Obama. Shallal went to Cleveland this weekend with the organization. He said he has thrown events for every critical primary and caucus, including the first Super Tuesday. “He needs to close that gap,” Shallal said of Clinton leading in Ohio by two-digit points. A man sitting next to Shallal said Hillary may not win a lot of states, but she wins the important ones. “I don’t like to predict these things because you can never call it,” Martinez said, sounding almost prescient about what would be eventually a mixed result for Obama--a loss in Ohio and a win of most of the delegates in Texas. “I don’t want to jinx him," he said. © Copyright by SeeingBlack.com |
