It is noteworthy that both Evo Morales and Barack Obama come from badrkgouncs in grassroots organizing. Morales, as a cocalero with plenty of experience practicing civil disobedience and hunger strikes as part of his long and tenacious work for empowerment among folks in his country who have so often been treated with disregard by the power elite. So, Evo is a national president with a background in community organizing. Barack, likewise. Obama continues to draw upon that grassroots experience in the way that he is approaching his presidency; this method is there for folks to observe (and you can be sure that people with experience in community organzing are seeing the co modus operandi in many aspects of Obama's efforts to build a base of support for his efforts to pass energy, education, and health care legislation). In short, we have two presidents who are practicing many of the arts of the grassroots empowerment world. Evo's hunger strike is clearly of a more recognizably intense form of expression, but we would be well served to study the subtle methods of Barack as well. My great hope is that the two will recognize their common ground and thus overcome the great chasm: the gulf between US superpower and Bolivian (relative) mini-power. Their common experience in community organizing is the basis, potentially, for changing the relations of power to relations of mutual respect. It is of no small significance, on another point, that Evo has chosen the period of the passion narrative in the Christian tradition, for the hunger strike.Much food for thought in all this.