Last night when I found out Obama and Biden were elected as the President and Vice President of the United States I stood perfectly still as if I were in shock. It was a shock. Then it seeped in that this was reality. The joy we felt then couldn't be contained. At my age, it is difficult to get too excited over anything. I've learned that things are not always what they seem. It took me a long time to warm up to Senator Obama and yet, when I became active in the campaign and I saw the kinds of people he had drawn into the campaign to help him I began to realize his message of hope was possible. Hope as a reality hasn't existed for me since 2000 when Bush became the president by stealing the election in the Supreme Court. Hope disappeared for me when after working tirelessly for Kerry he lost the election even though he won. Hope never arose for me when I demonstrated to investigate that vote and worked to keep our elections fair and transparent. Hope was never a factor in the marches made to demonstrate how we felt about extending a useless war in Iraq. So bringing back hope for me was a real challenge.
As a teacher I never gave up hope that a student would learn. As a mother I never give up hope that my children will have a better life than I did. But putting my hopes in a political figure was very difficult for me. I wrote about how I had decided to hope in my last post. Opening myself up for that decision was not easy. So as I worked as an Election official at the polls I performed my job without thinking. I put my hope on the back burner. At the end of the evening when we totaled up the votes I allowed myself a bit of hope when I saw that Obama had won in a traditionally conservative area. Then my husband told me that Obama had won Pennsylvania. My hope expanded and when I saw that he won Ohio and then Florida and California, and that CNN had called the election for Obama I let it out.
The amount of emotion and hope that came out was almost frightening. I had kept all these emotions inside of me for so long. WE ALL HAD KEPT OUT HOPE INSIDE FOR TOO LONG! Now at last as I stood up and screamed and laughed and cried and jumped up and down in a group hug with my daughters, I came to hope again. My hope has exploded now and I found myself smiling every chance I got today. WE DID IT11 All the people who worked and prayed and hoped. We all did it. Our messages and our phone calls. The people who knocked on doors and gave out hope to so many people who had been barren of hope for too long are the foot soldiers of hope.
President Obama you will sweep out the mean cold dregs of the Bush Administration and replace it with the light and confidence of hope. You will remember that there are people out there who will depend on you. They need to feel that someone can fight the tyranny we have lived under for so long. You will bring us back into the sunshine of the world's good will. Look at how your election has been celebrated.
In all of my years I have never seen so many people celebrating spontaneously. People spilling out into the streets shows me that this is not business as usual for the country. I know that after years of defeat winning tastes very, very sweet. I will be supporting you President Obama and I am so proud to call you my new President. Thank you for giving our country back its belief in itself. And now I'm doing my happy dance!:)
I live in New York, so we are not going door to door here. Instead we are on the phone speaking with people in battleground states. During this campaign I have phoned from my home, a campaign office, and a beautiful venue for the Last Call for Change. Phoning strangers requires you to have a pretty thick skin, because they hang up on you. Or you get them at a bad moment. Or they tell you they've been called 3 times. Or the worst was when I called someone today who told me her father was deceased and she had called the campaign to tell them to take her off the list. But then there is the call where you hear all of the family is voting for Obama. Or the 86 year old woman who needed a ride and who I waited to come back to the phone with a pencil and paper to write down the number for a ride. She was so grateful for this information, because she thought she could vote where she lived. Or the 18 year old girl who was a new voter and answered that she was excited to be voting for Obama. But the best story is the one I read last night, maybe in this set of blogs, about the couple who were traveling over 9,000 miles and spending $5,000 so they can come back home to New York from India to vote. The couple said they had become citizens last year after living in the US for 13 years and then the wife took a job in India and they wanted to vote on absentee ballots. They waited for their ballots to come after they sent in their applications, but they didn't appear. They didn't want to miss the opportunity to vote and so they planned the trip just to VOTE!! And they are voting for Obama!
Things like that bring me hope. But tonight I felt sort of down, because I was reading some of the negative stuff that is out there about Obama. I try to keep up with it to see what they are spewing into the atmosphere. So I was reading a mostly anti-Obama part of the front page of AOL and came across this little nugget of hope. It brought tears to my eyes, because this is something that is happening all over the country. Go and read it for yourself. I am going back tomorrow to spend my whole day at the Last Call for Change. I will be much more hopeful because of this:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1103/p09s02-coop.html
We have to counteract all this negativity and bring back hope. When I see the mix of people who have volunteered here in Westchester it is amazing to me. Thanks to Barack Obama our society is finally beginning to merge into a beautiful solution. At all events for Obama we are a rainbow of colors and a mix of nationalities. We are America, the best and the beautiful. We are why my grandparent escaped from the Russian army at the turn of the century and took a ship across to an unknown land. We are the result of a wonderful experiment started by feisty and determined men, our forefathers. With only 2 days left I am proud to have been a part of this campaign and thank you Barack Obama for bringing all of us together. Our country has been divided into segments for too long. Thank you for bringing us into One America.
I am going to pray tomorrow from 12 noon to 1PM as suggested by Bev Harris:
A request has been made for prayer between noon and 1 pm Monday Nov. 3. This originates at the national level, and is being shared through many leaders. If you are a person of faith, I'd like to share with you this nationwide call to pray:
- That the election will be fair
- That we will have the collective strength and courage to withstand whatever happens
- That the families of all candidates will be protected with love and held safe, both now and after the election.
If it is in your heart to do so, please share this message with others, and we will join together to ask and receive these blessings for this historic election.
Monday Nov. 3, 12 noon-1 pm.
I hope anyone who reads this will do the same.
On Thursday night my family and I went to the local Uno's Pizza where we were able to have dinner and support the Obama/Biden campaign. How great was that? The owner of this Uno's held this event to help Westchester for Obama raise money. For every dinner he gave 20% of the bill to the Obama campaign. The food was delicious. Maybe it tasted a little better because we knew that part of the money we were paying for it was going to the campaign. But we stuffed ourselves and had the delicious chocolate chip cookie dessert too.
We didn't know what to expect when we got there, but the whole place was filled with Obama/Biden signs and bumper stickers, even lawn signs were there too. People came around giving out buttons and stickers and lawn signs. Then the organizer for Westchester, Charles, introduced a few people who spoke and addressed some local issues. One wanted to have a petition signed to move a bus stop and he acknowledged the person who ran the local campaign office, Ashley. I had met Ashley earlier when I volunteered one afternoon and again when I phone banked. But the highlight of the evening was an original song written and performed by 2 kids and I hope that the national campaign has learned of them by now.
All I remember from it is the chorus:
Let's go Obama
Let's go
Let's Go
O B AMA
Repeat first stanza.
They were adorable and had worked on it for days in their basement. They also have instruments to go with it, but they didn't bring them. This boy and girl had some great verses to this song, but I can't remember them. They voiced the hope that they had and to see all the enthusiasm from everyone there singing with them I know that it would be great to make this national. No one had a camera there though, but I hope that Charles, who was also bowled over by these kids enough to have them reprise the song at the end of the night, will have filmed them. If anyone is reading this and knows anyone who can put them on YouTube get in touch with me.
As the time gets closer to the election I am keeping my fingers crossed and praying. This year I will be an election official at the polls, so I will be there in the middle of everything. Let's hope it doesn't get too chaotic.
Will be calling voters tomorrow. Thought we would go back to PA, but it's hard to do that 2 weekends in a row. Calling from home can be just as good.
So if you want to do something for the campaign, see if you can get one of your local restaurants to do the same kind of night. It's fun and painless. We donated over $12.00 at our table alone just by eating dinner.:) Funny thing, though, I wound up giving another $25 that night and found out that my daughter had done the same thing.
We trekked over to Scranton, PA from North White Plains, NY to listen to Hillary, Bill, Joe and Jill. After a 2 hour trip we found a tiny driveway almost obscured by a car wash and I wondered if this was the place. When we arrived we found an almost empty parking lot, since we got there at 10:30 AM for a 3:00PM show. Technically the doors were set to open at 1:15 PM. After finding way too many t-shirts that we loved we settled on a few and donned them. We walked toward the line forming outside the Sports Arena, which was a metal sided building similar to the Office's Dunder Miflen building. Waiting in the hot sun we met a few really great people and it helped to pass the hours away as we all shared our stories and how we came to be there in Scranton today.
At about 12:00 a Volunteer came over and asked us if we wanted to be on the stage and we said of course. So we all got green bracelets and were sent to stand with the media trucks until it was time to go inside. We were sent through security ahead of everyone else on the line, which had grown to the entire length of the parking lot, and they sat us on bleachers directly behind the stage. We were told that we had to be on our best behavior and they gave us all signs to hold. Cameras pointed at us directly. After standing in the sun for 3 hours it was great to be in an air-conditioned building even if we had to sit sqashed together on metal bleachers that swayed when we all stood on them.
But after a brief speech by Jill Biden who introduced Hillary Clinton who then introduced Bill Clinton, it was all worth it. Bill Clinton is still charismatic and sounds so genuine. He still looks great too! Then Hillary talked and I had never seen her speak in public. I have met her and spoken with her personally, but she is such a great speaker. Then we heard Joe Biden, and if I liked him before today, I love him now. He is a great speaker and he had everyone in that place screaming. I had heard a lot of his speech in bits and pieces, but altogether it is very impressive. At one point he stopped the teleprompter to say a few words about Hillary Clinton and how they were really friends. But the end of his speech was so powerful. He said: "Get up", and fight. He kept saying Get Up and the crowd went wild. I really love Joe Biden and he is such a strong candidate.
Biden said a few choice things about Palin, but when the crowd booed her he said it was okay. He also talked about why the McCain/Palin ticket has gone into the negative because they have no plan to save the economy. He says that the Obama/Biden ticket has a plan for taking care of small businesses and jumpstarting the economy. He talked about Health Care and one thing he said that got the greatest ovation: "We will stop the war in Iraq!!!" As he kept repeating it he got enthusiastic loud cheering.
We need Barack Obama and Joe Biden to win this November and it is time for everyone who has been sitting home and thinking that will do it to think again. Unless you are physically unable to get out please try to volunteer in your local campaign office. Also, talk to your friends and family and try to sway those undecided voters or even those who are leaning toward McCain/Palin. Joe Biden said that "this is the single greatest election we have ever had." We all need to make sure that this time we don't fail to elect the right people. Could you stand another 4 years of McSame? Or do you want to see a way out of this chaos that the Bush Administration has left for us? It is time to do whatever you can to get out the vote.
After being at this rally I am going to donate as many hours as I can to electing Obama and Biden. My children's future and my own and more importantly, 90% of this country needs them to be elected. So don't wait. Do whatever you can. If you speak to an undecided voter ask them which candidate is going to do the most for them. Get Up and go speak to whomever you can. Our country's life depends upon it.
