This is a post I am reposting from our local WNCobama.com website. I find it inspiring and thought I would share it...
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Hello everyone. This is Sam, and I just wanted to give a brief hi, and a little bit about why I support Barack.
I’m 18, live in Fairview, and am a composer. I’ll be going to Furman University in the fall to study music, and tend to suck the marrow out of life.
But, beyond the bio, I’m a person who believes that it’s the responsibility of a citizen to know what’s going on in the world. Living in our country, which allows us rights and freedoms that we take for granted but exist very few places in the world, requires that we take our responsibilities as citizens seriously. Being aware of what’s going on in our government and in the world is as much a responsibility as voting.
But, when I see that only 122 million out of the 300-some million people in our country voted for one of the most contested elections in recent history, I see a problem. Voters in this country have tuned out, picking apathy over the frustration of seeing candidates promise and never deliver.
On the same vein, much of the voter apathy in our country gets blamed on the youth. And, I’m inclined to agree. When I have friends who told me they were “too tired” to vote in 2006 (or more importantly, 2004, and both have happened), I know there’s a problem. It is worth saying, though, that apathy reaches across all age boundaries.
Still, often accompanying the decrying of an apathetic youth is the conclusion that this apathy is a foregone conclusion, which I wholeheartedly disagree with. The movement against the Vietnam War was partly organised, and had its strongest base of support, within the youth of our country. Our voices have changed the country, and can do so again.
Barack Obama is a candidate that can channel these voices, a man who represents a change from the foregone political process, where elections are a choice between the lesser of two evils. Obama is a herald of a new generation, a man who embraces our differences instead of creating a dichotomy out of them. But, he cannot win this election alone.
It will be our job until November to wake up those who have tuned out of the political process. It will be our job to move people from cynicism to hope in their ability to enact change, not in some distant future, but in 2008.
This is one politically active teen who will do everything in his power to fulfill his responsibilities.
peace.
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