My team of fellows live and work in Gwinnett County, Georgia. If you left Atlanta, you could drive out of the trendy bars of the Virginia Highlands on Ponce de Leon, and when that bends northeast and becomes U.S. Highway 78, and continue on past Stone Mountain, you'll see a private park of a bald granite mountain that has four giant Confederate heroes carved on its face. Though they can’t be seen through the trees, giant carving of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson keep watch over the highway, and blessing or cursing your purpose as you pass their shadow and enter Gwinnett County. I’ve been coming to this place on and off for seven years, and I never imagined a skinny guy with a funny name like Barack Obama could contest this state, much less this county. But here we are, and Gwinnett County, like the rest of the state, is very much in play. It’s hard to believe. In a frenzy of brand-new-Fellow enthusiasm, my team crisscrossed the county looking for likely places to register voters and likely volunteers. We stopped at a Chic-Fil-A at Ronald Reagan Highway and Scenic Highway, and began interrupting decent people at dinner, asking, “Would like to volunteer for Barack Obama’s campaign?” One woman I talked to said, “Yes, but we can’t really talk about it around here.”“What do you mean?” I asked.“Here in this county,” she said, “you have to be careful about what you say.” “Why?” “Because people around here, they don’t like it when you’re different, especially if you’re not Republican.” This is the kind of thing I had expected at the outset; I knew that John Linder, the Representative of Georgia’s 7th District was one of the longest-serving and most conservative members of the U.S. Congress. I was prepared for the next weekend when I came to a MoveOn.org bake sale for Barack Obama to get volunteers for the campaign and had to hear the disappointment in a little girl’s voice when she found one of the signs she had made with glue and glitter and marker ripped into little bits and dumped on the grass. I wasn’t surprised when I heard that after I had left, little men in big trucks spun out and tore off at the cul-de-sac where the bake sale was held. I was not surprised to that one of the organizers of the bake sale who had stuck a “War is Not the Answer” bumper sticker on her car kept finding tacks in her tires until she took it off. This is the usual story of this County, and I guess someone could say there’s no real hope for change in this county, or that the causes this campaign holds dear will find no purchase with the folks of Snellville and Lilburn. Except—except that on June 28th, people hungry for a new kind of politics and a new kind of leader gathered together in homes to find out how they could make a difference. Except that four out of every five voters we register will give us a fist bump or say she’s ready for change. Except last Wednesday, the Fellows held a county-wide organizational meeting that brought together 50 new leaders who immediately began organizing their own neighborhoods and towns, some of whom helped register over 150 new voters on July 4th. They came because something has happened. Over the past decade, a flood of new people has washed into the brand-new subdivisions off Five Forks and behind Lawrenceville Highway. These people are young and of every color and creed. They have settled down, begun to raise children, and have joined churches and clubs, and they have slowly integrated themselves into the community. They want Barack Obama to be President, they are tired of the same old divisive politics, and they are ready for change. This is not a major shift, but a subtle one—even after seven years of visiting, I had not noticed it until I began to look closely, with eyes ready to see change.In this way, I see Georgia in a different light. Many people here in the county and in the state still don’t believe that they can make a difference and that their voices are silenced. And why not? The nation looks at Georgia and says, it is blood red. But Barack Obama and his campaign look at this county, sitting at the foot of a Confederate shrine, and say change is possible. Just look a little bit closer. And slowly people are starting to listen and starting look. People who have spend their life voting for Republicans have decided they’ve had enough. Some of these new residents and some of the old come to an organizational meeting; they sign up to register voters. And in the span of time it takes is one volunteer to get one new voter, a person who hopes for change becomes a person who believes a change is coming near.The Obama campaign believes change is possible, perhaps because it is necessary. We take that belief to heart here, and we believe this crimson county will turn blue in November. We believe this in spite of our historical precedent, and because we believe it, we see how we can do it. There are still many of us who sit in the Chic-Fil-A booth, whispering our hopes to each other. But the time for change has come; sometimes you just have to believe it before you can see it.
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