Posts with the tag profiles

What Motivates Modern Voters?

Ken — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:48:45 EDT

What motivates the modern voter? Is it personality? The Issues? The proverbial pocketbook? Ever since Nixon was outed as a scoundrel in the 70s, America's sponsored media have pushed hard on identifying the problems with America as not being the result of a system in decay but rather the result of aberrant personality types and have refocused public attention to individuals rather than on the systemic source of the problems themselves. One look at the preoccupation of the public with celebrities gives you an idea of how far this obsession's been carried to consensus. Reviling Bush and Cheney only serves to divert attention from the systemic process these men only lead and refocus attention onto a cavalcade of personalities we call elections.

But not all people respond to this kind of distraction. What then does motivate the modern voter?

In my experience, there are 4 types of voters out there: About 30% of the public responds to what is commonly called "charismatic authority." This is when people respond to personality types regardless of what their position is.

Another 30% responds to what might be called "administrative authority." These are people that respond to the bureaucratic authority of the society's rule keepers, people likely to want law and order.

A third group of another 30% constitutes "the authority of self-interest." You know the type; the ones who ask "What's in it for me?" This group is exemplified by salespeople and their penchant for a 10% cut for anything to happen.

The 10% balance are those of us who believe that we are motivated by logic and reason, a small number compared to the 3 great motivators at work. Whether this is true or we all simply fooling ourselves remains to be seen.

Now, a good leader has to learn how to manage all 4 constituencies to effectively run any kind of organization. But a politician only needs a simple majority to win. In this way, it is easy to see how Ronald Reagan can gather in the charismatics and the bureaucrats and still preside over a crappy economy that wasn't in anyone's interest, and still fool the country into thinking he was a great president. It's also easy to see how Bill Clinton was able to win over many of the same charismatics while appealing to the self-interest crowd and ignoring the rule-keepers entirely. After all, he was our nation's rule-breaker-in-chief, wasn't he?

As for Senator Obama: He seems to have the ability to attract supporters from all 4 constituencies, attesting to his brilliance as both a politician and a manager making him a true leader. Hence, moving forward, as we continue discussing electoral choices with voters, our approach depends on what each voter's motivators are. As a result, as we approach the general voting public, it is probably wise for the campaign as a whole and each of us as individuals to grasp these archetypes, understand each audience's needs (and hot buttons) and then proceed with each accordingly. Make sense?

Why Terry Gives

Alexandra MacCallum — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 13:21:02 EDT

I just spoke with Terry, from Ocean Springs, Mississippi about why he gives to the campaign. He doesn't give a huge number, but he gives often. In a thick Mississippi accent, the Vietnam veteran told me why he gives, and why he thinks Barack is just what America needs.

Terry on why he donates:

One thing that we've got to do early is donate. They have these quarterly reports, and I think it's important that we have a good showing. Most people watch the news media and think Hillary's ahead and we don't have a chance to win, and I want them to think he does have chance.

On why he supports Barack:

I've read the Audacity of Hope – I think that's it the message of hope, period.

All we need is someone with intelligence, someone who can make decisions. What this nation needs right now – I am an old Vietnam vet – I remember when John Kennedy was elected. He said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." JFK had a magic, charisma. He brought this country together. That's what Barack can do.

On supporting Barack in Mississippi:

I'm in Mississippi – we're pretty much written off. This state has been conceded to GOP so I try to support Senators and Congressmen – candidates in other areas in hopes that we can gain a majority in the Congress or in the Senate or the Presidency.

Check out Terry's MyBO profile here. And donate and submit your own story here.

Meet Sarah C. of Colorado for Obama

Sam Graham-Felsen — Wed, 09 May 2007 17:13:39 EDT

There are over 5,000 different groups on my.BarackObama.com. Joining a group isn't only a great way to get to know people in your community; it's a great way to establish contact with people who share your interests across the country. Supporter Sarah C. from Colorado started the Coloradans for Obama group, one of the largest groups on my.BarackObama.com.

Like so many others who have gotten involved with this campaign, Sarah C. had never been engaged in politics before in her life.

I see a lot of corruption and a lot of promises that aren’t ever going to be kept. But the first time I saw Obama speak, it was like he was speaking directly to me. And it fit with me so much. I get the feeling that both he and Michelle understand what the common person goes through.

Sarah is currently working as an editor for an editorial publishing company, helping to produce a reading program geared towards second graders. Her true passion is teaching, a profession she hopes to re-enter someday.

I was a teacher but I left teaching because I was very discouraged by the NCLB act and saw very negative things happening under Bush. I couldn’t do it anymore. There was no way I could help students without drudging through the bureaucracy. Teachers spend all their time prepping kids for tests and not teaching them anything about life.

Sarah says she worked very hard to help one of her struggling seventh graders to improve. The student, who was in a gang and often got into fights, was exceptionally smart, and Sarah wanted to help him get on the right track. She spent numerous hours after school got out working with the student until she was told by her vice principal to “stop worrying about him, just drop him, and focus on students who were already excelling in their test scores.” That experience was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Sarah.

Growing up in Colorado Springs, Sarah’s family was very conservative and her father was a member of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family community. Sarah says she was turned off by what she saw as the hypocrisy of Dobson and other conservative evangelical leaders. She didn’t abandon religion—she now worships at an Orthodox church with her fiancée—but she turned her back on conservative politics for good.

Sarah’s fiancée comes from a military family; his mother and sister are career military, and his brother in law served in Iraq. Sarah says that while he does identify with conservatism and voted twice for Bush, he has been disillusioned by Bush’s presidency. He is now “totally on board” with Obama.

Sarah sees a lot of potential for Obama in Colorado. “The majority of the state is hardworking farmers and ranchers and they’re tend to be somewhat conservative,” she says. “But my sense is that a lot of people are starting to ask for something new.”

Coloradans for Obama, the group Sarah started as a meeting place for Coloradans, now has over 250 members. “I’ve been talking to so many people not only in Colorado, but across the country. It’s very grassroots and it’s been so inspiring.”

Click here to search for my.BarackObama.com groups to join, and click here to start your own group.

"People are starting to ask questions..."

Sam Graham-Felsen — Mon, 07 May 2007 18:01:27 EDT

We only need sixteen votes to end this war. President Bush stubbornly refuses to bring our troops home, flouting the will of the American people. Now the power is in Congress' hands. Will they stand by Bush or the American people, the great majority of whom oppose this war? Ty C., a supporter from Huntsville, Alabama is one of these people. Like Barack, he opposed the war from the beginning and strongly opposes it now.

Ty C., a chef from Huntsville, Alabama, spent a lot of his youth traveling around the world because his father was in the military.

“I’ve lived in Germany, Guam, England, Korea, Japan, other places,” says Ty. “And that experience has just cemented the idea for me that we are only as good as we behave. It’s so much easier to make friends with someone when you try to help somebody rather than when you try to knock down the door with a baseball bat. I just believe that we’re here to help each other.”

Ty’s grandmother, who he says “was a very devout Christian and a very wise person” also strongly influenced his ideas on foreign policy.

She used to tell me that if someone wronged you, you don’t pick up a stick whack someone on the head with it. If you felt slighted by someone, you did what you could do to make things work out for everybody. I was raised in that old Southern tradition which is not to just turn the cheek all the time but to be generally gracious.

In conversations with his neighbors, Ty has noticed that people are starting to seriously question the war and Bush’s general foreign policy approach.

People where I’m from are very proud to be American. I’m very proud to be American. Southerners have always been the first people to send our kids off to war. That’s just what we do. But now people are starting to realize something is wrong here. You’re starting to see it in the churches; people are starting to ask questions. We wanna know: ‘what are we doing?’ We Southerners have a long history of being stubborn-minded but once we asking questions, we apply that same stubbornness to getting answers. We wanna know why our kids are getting shot.

Ty donated ten dollars to the campaign. “I’m 35 years old and this is the first time I’ve donated,” says Ty. “As somebody who works hard for a living, I can tell you I’ve had about all I can take of this. I know it sounds corny but it’s time for a change.”

“People in the South,” says Ty, “want somebody to stand up.”

"[W]e could be building so many schools and paying so many more teachers"

Sam Graham-Felsen — Thu, 03 May 2007 14:00:05 EDT

Robert S. teaches chess to elementary school students in Inglewood, California.

“Getting kids into chess has numerous benefits,” says Robert. “It helps them spend quality time with their parents, and I think it can help them stay off drugs because it teaches them the joy of using their brains, critical thinking, and planning things out.”

Robert is frustrated that “our government spends hundreds of millions of dollars each week on this war, when we could be building so many schools and paying so many more teachers.”

He is haunted by the thought that the young people he works with will inherit so many challenges—particularly a dramatically changing climate.

We’ll have to say to them ‘the generations that came before you really messed things up and now we’ve got an irreversible problem.’ These days around LA, you look up and all you can see is smog. It’s a terrible thing to have to say to innocent children—that sea levels are going to rise by twenty feet and flood cities, that they won’t be able to enjoy so much of the pristine nature previous generations enjoyed.

Robert says he’s supporting Obama because in the midst of these challenges, “he’s the type of president we need right now.”

In addition, Robert believes Obama will serve as a strong role model for the inner-city kids he works with. “In the media you tend to see black role models as the stereotypes of either athletes or music stars. But seeing someone who’s smart, got his act together, and is trying to make a positive change—that’s something they really benefit from.”

Robert stepped up and gave five dollars. Will you step up too?

"I don't think this war is worth losing my best friend over"

Sam Graham-Felsen — Wed, 02 May 2007 15:30:15 EDT

"I like the fact that Obama's done so much so far with small donations. He talks about a new brand of politics where regular people can get involved," says Ned H. of Harrisburg, South Dakota.

Ned, a 21-year-old junior at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, donated to a campaign for the first time in his life last week. Despite his age, Ned has been engaged in politics on the local level and beyond for quite some time. Ned twice ran unsuccessfully for the school board of Harrisburg (once coming within 2 votes against an long-term incumbent).

His passion has been education reform:

When I went to college, I realized I wasn't prepared nearly enough and that the education I had received simply was not up to par. I ran two times for school board to try to change things. I wanted to make sure teachers got paid better, to improve the quality of education. At least in my school district, it was more about educating everyone at the bottom level, more about preparing kids to go straight into the workforce rather than into college. The agriculture department in our school was really big and there's definitely a place for that, but the emphasis could have gone to upper level classes rather than emphasizing that students know how to judge cattle.

The other issue that hits home for Ned is the war in Iraq. One of Ned's best friends is an Army Ranger who has been to Iraq and will certainly be going back. Ned says he attended his friend's graduation from training school while he was "incredibly proud," he was also "nervous."

I try to keep an open mind and I think suddenly pulling out is a bad idea, but at the same time I don't think this war worth is losing my best friend over. I've opposed the war from the beginning. I couldn't see losing someone over this.

Ned is a Democrat but he says he doesn't consider himself "very far left at all." He says there are plenty of issues on which he disagrees with the majority of Democrats. Part of it, he says, is cultural. His family has been in South Dakota for generations, ever since his great great grandfather settled there thanks to the Homestead Act.

Ultimately, as a person from a predominantly Republican state, Ned is interested in a leader that can do "what Bush promised and failed to do… 'be a uniter, not a divider.'"

"I think it's time for someone who brings us together based on what we have in common," says Ned.

"Obama is a leader for the future... he represents the diversity of this country"

Sam Graham-Felsen — Tue, 01 May 2007 14:27:09 EDT

Jose C. is a 27-year-old math tutor from North Hollywood, California.

He recently graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. After high school, Jose worked full time to help his mother pay the bills; eventually he went on to community college, and from there, was accepted into UC Berkeley, one of California’s finest schools.

Jose’s parents immigrated to the United States from Mexico in 1975. “It was a time of economic crisis in Mexico and economic opportunity in America,” says Jose. “They came in search of opportunity and to provide a better life for their children.” Both have worked in what Jose describes as “hard labor jobs”; his father is a gardener and his mother is a housekeeper at a hotel. Neither of them ever got a chance to receive an education. “My parents feel proud that I graduated from Berkeley,” says Jose. “At first, they didn’t really understand the magnitude of it, but now they do, and they realize that all of their sacrifices were worth it.”

Jose, who majored in engineering, is currently working as a math tutor. He serves many privileged children who can afford his tutoring, but he also offers discounted tutoring to poor children who can’t afford his normal rates. “I come from a low-income, underprivileged family, and I know what it feels like to struggle and work hard so you can go to a good school,” he says. “I relate to the underprivileged population and I want to give back.”

As a child of immigrants, Jose cares deeply about the direction of immigration policy. "We have to understand as Americans that the country was built by immigrants and we need immigrants," says Jose. "People have to understand why immigrants are coming here, and once we understand that, then we can start creating fair policies.

Jose supports Senator Obama because he believes Barack will address the issue of immigration in a fair and just way. “Obama comes from a very diverse background and I think he understands where a lot of Americans are coming from,” says Jose. “A lot of Americans today also come from diverse backgrounds and Obama is a leader for the future... he represents the diversity of this country.”

This is the first time Jose has ever donated to a campaign. “In fact,” says Jose, “Obama is the first candidate I ever liked in my life.”

“I feel Obama—the way he came to be. He didn’t get where he is just because his relatives were in positions of power,” says Jose. “He came to where he is today because he worked hard for it, from the bottom up. He understands the grassroots because he is grassroots.”

"I tell the young people I work with that the Gospel is a message of hope"

Sam Graham-Felsen — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 14:41:39 EDT

Dalton R. is a youth minister working at a United Methodist church in Atlanta, Georgia.

He grew up in Memphis, Tennessee in a “very conservative” household. Dalton’s parents, who are members of an evangelical mega-church, raised him as a Republican and he remained one all throughout high school.

But when I got to college, and began studying politics and religion, it all started to slowly make sense to me. I didn’t buy the compassionate conservative stuff— it didn’t work. I appreciate the idea of limited government in some ways, I mean, I’m against wasteful spending. But the problem I have is that Republicans don’t actually believe in limited government—they believe in cutting programs that don’t get them votes.

I didn’t all of a sudden say ‘I’m a Democrat’ but I slowly began to realize that there was a lot of injustice out there. I felt that both religion and politics had a role to play in dealing with these problems, and that the Democratic party was best equipped to tackle the problems that the church can’t on its own, especially with regards to health care.

As a youth minister, Dalton is extremely concerned with the state of public education policy. “Every week one of my youth tells me they’re going through testing that week in school and they’re exhausted and worried and completely nervous about the tests,” says Dalton. Under No Child Left Behind, he says, these students are so bombarded by mandatory exams that they learn little to nothing beyond test prep. “A standardized test education takes away from what teachers can teach and what students can learn,” says Dalton. “The students can’t blossom and grow under the current system.”

Dalton also discusses the Iraq war with his congregation. Several of them have parents and friends’ older siblings who have fought or are currently fighting in the war.

They are a bit confused because of what’s going on—a lot of them have been told by their parents we’re in Iraq because they attacked us first. We talk about whether it’s a just war, why we should be over there. They know something should be done but they’re scared to death because they don’t think they can do anything about it. One of the things I try to tell them is that getting involved in politics, especially voting (when they’re old enough), is a way to actually change things. It’s not fair for me to say, ‘It’s gonna be alright,’ because I’m not sure what’s gonna happen.

Dalton says he “got on board” after hearing Barack deliver a speech on faith and politics at the Call to Renewal conference last year.

Barrack doesn’t just co-opt evangelical language in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator of religious voters. So many politicians just say God or Jesus or the Lord and I feel like those are just code words to try for ‘I’m faithful, you should vote for me.’ At the Call to Renewal conference, he talked about doing more than just doing lip service. He presented a more nuanced understanding of religion—making religious values a part of your life. He talked about the way someone disagreed with him on abortion and how there is real room for people to disagree on fundamental matters of faith in a way that is civil and not divisive.

Here’s a picture of Dalton and his wife Stacey. They married in January.

For Dalton, Barack’s message of hope resonates on a deep level. “I tell the young people I work with that the Gospel is a message of hope and to remember at all times to be hopeful.”

Dalton, who is working and paying his way through Seminary, gave ten dollars to the campaign. “It’s not a lot, but it’s what I could give considering my circumstances. I think it’s important to become involved the best way you can,” he says.

Dalton was counted among the more than 40,000 of you who have given in April. Now it’s your turn. Stand up and be counted.

Families for Obama

Sam Graham-Felsen — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 23:52:07 EDT

Ruthi D. from Northern Virginia works as a portrait photographer, but spends most of her time taking care of her children, ranging in age from 2 to 18.

She grew up in Georgia in a Republican household that was “big on family values.” Ruthi explains, “My mom worked for Goldwater when she was a teenager. I mean staunchly Republican.”

For much of her life, Ruthi voted Republican too, almost by default. “I didn’t really question it. I voted Republican because I was raised that way and I didn’t pay too much attention to politics.” But in 2004, Ruthi “happened to have the TV on in the background” and she noticed Senator Obama. “I said to my husband, ‘Who is this guy? We gotta find out more about him.’”

Today, Ruthi is an avid supporter and has even convinced her parents to read his books and learn about him. It worked: “My mom says, ‘Now don’t get me wrong. We’re still Republicans. But we like Barack and we’re going to vote for him.’”

Ruthi is particularly passionate about education reform.

Where I live the schools are amazing but twenty miles away, in Washington DC, it’s a completely different story. It’s just not equitable. They don’t have books and computers and my kids school they’ve got talking white boards. It’s not right and it doesn’t make sense for the country going forward. I mean, we’re all one country. And it’s just so much more glaring to me because our schools are so excellent. It’s shocking that we have the resources in some places and not others.

Despite the fact that she’d never gotten involved in a campaign before in her life, Ruthi wanted to participate in this one; and she wanted to do something more than simply donate. But she knew it wouldn’t be possible, with her responsibilities as a mom, to do many of the activities normally associated with campaign volunteer work, such as door-to-door canvassing.

So Ruthi and other mothers in the neighborhood— Christine V., Kulia P., and Lindsey B.—went to my.BarackObama.com, and they started a group called Families for Obama for people who were in their exact predicament:

We said there’s got to be others like us who’ve never volunteered before and who would love to get involved, but said ‘I can’t because I have small kids.’ I mean, there’s lots of stuff to do but not a lot that’s tailored with people with kids. And so we decided that a majority of our events would be kid-friendly. For example, we have “Coffee and Campaigning” play groups. For stay-at-home moms we have our own meetings where moms get together and our kids run amok and play and and we can read over Barack’s Iraq legislation.

Families for Obama was such a great idea that it became one of the fastest growing my.BarackObama.com groups and already has 26 chapters across the country. They are also in the process of working with state and local groups. “We want to let them know that if they have events that are large and not kid-friendly in the area, we can provide a kids activity group so that parents can still come,” says Ruthi.

Ruthi is both thrilled and overwhelmed with the experience of co-founding Families for Obama and seeing it grow so quickly. She’s glad she’s gotten involved in a movement for change, and she’s also happy that she’s made new friends. Ruthi is amazed by the diversity of people who show up to her group’s events.

We had an event called “Baking It Hot for Barack” where we had parents and kids in the kitchen baking brownies and cookies. Of the 30-35 people there we had an former Newt Gingrich staffer, a couple ex-Hippies, an Episcopal priest, a military lawyer… it was such an array of people!

“It’s been great to meet like-minded people from such different backgrounds and it’s been so wonderful to see how grassroots this whole thing feels,” says Ruthi. “And the more I put in the more I feel I’m in it for the long haul, there’s no way I’m going to slow down now.”

"I remember telling all of my classmates, 'This man has to run for president some day.'"

Sam Graham-Felsen — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 13:47:15 EDT

Zahra M. is an 18-year-old first-year student at Wellesley College.

Zahra was born in London and immigrated to Queens, New York with her family when she was three years old. Her father, who runs a tutoring program, is of Indian descent and originally hails from Guyana and her mother, a dance teacher, is from a small West Indian island called Domenica.

She says this is the “most interested” she’s ever been in politics. “I don’t usually follow politics because it just seems like candidates are trying to sell a product all of the time, but Barack Obama is clearly different.”

She identifies with Barack’s early struggles with identity, and she says she deeply connected to his book, Dreams from My Father, which she read “long before” Senator Obama decided to run for President. “I remember reading it in high school and telling all of my classmates, ‘This man has to run for president some day.’ I just really admired him as a person,” she says.

Zahra says that her generation—which has come of age in a profoundly troubling time—needs Barack’s leadership. “We live in such a delicate world. I just feel like anything can happen at any time right now,” says Zahra, whose high school, Stuyvesant, was yards away from the World Trade Center.

On Monday, Zahra and her friends went to watch the Boston Marathon. “We were having a great time, cheering, everyone was in good spirits,” she says. But when she returned to campus, her roommate told her the news about Virginia Tech.

It just blew my mind. It was so upsetting. I don’t personally know anyone who goes there but they’re students just like me and all they were doing was going to class. Just trying to get by. To have your life taken away from you like that, it’s devastating. It’s like wow, it can just happen. I think there needs to be more resources out there. There are counselors, anonymous hotlines- but at the end of the day there’s such a taboo to saying ‘I need help.’ Much more needs to be done. People need to know it’s not a crime to need help and need to talk to someone.

But Zahra says, despite such tragic events, she and her peers are buoyed by hope.

There may be people trying to take these things away from us, whether they’re terrorists or students on our own campus. Bad things are going to happen. But if we lose all hope there’s no way we can continue to try and make things better. Its wrong to say ‘Hey it’s all good, we live in a world where the sun always shines and butterflies fly around.’ But we need this sense of hope.

“We need to believe that things can and will be better if we work for change.”

"And I say if not now, when?"

Sam Graham-Felsen — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 14:46:26 EDT

Cecilia R. of Gilbert, Arizona, has been working as a nurse for forty years.

“From when I was a young child, it had always been my goal to be a nurse,” says Cecilia. “I can remember reading books on Nurse Clara Barton and couldn’t tear myself away.”

Over the decades, she has seen the failures of our health care system up close.

“I think it's horrible, first of all, that so many people get turned away,” says Cecilia. One of these people was her pastor.

He didn’t have health insurance and he wound up getting sick. The city hospital had just closed and people like him, with no insurance, had nowhere to go. One of the physicians at my hospital at the time, who happened to also be a member of the church, finally got him admitted. But it was too late. A week later he was dead. He was my pastor and he was only 36 years old.

During the summers, Cecilia works as a nurse for a sleepover camp, where counselors from all over the world work as well. “The people I’ve met at camp from Australia and Europe tell me about their health care system and it’s not like that,” says Cecilia. “It makes me really angry. It’s just not right that we can’t provide for our people. I mean, people are bleeding just trying to pay for health care.”

In spite of these experiences, Cecilia has a lot of hope that Barack can change things.

“Some people say we're not ready,” says Cecilia, who grew up on 122nd Street in Harlem and remembers going to Amateur Night at The Apollo with her grandmother. “And I say if not now, when? When would we be ready?

When I listen to them I think about that movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. The scene where the character played by Sidney Poitier is talking to his father and says, “You and your whole lousy generation believes the way it was for you is the way it's got to be.” That’s the feeling I get when I hear people my age say things like that. I tell them, stop being so restricted in what you can dream about.

“And I tell them, you know, I don’t even think it’s a dream. He’s a viable candidate. He can win, he can make it happen.”

"A pragmatist politically, but also an incredible optimist"

Sam Graham-Felsen — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 15:55:14 EDT

Jane P. is a retired educator from Pinopolis, South Carolina. She worked for decades as a teacher, principal, and eventually, a superintendent in the South Carolina public schools. Throughout her career, Jane specifically sought out the most underprivileged schools to work in. "It's just a calling, I guess," says Jane.

Like Barack, Jane moved around a lot as a child. Her father was in the military, and so her family bounced around from South Carolina to Maryland to France to Morocco. "I grew up with a tradition of duty and self-sacrifice," she says. "I think in all our military families, there's just this tremendous sense of service. I've been blessed with wonderful parents and a strong family support system, and they just instilled in me, early on, that serving."

Right out of college, Jane started her career as a teacher in the Birmingham, Alabama public schools.

The year was 1968.

A few years earlier, Birmingham police commissioner Bull Connor had unleashed dogs and fire-hoses on peaceful civil rights demonstrators.

That very year, Alabama's schools had been desegregated for the first time. "But in reality, there was no integration," says Jane, "because white parents simply refused to send their children to public schools." Jane's school, which was entirely composed of black students, had been deeply neglected. Furniture was old and often broken. Text books were tattered and "hopelessly outdated." One day, the roof of the school gym collapsed. "Luckily, it happened to fall on a weekend, and so no one was hurt," Jane says.

Jane was assigned to teach tenth graders, many of whom had been so neglected that they could barely read.

I was trained as an English teacher. Nobody ever taught me how to teach reading. So i went back to school and took elemnetray reading courses just to learn how to teach my kids... I became a reading teacher by default.

Months after Jane began teaching, Martin Luther King, who penned his great letter from the Birmingham City Jail, was shot dead. Jane remembers the "tremendous sadness" in her classroom the day Dr. King died. Her students had lost their hero, and along with him, much of their hope. "It was a terribly distressing time," she says.

For the next three decades Jane remained in the South Carolina public schools. She's been around long enough to understand the complexities of education policy and she has a lot to say about how we're failing America's students, especially poor ones. That's why she attended today's education town meting event with Barack in Florence, South Carolina. Below is a picture of Jane and a shot of students from her former school district.

"Im a pragmatist politically," says Jane, "but also an incredible optimist."

She calls Bush's No Child Left Behind plan "a farce," and says "not only is it underfunded, but it tries to punish students into getting better. That's not how learning works."

And it's completely unfair with regard to second language learners and special education students. You've got kids whove been in this country less than a year and they have to take the same test everyone else takes in English! I have sat with kids who were mentally retarded and had to take that test at grade level and just cried because they just couldn't do it.

Jane says that among many other necessary advances, two major steps must be taken to start improving America's education system: stronger early childhood education and stronger vocational training for high school students.

She also says that we need to solve our health care crisis if we really want to tackle our educational crisis.

I care about universal health care deeply because pre-natal and early childhood care affects people's ability to learn. In the district I worked in, 92% of students qualified for free or reduced-priced lunch. Those kids used the emergency room for health care. They didn't get any preventative care. We had a much higher than average number of kids in special education, and I trace that to inadequate pre-natal and early childhood care.

But before any of these issues can be addressed, Jane believes America must move beyond the current climate of fierce partisanship. "Partisanship is a huge barrier to getting education issues solved," she says. "People are just so polarized and what they fail to realize that it's not what we disagree on what moves us forward. It's what we can manage to agree on."

"I'm optimistic about Senator Obama because he understands that what we need to ask is, 'What is it we have in common? What is it that makes us better?'"