“Alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient” - Sen. Barack Obama
“John is a fighter(not one of these) leaders who mistake stubbornness for strength” - Teresa Heinz Kerry
By Ndzana Seme, 07/27/2004
“My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father, my grandfather, was a cook, a domestic servant. But my grandfather had larger dreams for his son. Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place; America which stood as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before. While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor he signed up for duty, joined Patton’s army and marched across Europe. Back home, my grandmother raised their baby and went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the GI Bill, bought a house through FHA, and moved west in search of opportunity.”
This Tuesday night, Illinois state senator Barack Obama found the magic to break into emotional tears, not only hundreds of people in the Democratic National Convention floor, but also millions of viewers across the United States and the world. His parents’ story, in many respects similar to the well known movie “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” charactered by Sidney Poitier, is one of the stories that make the United States a unique country in the West.
The emotion tears also came because Obama embodies the rise of young, fresh faces, full of hope, enthusiasm and ideas within an old Democratic Party. And hope was exactly his message.
Obama defined this uniqueness as “the true genius of America, a faith in the simple dreams of its people, the insistence on small miracles” lying upon simple truths “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
He expressed these truths as the very rights that are missing in many places (such as Africa) based on the American principled rights “That we can tuck in our children at night and know they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe or hiring somebody’s son; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted—or at least, most of the time.”
He agreed with the Conservatives’ doctrine that people should not “expect government to solve all their problems”, but he added, under a storm of applause, that people also “don’t want their tax money wasted by a welfare agency or the Pentagon.”
Sometimes becoming the parent’s teacher he said people know that “government alone can’t teach kids to learn; they know that parents have to parent, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.”
People “sense, deep in their bones, that with just a change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all,” the poet Obama lamented.
Obama wants, along with John Kerry, an “America where hard work is rewarded”, “where all Americans can afford the same health coverage our politicians in Washington have for themselves”. He disagrees with the Bush administration, which offers “tax breaks to companies shipping jobs overseas” instead of offering them to companies creating jobs here at home”, sacrifices “our basic liberties [or uses] faith as a wedge to divide us”, doesn’t understand “that in a dangerous world, war must be an option, but it should never be the first option”, and leads America to be “held hostage to the profits of oil companies or the sabotage of foreign oil fields”.
Obama was heartbroken by the families of young militaries he met “struggling to get by without a loved one’s full income, or whose loved ones had returned with a limb missing or with nerves shattered, but who still lacked long-term health benefits because they were reservists.”
He warned that “When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they’re going, to care for their families while they’re gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.”
“Alongside our famous individualism,” Obama said there is compassion.
Sometimes he was felt like Martin Luther King Jr. when he said: “If there’s a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandmother. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It’s that fundamental belief—I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sisters’ keeper—that makes this country work.”
To those “who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes”, Obama said “there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America—there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it.”
He said the 2004 election is all about “politics of cynicism” vs. “a politics of hope”.
To define his hope, Obama said he is talking about “something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a mill worker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. The audacity of hope!”
He said he believe the Democrats “can give our middle class relief and provide working families with a road to opportunity […] provide jobs to the jobless, homes to the homeless, and reclaim young people in cities across America from violence and despair […] we can make the right choices, and meet the challenges”
Barack was later followed on the Convention podium by another “African” of a different type, Teresa Heinz Kerry.
“To all my continental African family living in this country, and to all new Americans: I invite you to join our conversation, and together with us work towards the noblest purpose of all: a free, good, and democratic society”, Mrs. Kerry stated in her first sentences.
Then she revealed her African story, as emotional as Obama’s.
“I grew up in East Africa, in Mozambique, in a land that was then under a dictatorship. My father—a wonderful, caring man who practiced medicine for 43 years, and taught me how to understand disease and wellness—only got the right to vote for the first time when he was 71 years old. That’s what happens in dictatorships. As a young woman, I attended Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, South Africa, which was then not segregated. But I witnessed the weight of apartheid everywhere around me. And so, with my fellow students we marched against its extension into higher education. This was the late 50’s, the dawn of the civil rights marches in America. As history records, our efforts in South Africa failed and the Higher Education Apartheid Act was passed. Apartheid tightened its ugly grip, the Sharpsville riots followed, and a short while later Nelson Mandela was arrested and sent to Robin Island.”
The Africa-born Portuguese came to the U.S. in early 1960’s, became a human rights activist before marrying late Pennsylvania senator Heinz killed in an airplane accident in 1991. She still considers Pennsylvania her home state, that of her sons Heinz. The Heinz foundation she is leading is a multi billion charitable organization providing assistance to the environment, the children and the poor.
In a thunder of women’s applause, Teresa set her tone when she stated that “hope is that, one day soon, women—who have all earned the right to their opinions—instead of being labeled opinionated, will be called smart or well-informed, just as men are.”
She believes that “one of the best faces America has ever projected is the face of a Peace Corps volunteer.”
Teresa Heinz Kerry thinks G W Bush is one of these “leaders who mistake stubbornness for strength”.
She reassured that her husband John Kerry “is a fighter” who “earned his medals the old-fashioned way, by putting his life on the line for his country” and who “will always be first in the line of fire” because, she said, “No one will defend this nation more vigorously” than her John.
The Illinois U.S. Senate race all in favor of Barack Obama
Will Mr. Obama go to Washington? Illinois state legislator seeks to become the only black male U.S. senator. While the stakes are high in the race for the former U.S. Senate seat of presidential candidate Carol Moseley Braun, accused by her opponent Republican U.S. Senate candidate Peter Fitzgerald of a campaign finance mishandling charge dismissed six years ago, as Democratic state Sen. Barack Obama attempts to become the nation's only black U.S. senator. If elected, he would be the first-ever black male Democratic senator and the first black male senator since Republican Edward Brooke of Massachusetts was elected in 1966.
Barack Obama, didn't have as much money as Blair Hull, and he didn't have as much clout as Dan Hynes during the March 2004 Illinois Democrat primary. At 42, he’s a young, fresh face, full of enthusiasm and ideas. But he also had something perhaps more valuable than money: experience at the grassroots level as an organizer of a successful 1992 vote drive.
What the most may have helped Obama win, by nearly a landslide, over voters were his credentials. He’s a two-term state senator from Hyde Park. He has a law degree from Harvard, where he was the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He is a civil rights attorney, and he lectures at University of Chicago. He has awards, recognition, and he is even a published author.
Now Obama, a married father of two, seemed to have a strong advantage to the general election against Republican Jack Ryan.
Ryan is down in the polls, dogged by controversey over his divorce records. He thus divided an already fractured state Republican Party. The millionaire former investment banker, who won the 2004 GOP primary, said last month he would drop out of the race after embarrassing allegations about his sex life became public, with embarrassing allegations that he tried to pressure his former wife to perform sex acts in clubs while others watched. The divorce records of Mr. Ryan and his ex-wife, television actress Jeri Lynn Ryan, were released by a California judge at the request of the Chicago Tribune and WLS Television. Both of the Ryans said they wanted those records kept sealed to protect their nine-year-old son.
Obama has not made an issue of Ryan's divorce records, but has criticized a Ryan staffer who was paid to follow Obama closely with a video camera.
So, as Ryan was forced out of the race on June 25, 2004, who will take his place? Almost certainly one of the candidates Ryan crushed in the GOP primary. There is dairy magnate Jim Oberweis, state Sen. Steve Rauschenberger, and businessman Andy McKenna. But if they couldn't beat Ryan in the primary, how could they beat Obama statewide? A replacement candidate will be decided by a group of 19 Republican committeemen.
Other competitors to Democrat Barack Obama are Libertarian Jerry Kohn (High school teacher and Cook County library board member), Independent Albert J. Franzen (Retired electrical worker and union local president), and Republicans Jim Oberweis (Dairy businessman and second place finisher in GOP primary), SteveRauschenberger (Powerful state senator from Elgin and third place finisher in GOP primary, Rauschenberger appeared to be the top candidate for the job, but announced that he was no longer interested), and several others.
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