On a recent trip to New York, we stopped by the Obama headquarters downtown to visit and pick up a couple of buttons to show our colors. As expected, it was not the least glamourous. You could tell these folks cared not for how they were perceived to outsiders but more importantly the greater good they were trying to accomplish. After getting our buttons, we hastily put them on and went on our merry way back down into the subway.
As we walked out of the building, I was a little surprised when someone held the door open for us. Growing up in New York, New Yorkers aren't known for their Southern hospitality. As we got onto the A train, we noticed a group of African American teenage kids acting rather loud and rowdy. As much as I like to think of myself as a person that does not carry any prejudices, there was a fear in me like most typical New Yorkers, that I should not make eye contact and keep my distance. To my surprise one of the kids, without a sarcastic tone, invited us to sit and moved down the row of seating and made room for us. In all the years that I have grown up in New York when all such situations like this one have played out over and over again thousands of times, never have a group of rowdy kids responded so drastically different than I or anyone in New York would have expected. After sitting down, my wife who is from the woods in California started chatting with them about Barack. I then realized maybe it had something to do with the pin I was wearing.
Seeing us with that pin, which simply read 'Obama '08', brought about a whole different level of assumptions of character, values, and morals. What the kids saw in us was someone like Barack, a person that does not try to find what it is that's different between us, whether it is race, wealth, or elitism, but rather what it is that we have in common. The possibility that you are not my enemy. Especially in a place like New York City, millions of people live side by side but all act as strangers. Barack tells us that the person standing next to us in the subway isn't always the bad guy, isn't always going to hurt us, isn't hating us for the way we look or dress. And one simple piece of plastic and metal symbolizes just that possibility, that possibility to take away all those prejudices, all the hatred, all the division. If a group of kids can find the courage to move themselves out of all the years of ingrained transgressions, in the harshest of place like New York, maybe all of us Americans can too find that place in our hearts to feel Barack Obama's message of hope and unity for not just our community, for not just our country, but for the world. We have always been a beacon of hope for all the world. Barack Obama lives up to that symbol with his life and his actions. I believe Barack Obama will bring this hope back and be that great leader.
That is why I support Barack Obama.
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