Is it too soon to reflect about meaningful people you've met during the campaign? I just watched the video about Charles Alexander in the recced diary by Debha
Charles
and it got me thinking. (well technically it got me crying)
But I started thinking about phone calls I've made to strangers (NOT an easy thing for me) and the trip my husband and I took to Indiana to GOTV for Obama during the primary. That trip was awesome for too many reasons to go into now, but I started thinking about a young mom i met in the first apartment complex we went to. A young army wife. With a toddler. All alone in an apartment complex because her husband was in Iraq. And we chatted for awhile.
I had my canvassing sheets with the little bubbles I was supposed to fill in - Obama supporter? registered to vote? going to vote in the primary? Won't you PLEASE support Obama in the primary?
But then we started to really talk. Maybe she was lonely, but I could tell she was thoughtful and really happy someone had stopped by to discuss the primary.
She told me that her husband was in Iraq and some of their friends had been either killed or injured. She wasn't sure who she was going to support in november, but she told me that she really liked Obama and since anyone could vote in the indiana primary, she was going to go vote for him. She told me that she would then think about who to vote for - McCain or Obama come election time. She told me that she and her husband wanted the war to end, but she was concerned that a vote for Obama might be a signal that they thought their friends' injuries and deaths were in vain.
So we talked about that and I told her about Operation Giveback a program by neurologists to help returning vets with traumatic brain injury, and how Barack Obama understood that we needed to increase funding to take care of the vets and to do the research that could help prevent many of the comorbidities of TBI like epilepsy and cognitive impairment.
We talked about how Barack Obama would responsibly draw down the troops and work hard to bring her husband and his colleagues back safely.
And I left her with information and told her how to go to the website and learn all about Barack Obama's policies. And she promised me she would.
Now that time has come for her to choose.
I hope I helped her to think about change we can believe in. I hope someone from the Obama office in South Bend pays her another visit. I hope someone calls her to see how she's doing with her decision. I hope her husband has come back safely.
And I hope you all do what you can in the last 6 days to help wives and mothers like her to decide that Barack Obama is the right choice for all of their baby's futures.
GOTV