I just hope it's not too late to count. I'm not sure exactly what did it for me, and it's only $20, but it's all I could afford. I'm a student living in London with no income, and getting drained by the exchange rate. I've been free riding up until this point, but no longer.
I wish I could phone bank. I wish I could canvass. I promised myself back in 2004 that if Barack Obama ran in 2008, that I'd drop everything - school, work, a life - to work for him, even if I didn't get paid a dime. Well, my mother wouldn't hear of it, naturally, and my time spent in London has put me at far too much of a distance to the campaign.
I was incredibly envious of friends who were able to pound the pavement in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, while I was left to cast my vote for Obama as a Democrat Abroad. He won Democrats Abroad, much to my delight, but having worked on a campaign before, I knew it just wasn't quite the same as being there.
I feel a bit better now, having kicked in a twenty. That said, I always felt right about supporting Obama - I knew that I was part of something bigger, not just politically, but personally.
Though I was not involved in a high stakes primary or caucus, with all that energy and exuberance, I finally felt at home as a Democrat when I voted for Obama. My grandparents, Ukrainians who spent years in displacement persons camps in Europe, finally made it to the U.S. in the early 1950s, with nothing in their pockets. After becoming citizens, they cast their first presidential votes in 1960 for John F. Kennedy.
When my father was in high school, he worked on the newspaper (the Chronicle) with his friends, and after the school administration refused to allow publication of an issue with student opinions on drug use and the Vietnam War, they started their own alternative newspaper (the Kronikle). He cast his first presidential vote in 1972 for George McGovern.
My mother was one of the first female graduates of Rutgers College, paying her own way. She graduated with a degree in archeology and history in three years, and got her masters degree from the Columbia School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, at a time when women were vastly outnumbered in those fields. She cast her first presidential vote in 1976 for Jimmy Carter.
As for me, I'm just a normal 20 year old male. As someone who has helped lead an underground reproductive justice group at a university where such views are not openly allowed (to the extent that university health services removed the entire sexual health section from an informational packet in the infirmary), I know firsthand the value of grassroots, bottom up organization. As someone who stood against an incredibly misguided war from the very beginning, and lived in an area truly devastated by 9/11 (where such a view was not popular in 2002), I know firsthand the need to have the courage of your convictions, no matter what the political or social consequences.
Carrying with me not only my own experiences, but the values of my kin - opportunity at home, a firm but fair foreign policy, uncompromised civil liberties, equality in all manners of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation - I cast my first presidential vote on February 5, 2008, for Barack Obama.
I do not know what the outcome of this nomination contest will be. I do not know if my appreciation for grassroots organizing will be upheld, nor do I know if a reasoned and peaceful foreign policy will be made true.
But I do know that at this moment, I have cast my lot - my keyboard, my wallet and my vote - with a candidate who shares my passions and convictions, and represents everything that I and my family have learned and loved about America.
That is all I can ask for in Barack Obama. I simply hope that there are multitudes (and majorities) of Hoosiers and Tarheels who feel the same way I do.