First, let me say that I've had a longtime desire to thank Hillary personally for her work to save the elephants. I've been involved in an international effort to save them since the beginning of 2013 and along the way, I learned that she, too, had worked hard to save them through the Clinton Global Initiative beginning in late 2012.
For those of you who don't know, elephants are under siege for their ivory. Approximately 100 a day are mercilessly slaughtered -- that's one every 15 minutes! Hundreds of thousands of them have been slaughtered in just the past decade and sustainable populations in most African countries no longer exist. At this time the elephants are facing extinction in the wild within the next decade or so -- and many thousands of us around the world are working to save them -- including Hillary Clinton.
And so when a last minute rally was to be held in San Francisco, I decided to go with the meager hope that I might be able to say thank you to her.
After standing on concrete for 4 hours, here she came to stand before hundreds of supporters in full rally mode -- waving signs and chanting. Footsore and broken backed, we then listened to her speech. Then among much fanfare, she left the stage and was heading for the exit, when she decided to come back -- greeting the people who were standing in the front of the crowd. I was standing 3 people back and knew that I had no chance of saying anything to her that could be heard over the hubbub of the crowd.
Because I still hoped to let her know of our shared love for elephants and to somehow express my gratitude toward her, I decided that what I could do was to hold my cell phone toward her with a picture of an elephant. And that's what I did. The one I quickly chose off my phone was of Tim – a great bull from Kenya. (It's the picture that I've included here.)
What happened next was literally breathtaking. She saw the picture and her response was stunning. Her face almost went into shock. Her head tipped back and her eyes went wide, filled with tears and then all the energy in her face collapsed into grief and love. And we just stared at each other with a shared compassion for these beautiful creatures. It was as if time stood still and all that remained was our love for them. Then she said, "Thank you." We held hands briefly, and she turned and was gone.
Hillary Clinton is believed by some to be cold, robotic, calculating. What I saw was deep compassion and love. It's such a travesty that someone with such depth should be continuously assaulted as she is, when she has a great heart and truly desires to serve. She's absolutely the real thing.
If elephants could speak a human language, I have no doubt that they would trumpet, "I’m with her!” As am I.
Here’s a link to an episode of the Ellen show, where Hillary talks about her love for elephants. Beginning about 2:40.