That was the statement made by Mr. Williams, a man I registered to vote today.  This afternoon, we held a small voter registration canvass in a local neighborhood in our county. We decided to do this at the last minute.  The event didn’t look very promising at the start.  It was scheduled for 2:00 PM and no one showed up until 2:15.  We had a total of seven people.  Except for two of us, everyone was a new volunteer.  After a 15 minute training session we all set out down a street adjacent to the park where we met. No one answered the door at several of the houses I went to.  A man was sitting on the porch of the next house; he looked surprised and not too happy to see me approach him.  I told him who I was and that I was registering people to vote.  As I got closer, he saw that I had an Obama 08 sticker on my shirt.

We all have different perspectives and our perspectives have many layers. One of those layers is shaped by where one lives.  I live in Fauquier County, Virginia –about 40 miles southwest of Washington D.C.  It is a very red county.  I don’t know when Fauquier last voted for a Democratic Presidential candidate.  In the eleven years that we have lived in Fauquier, the county has always, always voted for the Republican candidate for every public office for which elections are held.  Even Jim Webb did not win Fauquier County. But that changed this past February when Barack Obama won Fauquier County, getting the most votes of every candidate on the ballot, including John McCain.  Where I live, and the fact that my very red county turned blue for the primary election, shapes my perspective on the various controversies rampant among progressives now.  

     After watching the media agonize over Hillary Clinton’s concession speech and over whether she will actively support Barack Obama, I find it difficult not to become frustrated.  The Democratic Party has nominated a capable, charismatic, and ingenious leader who is getting very little coverage except to the extent that he is part of the Senator Clinton story.  But there is something happening "on the ground" in Virginia and it doesn’t involve Hillary Clinton’s next move. I expect that it is happening elsewhere in the country as well. It won’t get much coverage from the national media but it does not matter.  

I have no problem with Rev. Wright’s comments of the past three days or his answers to the Q & A at the National Press Club. Rev. Wright is a scholar, preparing to speak in scholar's language to a group of people who were attending a symposium on race and the black church when he made his latest "controversial" statements.  As a fellow Christian who embraces liberation theology and as a teacher and graduate student in history, I agree with what Rev. Wright said and the nuances of his statements.  

       I was in grade school in Miami forty five years ago during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  I remember vividly the "Atom Bomb Drills" in which the bell rang three times, air raid sirens went off, the teacher pulled the blinds and we got under our desks with our hands over our eyes and our heads between our legs so we wouldn’t be blinded by the flash.  Blindness was the big fear that was impressed upon us by our teachers and our parents.  We were scared but we were reassured that if we did these things, we would be Okay.  I remember also that there were more and more absences from our classroom as students were taken out of school by their parents to prepare to flee for Jacksonville.  My family stayed because my Dad said, "No damn commie is going to make me leave my home!" They had special prayer services at church. People stocked up on milk and toilet paper.

 I respect each of you.  I voted for you, Vice President Gore, for President and were you the candidate in 2008, I would proudly vote for you again.  Senator Edwards, I voted for your ticket, Kerry/Edwards and was proud to do so in 2004.  You were my second choice for the Democratic nomination and I wish that you had stayed in the race and voters had sent Senator Clinton packing.  I would have had no problem supporting your candidacy for President had you won the nomination.  I have been proud of your leadership as Speaker of the House of Representatives, Speaker Pelosi.  And I have been proud that as a woman, you have the guts and the tenacity to take on the Bush/Cheney criminals on many, many issues.   So it is with confusion and diappointment that I write this open letter to the three of you today.  

       In my religious tradition, today begins what we call "The Three Days".   These are days when we engage in self examination and repentance in order to prepare ourselves for Easter, our most holy religious holiday.  One of the ways in which I prepare for Easter is to read passages in the Gospels that are attributed to Jesus’ messages to the people of his day during the week before he died.  In one of the most moving passages, Jesus used the word translated as "Woe" when he spoke about the hypocrisy of the religious and political leaders of his day.  No matter what one believes about who Jesus was, his words have a particular resonance and warning for this day and time.  For those who care to read them, they are in the 23rd Chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. His words are in the best prophetic tradition of Old Testament prophets like Jeremiah, Isaiah, Zechariah, and others who decried oppression of the poor and weak, violence, and greed and chastised those who considered that their legalistic religious rituals would resolve them for that guilt.

       This diary is written by a White woman over 50.  I am a Mother of four, three boys and one girl.  I support Barack Obama for President for reasons that have nothing to do with his race(s).  I have never considered myself to be part of an "identity group".  I have always considered myself to be a liberal, progressive woman who is trying to provide for my family and to be the woman my mother raised me to be as well as an example of a good citizen to my children, especially to my daughter.  

Mrs. Ferraro, the ignorance of your remarks left me speechless.  Senator Clinton, your response and the response of your campaign infuriated me.  Since the two of you are White women, and you initiated and orchestrated these remarks, I believe that it is my duty as a citizen, as a daughter and as a mother, who happens to be a White woman, to reject, renounce and censure the two White women who are responsible for these remarks and their use in political discourse.

    Does anyone else see the contradiction between Senator Clinton's claim that the rules that penalized Florida and Michigan for moving their primary dates ahead should somehow be nullified by either counting them or by giving them a re-vote and her claim that the "Super-delegates" should be allowed to vote for whomever they want regardless of who has the lead the lead in pledged delegates?