Ah, life's bittersweet moments.
I just hugged my brother goodbye and wished him luck as he sets out on a truly great adventure. Its hard not to feel a little sad. We're very close, as brothers go, and it will be a while before we will have a chance to plug in the old XBox or goof on Chris Matthews together.
But, whatever sliver of sadness I feel as the taxi pulls away is massively outweighed by the glowing sense of pride that fills me as I watch him seize the reigns and set his hand to follow through on what he believes in.
See, my brother is one of the Obama Organizing Fellows, and, as we speak, he's zooming off from our little concrete bunker in L.A. to help bring 'em on in for Obama and turn Ohio blue in November.
For those of you who may not have heard about the Obama Organizing Fellowship program, today's WaPo has a short piece about it:
Moving to harness the grass-roots energy that helped win the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama's campaign will deploy 3,600 volunteers in 17 states this weekend, each committed to six consecutive weeks of full-time political work.
The project, launched two months before the senator from Illinois became the presumptive nominee, is a measure of his determination to out-organize Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in states that could swing a close election.
Think about that for a second: this is June, its five months until the election, and Team Obama is already putting thousands of fired up and ready to go volunteers in 17 states.
Here's a little more:
In return for a promise to give the campaign at least six weeks of their lives, they were promised training in community organizing techniques.
A cover letter from Obama, who spent three years in the 1980s working in impoverished Chicago neighborhoods, spoke of lessons in the "basic organizing principles that this campaign and our movement for change are built on."
Obama urged supporters to apply and to "put progressive values to work in the real world."
Get that? Obama's not just fanning out campaign volunteers, he's minting thousands of new community organizers. He's not just trying to win an election, he's helping to build the infrastructure for a durable progressive movement.
And my brother-- my wacky, passionate, gregarious, bad-pun-dropping brother-- is putting aside his personal ambitions to fly to a state he's never been to, to sleep in the house of someone he's never met, to spend six weeks working full-time at a job he's never done, just to have a chance to be at the heart of the action.
Proud? That doesn't even come close. Dude is my freakin' hero.