Around one of four thousand tables, today.

by: Kelly Nordstrom

Sun Jun 29, 2008 at 00:26:01 AM EDT

Anyway, thanks to my GPS and needing to stop for $4.17/gallon gas in Amherst village (for some reason I never correctly judge how quickly the tank will get to E), I was (fashionably) late.  However, I did arrive in time to meet our Obama Organizing Fellow Edie and watch the video produced for today by Obama for America.  The same video message that was watched presumably in at least 4, 000 houses across America today.  The message was clear, community organizing will not only win us the White House in November, but will also lay the ground work for networks of community activists for causes to come.  Great message.  But the inspiration was yet to come.

We went around the room, you're familiar with the drill: introduce ourselves, who we are, why we're here, the usual...  Except this crowd was anything but usual.

There was a woman who grew up a Republican.  Dyed in the wool Republican.  True Red.  Until George W. Bush.  "I am so pissed off at George W. Bush that I could ring his neck," she said with tears in her eyes.  She quit politics, but remained a Republican, "so I can tweak them."  She suffered harassment, intimidation, and was even tailed at night when she tried to stand up by putting a Kerry sign in her yard in 2004.  This Grand Ole Party of hers has so strayed from its roots that she refuses to quit them as to not let the bastards win.  Her bravery and contempt is admirable.  She cries in frustration, "Don't you understand?  We need to take our country back, he's ruining us."  I agree with her, we have delegated all of our personal responsibility and it's time to take it back.

There were people their today who literally share Kennedy family lineage.  Someone else who was there this afternoon just lost a parent who was at the Ambassador Hotel the night when RFK was assassinated.  Another man remembered being a little boy in California, a self-described "flaming liberal" since birth, who was 8 years old in 1968 and remembers waking up to the news on June 6th, and on seeing what had happened, called out to his mother in the other room, "They got Bobby, too."  

Of the dozen or so people there today, (3 men and a baby, and 12 women), there was someone in 9th grade when George Bush took the presidency.  There were a couple of Hillary supporters there.  People who last worked for Bill Bradley and Howard Dean.  People who acknowledge that if not for the tenacity of Hillary Clinton, there may not have been 57 Democratic contests this primary season, and the countless addition to Democratic voter rolls because of those contests.

And, there were 2 people running to represent Amherst and Milford in Concord this fall. Len Gerzon, running for District 6 Representative, says, "It's time for us to do something, to get off of our duffs." He's putting himself out there because of what Barack Obama is doing and is inspiring us to do for our country.  He is so right on when he says because of Barack we are on the cusp of some big changes.  He recognizes that we need people in Concord with imagination, energy, and a bit of fight.  

Roger Tilton, is also hoping to represent District 6 (again, not my house district, but New Boston does share a Senate district with Amherst) and had, at one point, begun to make a list of all of the injustices perpetrated by the Bush administration.  But he got frustrated when the list kept getting longer and could no longer keep up with the list.  The administration is culpable; they do what the President allows them to do.  And we, my friends, elect the President.  We can't wait for the next person to do it.  It's our turn.  Go get your "A," Len and Roger.

A mother and former legal aid lawyer from NYC shared how touched she was by the speech Barack Obama gave "on race" in March of 2008.  When she was home schooling her 3 children (now grown), she would use "Letter from Birmingham Jail" written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as an example to her children as how to frame an argument; and was pleased to see that Barack had obviously studied the speech as well, as she could see that he framed his arguments in a similar way.  

When people share their political histories in a setting like todays, they often mention watershed moments in our history; moments when the country was at war, either with itself or outside its borders.  A woman recalled the Eisenhower/Stevenson election, when she felt embarrassed by her parents support of Stevenson, because she didn't know another sole whose parents weren't for Ike.  Another woman, born a mid-Western Republican, recalled watching the 1968 Democratic Convention on television with her parents.  Watching the rioting and the protesting, listening to her mother say, "If I one of my children ever acted like that I would disown them," and knowing that she would always, with guilt, vote Democratic.  She's always voted, but never been involved.  She claims she's been hesitant, but has come to the realization that she cannot be hesitant any longer.  She was there today "to see what I can do to make sure that we don't elect another Republican."  

I had actually thought of not going today.  When the party in New Boston got cancelled, I thought, well, I just won't go... I already know what I NEED to do.  I'm already involved. I'll just stay at home in my sweats. But then I remember talking to Jack the other day and he reminded me, "No regrets?  Right, Kelly?"  And I was like aw shit...

I was graced, to be in the presence of men and women who have done amazing things.  Women who helped to start Women Making a Difference.  Women who have tried cases in front of the United States Supreme Court (seriously, it's true). Mothers and fathers to daughters who can recognize Hillary Clinton on site and proclaim, "There's Hillary" whenever they see her, and think nothing odd of a woman really wanting to be President.  Folks who were in Unity yesterday saw 2 politicians "with genuine affection for each other," and were inspired yet again.  As they were in 1960, in 1968, in 2004 at the Democratic Convention, in 2006 at the Victory celebration in Manchester; as I was today.