Val McCall is one of our most active volunteers in Connecticut. Recently, she helped coordinate forty volunteers to spend their Saturday sharing Barack's message outside of the UCC Convention in Hartford.
Val's son is active duty military and she has several other relatives who are in our armed services. For her, the war in Iraq is personal, and she believes Barack will bring the troops home.
if you're inspired, please give before 11:59 pm tonight.
Deborah Fordam has given several times to the campaign. She was inspired because of Barack's new vision for American foreign policy.
"Barack Obama would be an excellent representative to unite us with the world," she says. "Barack Obama had the courage, the fortitude, and the honesty to say that this war was wrong."
"Change is not about doing something because it's popular," she says. "Change is about doing something because it's right."
If you're inspired, can you give before midnight tonight?
Teno Villareal of San Antoni, Texas is inspired. He believes Barack will bring about a health care system that brings affordable care to all.
When Teno was young, he was stricken with cancer and lost one of his kidneys. Ever since, he's been hit hard by insurance companies due to his "pre-existing condition." It's been difficult for him to get insurance, and thankfully he receives it from the company he works for. Yet, it's a small business, and as a result, the costs for his entire company are high. He's excited that Barack will fight to lower costs and ease the burden on people like himself.
"Change has to start somewhere, and every little bit counts," he says. "Ten bucks, five bucks… you know, everything helps."
We're getting down to the wire. Are you inspired? If so, please contribute by 11:59pm tonight.
Terry, from Plantation, Florida donated because she feels that she can actually vote for Barack – She's not forced to choose between the lesser of two evils.
When I was younger, the only person I wanted to vote for was Bobby Kennedy. Recently, it's been the lesser of two evils. The minute I saw Obama speak, I thought "Oh man, this is someone I could vote for." He's really so different from everyone else. He talks to you and he's so honest. You don't get that in politics anymore, at least in my lifetime. It's more than charisma – it comes form honesty rather than a polished line. And I've never seen him in person. I've hear in person he's even more compelling.
I've originally from Brooklyn. We can spot bull a mile away – and this man doesn't have any in him.
He also has this ability to go past the boundary that everyone else seems to make. He can talk to someone who you might consider an enemy. The only way to get out of this war is to get all the parties talking and I think that he's the only who could do that.
Domestically, I think everyone is concerned about trade agreements – CAFTA – he voted against that. It's so important for the workers that are losing their jobs –Barack would be for the people, he's not for the big businesses.
Healthcare is another thing. We just changed our healthcare provider at work, I work for the city of Plantation, but I have a co-worker whose son is battling cancer. Besides making her crazy that she may be losing her son, she's had to fight with this new provider. Less and less is being provided to take care of people's health.
I believe most Americans, are sick of politicians, canned speeches, rehearsed sound-bites. I see in him the same integrity of character as Bobby Kennedy.
We have only a few hours left until the deadline. Share your story and donate here.
Alyson, a special education teacher from Halethorpe, Maryland, supports Barack because she cares deeply about our broken healthcare system. She worries about the children she teaches who aren't covered by Medicaid and who don't have access to basic healthcare. Barack, she says, has made a firm commitment to fixing the health care system.
Alyson watched Barack live last night from Howard University gymnasium, and explained why she thinks the country needs the unifying power Barack can provide.
One child that I teach lives in a public housing community. There's violence and drug dealing – he's exposed to things that no five-year-old should be. He threatens people with knives; he got access to a BB gun. He's a sweet, sweet child and in the right environment would be. His mom is a recovering meth addict, but he has this wonderful grandmother who is fully capable of taking care of him. But if his grandmother takes him, he loses Medicaid so won't have medical coverage. So he lives in this unsafe environment or his grandma is stuck with taking on this child with all these issues, and paying for all his doctor's bills, which she can't afford.
I see what happens when the most vulnerable members of our community are denied health services. Barack's making a really firm commitment to fix the healthcare system by the end of his first term. Given all that he's accomplished in the little time he's been in government, I think he can make it happen.
Barack brings people together, and represents this country as a whole. He'll bring people together from a wide variety of communities, locally, nationally, and internationally. His unifying power really draws me to him.
He'll be a unifying presence for the country whether he's President or not, but the country really needs him. We need the kind of moral guidance he would provide.
Excerpt from June 29 commentary aired on ABCRadio.com.
Talk radio, along with the blogs, helped block an immigration bill that the American people overwhelmingly opposed. Then, a congressman, who is also an ex-radio talk show host, managed to get a “yes” vote on language in a House bill that could permanently stop those who want to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine.
Giving the government veto power over radio stations’ programming decisions is wrong. I understand how the left feels though. For most of my life, the big broadcast television networks and almost all the major newspapers and magazines presented only one side of a lot of issues. Talk radio is a relatively small part of a bigger media picture, but I imagine it aggravates the new congressional majority to hear their opposition’s arguments without the old filters.
I’ll tell you something that those who want to control the media apparently don’t know. Everyday, more people are listening to streaming radio on the Web and downloading podcasts. Some popular talk shows skip radio altogether and go straight to the Internet. You can even hear talk shows on Web-enabled telephones if you want, and that will get much easier and cheaper quickly.
If the current stars of talk were pushed off the radio dial, they’d get their audiences anyway. The era of controllable media is over, and nothing will ever bring it back.
Lloyd Porter owns a coffee shop in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. He was inspired to join the movement because Barack is reaching out to ordinary people like him.
"His view of what the small person can do, what the individual person can do, what the individual business owner can do," he says, "just with the power of one, it moved me."
As a small business owner, Lloyd says, "time is money." But he's given his money and time to the campaign, volunteering as an organizer with the grassroots group Brooklyn for Barack.
What's inspiring you to sacrifice for this campaign?
Stephen, from Holyoke, Massachusetts joined the movement early. He grew up in an interracial family that stressed values of tolerance and acceptance – qualities he views as the core of liberalism. Stephen is proud to have compassion for others, and sees that compassion in Barack. He talked to me about how how he's proud to be a liberal, and how he thinks what Barack says speaks to the core of liberal values.
As a party, we really have not articulated what liberal values are, and why they're important. We allowed sound bites like the "death tax" or "Fem-Nazi" to take over. I used to tell people that I'm a liberal, not a Democrat, because no Democratic voice was standing up against that.
Barack was the first guy. I don't agree with everything he says but he's opening his mouth. He speaks about liberal values with an "of course they're important" mentality that I think should always be there. We should have compassion for other. He goes in with that as an assumption.
I see that leadership in him — things like his early opposition to war in Iraq. He makes the decision based on what the situation is, not the latest poll.
