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Edited on Thu Nov-06-08 12:46 AM by Catamount
My Thanks To You America!
Four years ago, after four long years of shrub’s first term, I was so depressed after his second “win”, that I was tempted to sell my meager possessions and move back to Australia. But given that my son was doing well in his second year in college, and my three aging cats would most likely not survive such a long flight, I decided to stick it out a bit longer, at least until my circumstances improved. I was convinced that the election had been stolen from Kerry. My son totally agreed, but no one we knew, or any people on TV seemed to talk about it, or if someone did voice their concerns—they quickly disappeared from the scene. We felt alone in our despair—or so we thought.
But then a miracle happened and we stumbled onto DU and Air America—all at once.
It seemed a life raft had been thrown to me in the form of a group of people who shared my beliefs and my doubts about the political situation of the time.
Do you guys here at DU remember how it felt four years ago? How we all comforted each other in the face of our misery?
That’s how I felt for the early part of last night, I couldn’t stand it—I thought that we would be cheated once more—even though the numbers were coming in our way!
I don’t know just how I would have survived if it hadn’t been for all you guys, thank you! Thank you Skinner for creating this forum in the first place, even if I came into it late—but DU--you’ve been here for me, my home page since then.
Through you I felt connected to everything and everyone that helped me through the past four years. Although I haven’t been a constant participant recently (because the site has gown so much since 04 and most of what I’ve thought has been said before), I have been motivated to write occasionally, and motivated to act. With other members at that time, we marched against that stolen election in Seattle, took part in a protest in Olympia—wearing orange armbands, as did the people of the Ukraine who had their election stolen around the same time, and made other people more aware of what was really going on in the White House.
I want to thank all those guys and people like Greg Pallast, who first wrote about it all.
I want to thank all the people who started Air America and progressive radio, like Randi Rhodes, Al Franken, Mike Malloy, Rachel Maddow, Thom Hartmann, Jeanine Garofolo, Sam Seder and Marc Maron, the incredibly funny Stephanie Miller; the original redneck turned- incredibly enlightened Ed Schultz, who reached millions us progressives could never have done, and so many other radio hosts/ bloggers who have come and gone. Your voices comforted me, and educated me in ways that made me understand how everything fits together in this political world. You all did your part and brought the best politicians into the limelight, (and the worst also so they could be exposed) so we could one day have better people in power to represent us.
WE GOT BARACK OBAMA!
Oh my god I have to say it again, we worked hard, singly and collectively, all doing our own things to make it possible for the people’s voices to be heard, loud and strong!
We collected in like-minded groups and got people registered to vote, we knocked on doors all over the country, we made phone-calls by the millions and sent an untold number of emails to remind people to vote, whilst getting untold emails reminding me to vote! That’s how it worked. Ironically I couldn’t actually do that, but next time I will, because by then I’ll be a citizen. If the election had gone the other way, I would have left for sure, but now, on this day--after nineteen years, I’ll be proud to become a citizen.
How thrilled I am to be lucky enough to witness this event in person, and to participate to the extent I did.
I want to thank all the people with whom I worked over the last two months, their names too many to remember, but they all helped to make this happen.
I know the road ahead is steep, the battle to live up to our principles very hard, the enemies here and around the world bitter, but like Barack said, he will have our backs if we’ll have his.
We have realized the American Dream!
And so, on this historic day, as a citizen of the world, I thank America for Barack Obama.
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