Election Day 2008

The morning starts to the hard fresh breezes off the Atlantic coast. Halfway between day and dreams, I feel that I am poised halfway up a cliff. I am clinging to the rocks, stagnant and tired. It has been a long, hard climb, and I feel disheartened to continue. In this early morning state, I am no longer myself, but the whole world. I am not the one with tired fingers, I am my father who fights to keep his job; I am my mother who wonders how she will afford to send her children to the doctor; I am my sister who see no more hope in her school; I am my brother will no longer accept the destruction of the environment; I am my friend whose reproductive rights are being stripped away from her; I am my lover who watches his countrymen work long hours for a bowl of rice while billions are being spent on a useless war; I have stretched and reached to find footing; I have climbed with hope, with vision that the world could be better than what I see before my eyes. I am tired.

And now I wake. The winds are rough and cold, alive; they whisper to me of change. But I am afraid of what change could mean. Change is a word I have heard countless times and have somehow learned to stop listening to. Over the past eight years, Change has meant more war, less civil rights; more money for the big business, less for schools. Change has meant my library closing and my faith in democracy evaporating. But over the past year I have heard a new voice of change, and this one is filled with hope, a hope that I can believe in.

Change today in the USA means change in the world. I know because I here it shouted and whispered by dark tongues and hopeful faces in the streets of Dakar and Bamako. People shout ‘Obama’ as I walk down the street. And for the first time in my adult life I am proud to respond with a great smile, a grin, proud to say I share their hope and support their vision, and that this day could mean change in the way I have always envisioned it.

Today the wind is full, thick with a heavy decision in the hands of American Voters. We are poised to move on, but we must make the choice to do so together. Please help me keep climbing. Vote Obama.