Posted by Angel Elliott, BET News for YOU(th) Vote!
Posted from Columbus, OH (November 4, 2008)- My mind swam as my plane took its final decent into the Columbus Airport. It’s been such a long, harrowing, yet exciting election season. History being made at every twist and turn that the race for the White House took. I wasn’t able to get my proverbial plane nap because my head was clouded with recent memories, memories that allowed my mind to drift back to the first time I traveled with my news team to cover a primary.
We went to Columbia, South Carolina when it was still early in the season, and Barack Obama was just emerging as a force to be reckoned with. I’d heard his campaign rhetoric, of change this and change that. And although my life had increasingly become affected by the last eight years of failed social and economic policy under the Bush administration; I still didn’t get that his message was real. We traveled to what was suppose to be a hair salon in Columbia, where Obama had stopped past, and made believers out of the employees and black folks that got their hair done there forever. As we rolled up in our rental car, I had to look twice at the Mapquest directions to realize that this trailer, only anchored by four cement blocks was in fact the place where our first interview was to take place. We walked inside and were greeted by smiles and looks of slight confused anticipation for the interview to come. They saw myself, a producer and our cameraman and I guess they expected more from BET, some type of BET Awards/ Hip Hop production.
But wait, maybe I took those quizzical looks for granted, maybe they were just trying to look past our eyes to see into our souls, so they could get some kind of inkling if we’d take their personal story seriously-just like Obama had I suppose. So we sat down, set up and began to listen to stories of economic hardship, struggle, and ultimate triumph in the mere thought that Obama- a black man might be elected as President. As I walked down the make shift steps, and look over my shoulder at the street nicknamed “Corridor of Shame,” lined with trailers and shacks disguised as homes I realized that Obama was more than a black man running for President. He represented the prospect of a real life change for these people, and honestly myself. How did he come across this street? What led him into this tiny hair shop? Can he possibly be more than a politician, looking to push some lobbyists agenda to put money in his pocket? Yes he can.
Then, my mind fast forwarded to traveling to Detroit, Michigan, a city so abandoned and impoverished that buildings once symbolizing this countries great economic wealth, now loomed sad and empty. Once again symbolizing what had happened to the U.S. in the past eight years, it’d been forgotten. Kids afraid to go to school because school was no longer a safe haven, were they could learn and be expressive without fear of the outside world. The education institutions in Detroit had been violated by the effects of a declining urban city: no money, more crime, less life. In that moment I realized, late as I might have been that we NEED Obama. We need this compassionate man, who not only embodies the hopes, dreams and aspirations of our ancestors, but realizes that change is NOT just a an adjective, it’s a verb. We need this intelligent educated brotha, who took advantage of all the opportunities that Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Rosa Parks had afforded us. We need this Father of faith, who can continue to usher our country into a new millennium with his smart economic policies, and care for the middle class. WE NEED THIS CHANGE.
As I woke back up from my daydream, I heard a stewardess announce that if we looked to the left as our plane made its decent, we could see Obama’s plane, that had just landed, and the Illinois Senator and his traveling press walk off. At that moment my plane erupted into applause, and though I’m young I knew I’d never seen anything like it, or would again. The people on that plane, Asian, Black, White, Hispanic all felt the same way that I did, a sense of bubbled excitement and anticipation for an Obama Presidency, just like they did in Columbia, in Detroit, and here now.
PLEASE VOTE.
-Angel
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Today marks the day when we will know who the next great leader of this country will be. Today marks the day in the history books when either we will have our first Black president or our first female vice-president. Today marks the day when your live will change, but most importantly, today marks the day that will change the lives of Americans FOREVER.
