| appearing at rallies and fundraisers for Democratic candidates across America, a sign that a bid for the presidency is not out of the question. On October 31, Obama appeared in Pere Marquette Park in downtown Milwaukee at a rally for Democratic candidates Governor James E. Doyle, Congresswoman Gwen Moore, Senator Herb Kohl, and Kathleen Falk who is running for attorney general. The workday rally attracted approximately 5,000 fans and supporters. Obama's appeal had an almost rock star quality to it. As Obama began to speak, young girls screamed with delight and the crowd roared its support for Obama. Clearly, his ship has set sail. Obama began his remarks by reflecting on his new book. "I first heard the phrase 'The Audacity of Hope' around 18 years ago," Obama recalled. "I had gotten out of college and I was busy figuring out how I could work on behalf of the community and help lift it up, to help lift people up. There was a group of churches on the south side of Chicago who were trying to deal with the devastation of the steel plants being closed all throughout that region. Tens of thousands of people had been laid off. Homes were for sale and foreclosure signs were every where. Emergency services deteriorated. Schools were having problems. Young people were getting into trouble." Obama was attending church one Sunday at the United Church of Christ, which became his home church, and was inspired by the pastor's sermon. "The title of it was 'The Audacity of Hope,'" Obama recalled. "And his sermon was very simple. He said 'Sometimes when you walk around, it seems as if the world is falling apart. There's war. There's famine. There's poverty. There's violence. And the easiest thing to do when looking around at all of the strife the world is in, is sometimes to take refuge in cynicism and conclude somehow that the world as it is, is the world that must be. There isn' much we can do to change things. There's not much we can do to make things better. And the best thing to do then is just to withdraw and try to make sure that we are taken care of and what we have for ourselves and not engage in the larger processes of American rule because we don't have much confidence in it.' But my pastor then said 'You know when things are bad, the church is the hope. And we believe that somehow things can be better than they are right now.' We can believe in a world that is more fair, and more just, and more equal." Indeed, Obama would use "The Audacity of Hope" as a prism to view and understand American history and to understand what was needed today. "We would not be here now if it weren't for "The Audacity of Hope," Obama said. "If you think about 13 rag tag colonies who decided they could get together and defeat the greatest naval power on earth. And somehow they were going to form their own new form of government that had never been done before. And somehow, they would spread across an entire continent and create a nation that is unmatched in power and prosperity in the world. No one would have believed that." Obama then went on to emphasize that it was hope that caused disenfranchised people to force their way into the American electoral process. "The founding charter, our Constitution, had the original sin of slavery within it, " Obama said. "And yet, people somehow believed that just because that was how it started, that didn't mean that was how it had to end. We had the civil rights movement and other movements so that more and more people became part of the American political community. And the fact that women couldn't vote. And the women said 'That's not going to work.'" The immigrants to this country were also filled with hope, Obama said. "Most of us are here because our parents, grandparents and great grandparents were willing to take that risk, the hope that somehow when they crossed that ocean and somehow, something better was going to be there as long as they worked hard and they created dreams for their children," he said. And, according to Obama, it was working people who also had the hope to make things better when they came together to form unions. "There were a lot of working folks who were working hard -- we believe in hard work and individual initiative -- and not getting their fair share," Obama said. "And while we admire businessmen, but we also think that they need to share some of that prosperity. And so, we formed and fought for unions to make sure that prosperity would be shared." Next issue: Obama's vision for America. |
| U.S. Senator Barack Obama appears at Milwaukee rally The Audacity of Hope by Jonathan Gramling Part 1 of 2 |
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| It seems as if U.S. Senator Barack Obama appeared from nowhere just a few years ago to now being considered as a possible contender for the Democratic nomination for U.S. President in 2008. Born of a Kenyan father and a Euro-American mother in Hawaii, Obama set the stage for public service by moving to Chicago in 1985 after graduating from Columbia University to work as a community organizer on the south side of Chicago. He entered Harvard Law School where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review and graduated in 1992. Obama returned to Chicago and made his name as a civil rights attorney before he was elected to the Illinois state senate in 1997. Obama served there until he was elected as a U.S. Senator from Illinois for Chicago in 2004 where he recorded a large landslide victory. Obama is an articulate and charismatic leader who is being carried away by current events to consider running in 2008. Recently, Obama has been on a combination book tour, plugging his new book "The Audacity of Hope" and |
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