Rogers Cadenhead on an Obama rally he attended in Orlando:
Throughout the event, black families, some with aging grandparents and young children, gently moved through attendees to get closer. Although the crowd was racially and generationally diverse, you couldn’t miss the emotion of blacks who had come to see Obama’s first event in the city. As an adopted Floridian who has learned the tragic history of race relations in the Sunshine State during my decade here, I had to marvel at the progress that brought some of the older Americans in attendance past central Florida’s Rosewood massacre, Klan lynchings, poll taxes and the civil rights struggle to this amazing moment in time.
Kind of made me think I should take a personal day and go out and see Obama if he comes back to North Carolina before the election.
October 22, 2008 at 4:49 pm
You probably have a good shot at seeing Obama again before Election Day. It was definitely worth the trek to see him in Orlando. I had to miss his Jacksonville stop a few weeks earlier because of another engagement.
October 22, 2008 at 9:42 pm
I’ve thought about flying out just to see him speak somewhere before the election. But actually I figure that once he wins, he’ll probably visit San Francisco at some point, unlike our present dear leader who’s too afraid to do so, poor baby.
I don’t have a hero complex about him; I just think that he’s the most decent and thoughtful political figure I’ve ever seen, that he has tremendous organizational skills, that he’s a great orator, a real progressive, and has the potential to be a unifying figure.
Of course being “just” those things means he’s the most spectacularly appealing political figure I’ve ever seen, because most politicians kind of suck.