Something BIG is Happening in Racine

Racine, WI, November 15, 2008 — A new group in Racine is attracting international attention. After only one week in existence, Yes We Can Racine has already been featured on National Public Radio and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Tapping into the spirit of volunteerism, Yes We Can Racine is a new non-profit dedicated to taking local action to solve local issues.

“The response has been phenomenal” according to Kelly Gallaher, one of the founding members. “We gained twenty-four volunteers in the first twenty-four hours of operation. After only seven days there are already more than seventy volunteers connected online.”

Yes We Can Racine was formed in the wake of the recent presidential election. According to Gallaher, “Several of us worked together to elect Barack Obama as president. We knew during the election that we were connected to something larger than a political campaign – we were part of a movement. Now we’re taking the ‘campaign for change’ and we’re transforming it into the ‘community for change,’ our own self-directed movement.”

Diana Kovacs, Director of Generation Obama, or GO! commented “I didn’t want the movement to end when the election was over. I love being part of this group. It gives us a chance to take the organizing principles we learned during the campaign and to apply them to local problems. It’s sort of that spirit of ‘We are the ones we have been waiting for.’ If there are going to be solutions to our issues in Racine County, it’s going to be up to us. No one else is going to do it for us.”

First steps have already begun for Yes We Can Racine. A web site is up and running at http://yeswecanracine.com. A meeting is planned for December 6 at 10 AM at Blueberry’s Eatery (522 6th St, Racine, WI). See the web site for details.

A fundraiser for the Racine County Food Bank is also being planned for January.

Yes We Can Racine!

Do you wish we could keep the momentum of the campaign going now that the President has been elected? Some of us have been thinking about how we can keep the spirit of the campaign going, and we think we’ve hit upon an idea. We’ve started a web site for Racine County Wisconsin called YesWeCanRacine.com. There you can add your voice to the discussion at the forums, keep up with the latest events and remain involved in the movement to change our world.

Yes We Can Racine is more than just an online presence. It is a local community movement. It is about answering the call of President Barack Obama in our neighborhood:

“And above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done in America for 221 years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

“What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter cannot end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

“So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers - in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.”

- Barack Obama, 44th President, 4 November 2008

Join the movement today. Log on to http://yeswecanracine.com/ and let the conversation begin.

Choose Hope over Fear

This election comes down to a simple choice: Do you want to live a life of love, or do you want to live a life of fear? I'm going to tell you how I have chosen, but first I have to tell a little story.

Several years ago I was seeing a counselor to help me sort through some issues. At one point she asked me the typical, “…and how do you feel about that?” question. As she saw me struggling to come up with a word that would perfectly describe my nuanced feelings, she offered this suggestion. “Don’t try to come up with the perfect word. Just think of feelings as four primary colors – sad, mad, glad and scared. Which one of those are you feeling?” That helped a lot. After spending a lifetime learning a thousand different words for “happy,” I finally had a simple way of expressing how I felt.

For several years I continued to use this simple four-color method for sorting through my feelings. After a while I began to simplify this system further until I realized that, for me, all of my feelings came down to two – love and fear. I have found it useful to ask myself, “Right now, am I coming from love, or am I coming from fear?”

I want to live a live that comes from love, but there are a lot of forces that are working in the opposite direction. Who told me to be afraid?

There is an entire news industry whose job is to milk my glands with dire threats and imminent dangers. Someone once told me that “the body cannot absorb the amount of grief produced by our modern 24 hour news channels.” I believe that.

There are the K-Street lobbyists who would rather win a battle for funding than to really help and educate the American people. Richard Feldman, a former lobbyist for the NRA said in his new book Ricochet, “Drawing nice clean lines between ‘us’ and ‘them’ to battle over makes for far more successful direct mail solicitations than actually solving problems.” How sad.

Unfortunately, some presidential candidates want us to be afraid – they want us to fear Latinos and gay people and the Jihadist who is lurking around the corner. They want us to suspect the motive of their fellow public servants and to believe their opponent in the race is the anti-Christ. Their dark scary ads warn us of the weakness of their opponents and the imminent danger brought on by voting for them. Their message is, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

Well, I choose not to live in fear. I have chosen a candidate of hope – one whose message comes from love and not fear. I have chosen to caucus for Barack Obama.

Barack Obama speaks of the importance of faith, telling us “But over the long haul, I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in people's lives -- in the lives of the American people -- and I think it's time that we join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy.”

He reminds us that justice is in OUR hands. He said “Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the crowd of thousands and said ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.’ He's right, but you know what? It doesn't bend on its own. It bends because we help it bend that way.”

He calls us to service, saying “I am here today to…invite you to take hold of the future of your country. Because your own story and the American story are not separate - they are shared. And they will both be enriched if we stand up together, and answer a new call to service to meet the challenges of our new century.”

Faith, hope, love, justice, service…these are the reasons I support Barack Obama. I hope you will too.