How West Virginia Democrats Came to Terms with Obama's Rise

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: How W.Va. Democrats Came to Terms with Obama's Rise
By Amar C. Bakshi
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, October 22, 2008

WHEELING, W.Va. -- In June 2008, this small steel town, tucked between the swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, was grappling with the local consequences of Sen. Barack Obama's historic victory in locking up the Democratic presidential nomination. Almost as soon as Obama locked up the Democratic presidential nomination, the order came from Washington to merge the operations of the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign from the top down to the local level. The predominately elderly, white organizers who have run the county Democratic Party here for a generation were uneasy about integrating their operation with the Democratic presidential campaign, which was filled with new, unknown faces, many of them minorities....

***

"We got him. He was nominated. We have to accept it." (Democratic activist Waneta Acker) leaned forward, earnestly. "We have to accept it."

FAST-FORWARD FIVE MONTHS to October, and it feels like five decades have passed. On Sept. 2 the Obama Campaign and the local Democratic Headquarters cut the tape together inaugurating the joint "Democratic Headquarters for Change." Acker dates the beginning of the two camps' integration to July 24, the opening of the Italian Festival on the waterfront. She was busy setting up the Democratic Party booth when some of the Obama newbies approached her and offered their help passing out local politicians' fliers and registering voters. "I didn't know them from a load of coal," she remembers, "But they knew what they were doing" with their forms, their talk of health care and their relentlessness. "Just talking to them, I saw what nice people they were."

Next came the Stern Wheel Regatta, then Waterfront Wednesdays, then Party Picnics and so on. Setting her palms apart in the air and marching them together, Acker says, "Little by little we came together." There were compromises. Acker agreed to let the Obama folks take over the phone banking. "We only had one phone," she explains. Acker took charge distributing party literature to the Democratic faithful. The Obama volunteers let her lead the sale of Obama pins, pulling in $1,000 of the $1,200 she normally had to raise for two months of operating costs.

And the same local white Democrats kept coming to the headquarters, despite the life-sized cutouts of Obama. "I was surprised so many of them (white Democrats) have changed," says Acker. "Where they didn't accept the fact that he was colored, now they've changed their attitude. Really." "I also had some concern because he was colored that they (Obama volunteers) might turn the table on us here, but now when I see the way people have really worked together and banded together, I see a different way."

"It's a different era," she muses. "I accept it."...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/21/AR2008102102111.html?nav=most_emailed

[hvn_nbr_2]

1. I hope and expect that some of this will be a template for America

"Where they didn't accept the fact that he was colored, now they've changed their attitude. Really." "I also had some concern because he was colored that they (Obama volunteers) might turn the table on us here, but now when I see the way people have really worked together and banded together, I see a different way."

People will get used to seeing a black man on TV behind the presidential seal, dealing with their problems. They'll get used to seeing a black man representing them when meeting with worldwide heads of state, and they'll see the world re-embracing America as a result. The hard-core hatists (I made up that word) won't change, but I think a lot of racism is just habit and early training. People can and will learn to change their attitudes, when reality appears right in front of their eyes. Well, at least I hope so.

K&R.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

2. Welcome to the 21st century.

:eyes:

[Jane Austin]

3. "I didn't know them from a load of coal. . . ."

Hahahahahhahahahaha!