Obama from a Mom's point of view

I want my children to hear what Obama has to say.

I'm a mom with two daughters, an 8 and a 5 years old. They are growing up in a world that is vastly different than mine.

I grew up in a parochial school, it was all white. My neighborhood was all white.

Obama embodies my new neighborhood. My daughters' school is 25% non-USA/caucasian. Their best friends are from India and Poland, they play with the Japanese children across the street. One friend just moved here from China, her father is a French cook. Another friend is black, adopted into a white family. Another has parents from Lebanon and Egypt. My kids don't think about it, these are just their friends. Their world is global already.

Obama understands this integrated society, and can speak to our kids. He teaches our kids to have compassion and empathy. He teaches them fortitude. Here's an excerpt from a letter he wrote to a 7 year old boy:

"I hope you always remember to seize every opportunity to make the world better. Now, making the world better is not always easy, and you will probably find in your life that it is more comfortable to ignore injustices that don't affect you directly. Don't take that comfortable road. Challenge yourself to make a difference.

If you don't already know what it means, I want you to look up the word "empathy" in the dictionary. I believe we don't have enough empathy in our world today, and it is up to your generation to change that.

I leave you with three bits of advice that will make your life more fufilling: Look out for other people, even when it does not directly benefit you; strive to make a difference everywhere you go; and get back up every time you are knocked down."

I want my kids to hear this, I want them to live this.

Our children are listening. Here's a video from a Bronx high school of kids learning to overcome race, and feeling inspired, after listening to Obama DNC in 2004, and his "A More Perfect Union" speech:

I also want my kids to know how to work on a team, to collaborate and cooperate. I want my kids to be able to understand the whole picture, to listen to differing opinions. I want them to be involved in the community, not just consuming wages from a job. I want them to be politically engaged, to understand with a critical eye the influences that try to shape their opinion.

Obama is inspiring this. Here is an essay written by Molly Kawahata, a senior at Henry M. Gunn High School in Palo Alto, CA.:

Senator Obama often talks about his children and what they mean to him, and I think Malia and Sasha are driving forces behind his desire to seek the United States presidency. He looks out from his Senate seat in Illinois and sees a broken system, an underrepresented process, a population hungry for change. And he doesn't want his children to have to live in that world. We as Americans have become so jaded, so disenchanted with the political process that we are left with low expectations for our government's ability to serve us. And so we settle. We accept America's divide state as it is. We sit down; we watch, and we simply hope there isn't too much damage.

But that is all changing.

We are no longer waiting, but actively working, to improve our current state. Senator Obama has instilled in us that we, as a nation, as a government, as a people, can do better.

I will be casting my first vote for Senator Obama, and I feel fortunate that, within my lifetime, a figure resembling those I've only read about in history books or heard about my parents' generation has emerged. I have never seen anyone of this caliber. When our children, like Malia and Sasha, have grown up and inherited the world we left them, they will look back at man who started uniting the country before he even became president. And they will read about him in history books and recognize that there was a time when the American people united from the ground up, and all together said, "We can do better."

Here is a video where Molly presents her essay:

Molly's essay beat out peers from across Northern California to win the campaign’s essay contest “What it would mean to me if Barack Obama were elected our next President.” The essay contest entries were judged by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon of Berkeley, who with his wife, author Ayelet Waldman, had cosponsored an Obama fundraiser in Oakland back in June.

“All these essays show the powerful sense of connection young people feel to Barack Obama, because he is directly addressing their deepest concerns, their most powerful hopes, and the boundless idealism that is their greatest resource,” Chabon said in a news release.

I want my kids to hear Obama for the next 8 years. I want my kids to know how to step aside from meaningless divisions that consume our energy and distract us from the real issues. I want my kids to hear:

There is not a liberal America, and a conservative American, there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America, a latino America, an Asian America, there's the United States of America.