Michael Scherer
Time
For Kenneth Richardson II of Owings, Md., Barack Obama's election-night victory was not the end but the beginning. "We can't let this go," the 58-year-old father of three remembers thinking. "People feel invested. They feel they can actually do something." So he did. A couple of weeks after the confetti settled, he posted an alert on MyBarackObama.com proposing a new activist group in Calvert County, a rural exurb of Washington where the rolling farmland is dotted by weathered barns and crab shacks. Complete strangers signed up. A retired Air Force pilot, Phil Pfanschmidt, and his wife Joyce, both 71, came to the first meeting in December. So did Chris Melendez, a self-employed art dealer who lives about 30 miles away. Richardson's old motorcycle buddy Al Leandre brought his wife, a public-school teacher, and passed the word to some friends he had met through his government-contracting business. With a few clicks of a mouse, the Owings Grass Roots Group was born.
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xtina, Chigago IL like so many, "just don't get it". The world is in the economic mess because of "free market fix itself" which translated into "let me see how I can get more for myself by shuffling paper around posing as value". Obama's plan needs money but it is a plan that does not shuffle papers around posing as value, but is actually going to improve infrastructure and give real jobs to people. His plan is not "the house of cards" Bush administration allowed but it will have substance. If Obama does not spend the money, then the "great depression" will look like a tea party. But I bet you xtina, is too young to know what that was like, hey?
I've just joined a similar group in Pasadena, CA, and I'm excited to be a part of it. It's thrilling that for the first time in my life I feel a part of the system, even if I am just a tiny cog in it. For so much of it as a young person I felt that I wouldn't and couldn't affect change, and that my government didn't want me to.
I agree with (xtina) also look where he started this grassroot thing of his,I hope for our kids sakes yall voted for the right guy
The American People are back in charge. President-elect Obama through his use of the internet is seeing to it that it stays that way. God Speed Mr. President-elect.
xtina from chicago may think that clinging to the failed neo-con G W Bush policies of the past is the 'way out' but the the reality is that this kind of myopic two dimensional dogmatic thinking is Way Out ...... Way , Way , Way Out. It has brought the American People and the world nothing but suffering death and destruction simply for the sake of uncontrolled GREED ! It has shown the absolute worst of humanity. Now it is every American's duty to show the World Our Best.
Please contact your reps and senators to ask them to vote No to Obama's high spending. Instead, ask them to support a lower tax bill for businesses and all Americans (not just ONE select group of Americans). Let the free market fix itself. We don't want European socialism to ever permeate the US.
All of our modern technology on computers make it easy to be a loner, off to yourself, not socializing much because there is just so much on the internet to keep you busy. Pretty soon you feel disconnected and adrift. Obama has shown and is still showing us how to use the computing resources and the Internet as a tool to come together and work in community groups again – and to be effective using the tools at our disposal. When I was growing up the main theme of my generation was that we could change the world for the better. Well, we haven't but with Obama and our younger generations perhaps its not too late after all. If anyone can lead the way, its Obama.
Yes the movement continues and Obama's
supporters will make sure his plans to fix this
country manifest.