Michelle Obama to visit Asheville?
Rumor has it that Michelle Obama will be in Asheville on Friday. Stay tuned for updates as they come in!
Update: Yep, today (Friday) at the UNC-A Quad. Doors open at 4:30 p.m., speech begins at 6:00 p.m.
For preferred viewing tickets visit: http://nc.barackobama.com/MOasheville
A limited number of preferred seating tickets are also available to early voters at Board of Elections, North and West Asheville libraries, and Biltmore Square Mall early voting sites. Only 1 ticket/early voter.
The event is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required, but RSVPS are strongly encouraged.
For security reasons, do not bring bags. Please limit personal belongings. No signs or banners permitted.
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008Volunteer for Barack today!
More volunteers are urgently needed at the Asheville Barack Obama headquarters. Just stop by at 107 Merrimon Avenue (next to Bojangles) and ask how you can help. Canvassing and phone banking is going on all day and into the night.
You can also make calls from home. Just call (828) 225-5904 to find out how. Outside of Buncombe County, visit the Obama ’08 website for information on how you can lend a hand.
We’re in the home stretch and need to redouble our efforts to ensure a huge turnout for Barack.
Yes we can!
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008Vote in the May 6 NC primary
If you live in North Carolina (or Indiana), you have a unique opportunity to make your voice heard on May 6 and help make Barack Obama the next president of the United States. In addition, it’s time for some new (and progressive) blood on the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners with Cecil Bothwell and Holly Jones leading the pack.
From now until Saturday at 1:00 p.m. you can still register and vote early at ten locations around Buncombe County. Then, of course, you can vote on May 6 at your usual polling place. Click here for information on voting elsewhere in North Carolina.
The North Carolina ballot is relatively long and complex. And while I’d never try to tell anyone how to vote, below are my picks in the various races. Tip of the hat to Cecil Bothwell at bothwell’s blog for doing the research on most of these candidates.
President of the United States
Barack Obama
Buncombe County Board of Commissioners
Cecil Bothwell
Holly Jones
Keith Thompson
K. Ray Bailey
U.S. Senate
Jim Neal
Governor
Richard Moore
Lieutenant Governor
Dan Besse or Hampton Dellinger
Auditor
Beth A. Wood
Commissioner of Insurance
Wayne Goodwin
Commissioner of Labor
Robin Anderson
Superintendent of Public Instruction
June Atkinson
State Treasurer
Senator Janet Cowell
Non-partisan judgeships (Back of the ballot)
Court of Appeals
James Wynn
Court of Appeals
Kristin Ruth
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008Obama calls on us to help change the nation
Obama calls on us to help change the nation
By Bruce Mulkey
Asheville Citizen-Times, April 29, 2008
In early 2007, I spent a few days in Nashville with Al Gore, being trained to present his global warming slide show. Contrary to the mainstream media’s portrayal of the former vice president, Gore proved to be warm, witty and engaging. At the end of the training, I thanked him for what he was doing, wondering (but not asking) if he planned to run for president again. For a few months thereafter I hung on every rumor of Gore’s candidacy until, alas, it became obvious that he did not intend to enter the race.
So I shifted my support to John Edwards and made a modest contribution to his campaign. I watched the results of the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses hoping for an Edwards upset but gained a revelation instead: Barack Obama’s eloquent and inspiring victory speech compelled me to switch candidates again.
Since, however, Obama was a relative newcomer to the national political scene, I had questions about him and his bid for the Democratic nomination for president. Who was this guy? What was his vision for America? How was he different from any of the other candidates running for president?
So my wife Shonnie and I did some research on the Internet. Then we downloaded both of Obama’s books — Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope — and spent evenings listening to them and learning more about this man.
Who is Barack Obama?
In doing so, we learned that Obama was raised by his single mother and his grandparents. After graduation from Harvard Law School, rather than taking a prestigious position at a high-powered law firm, he went to Chicago to head a voter registration drive.
He ran grassroots, citizen-funded campaigns for the Illinois State Senate and the U.S. Senate and has gained as much legislative experience as Abraham Lincoln had when the Great Emancipator ran for president. He has co-sponsored legislation that will help provide cleaner air and fight methamphetamines, both serious issues in Western North Carolina.
He wants to do more than end the Iraq war — he wants to end the mindset that got us into this war in the first place. Among Obama’s values are personal responsibility, self-reliance, empathy, authenticity, honesty, thrift, fairness and love of country. He is a servant leader who calls on us to be leaders in our own right. Finally, we learned that he is a committed, faithful husband and a devoted father whose personal and political decisions are informed by his deep Christian faith.
So I decided to get to work for Obama. Before I began volunteering locally for his campaign, I’d heard some referring to it as a personality cult, a throng of naïve, youthful Obamaniacs who had drunk the Kool-Aid and blindly followed this political pied piper wherever he led. My personal experience is quite the contrary.
Hundreds of self-organized volunteers of diverse ethnic origins, ages, sexual orientations, socio-economic backgrounds, professions, religious faiths and even political parties have joined together in Asheville and throughout Western North Carolina to reclaim the political power that is our birthright. We have united to help Barack Obama win the May 6 North Carolina Democratic Primary and move him one step closer to becoming president of the United States.
The right leader at this crucial time
It may still be business as usual for many Washington insiders. But here in Asheville and across the land, a powerful movement of energized citizen-activists has arisen. Barack Obama has rekindled the hopeful vision for our nation that lies deep within each of us.
He has called on us to make that vision a reality, to become personally accountable, to help our country correct the course it is on.
With your support, we will seize this opportunity to bring about fundamental change in our nation’s capital. We will rebuild our schools and infrastructure, restore our constitutional rights, bring our troops home from Iraq, curb global warming, make health care available to all and restructure our economy. Together we will transform America into the country it’s meant to be.
We are the ones. Now is the time. Please join us.
Bruce Mulkey is an Asheville writer and communications consultant. Mulkey is a former community columnist for the Asheville Citizen-Times and currently blogs at brucemulkey.com. You may contact him at bruce@brucemulkey.com.
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008“My Vote’s for Obama (if I could vote)” by Michael Moore
My Vote’s for Obama (if I could vote)
by Michael Moore
Monday, April 21st, 2008
Friends,
I don’t get to vote for President this primary season. I live in Michigan. The party leaders (both here and in D.C.) couldn’t get their act together, and thus our votes will not be counted.
So, if you live in Pennsylvania, can you do me a favor? Will you please cast my vote — and yours — on Tuesday for Senator Barack Obama?
I haven’t spoken publicly ’til now as to who I would vote for, primarily for two reasons: 1) Who cares?; and 2) I (and most people I know) don’t give a rat’s ass whose name is on the ballot in November, as long as there’s a picture of JFK and FDR riding a donkey at the top of the ballot, and the word “Democratic” next to the candidate’s name.
Seriously, I know so many people who don’t care if the name under the Big “D” is Dancer, Prancer, Clinton or Blitzen. It can be Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Barry Obama or the Dalai Lama.
Well, that sounded good last year, but over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I’ve watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name “Farrakhan” out of nowhere, well that’s when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the “F” word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama’s pastor does — AND the “church bulletin” once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin! (more…)
Monday, April 21st, 2008“Obama best bet for America’s future” by Shonnie Lavender
Obama best bet for America’s future
by Shonnie Lavender
Asheville Citizen-Times, April 20, 2008
‘Leadership is not a solo act, it’s a team effort.”
–James Kouzes and Barry Posner in The Leadership Challenge
Fundamental changes must occur if America — as we hope she can be, as she has been in part before — is to come alive. No one individual, regardless of intellect, experience, age, race, sex, or any other “qualification,” can create this country anew. Such a transformation will happen only through the work of the millions of us who are blessed to call America home.
Barack Obama is the only candidate of either party who understands this because he is the sole contender who really wants Americans to be fully engaged.
Attend any meeting of WNC for Change, the local grass-roots effort to elect him as president, and you’ll see plenty of evidence of how active and autonomous Obama wants us to be. Come to the local Obama for America headquarters (107 Merrimon Avenue) and see how organized and effective a citizen-driven voter registration campaign can be.
The other two candidates view us merely as voters, pursuing us to the polling place, coaxing or coercing us to give them our vote before showing their true colors with rehearsed and hollow “thank yous” and the swiftest of departures.
Barack Obama is unique among those aspiring to be president because his goal is to serve and lead rather than to rule and govern.
He believes, as Abraham Lincoln described in his Gettysburg Address “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Though other presidents have encouraged civic participation, Barack Obama is one of those rare individuals who understand that true power lies with the people and that “we the people” must be fully engaged beyond election day if transformational change is to take place.
Grass-roots support
Those heading governments and businesses may craft and enact policies hoping to shift the direction of a country or company, but without the support and follow through of those on the ground, policies never come fully to life.
By sharing responsibility with campaign staff and ordinary citizens alike, Obama is developing the leadership capacity of his followers and setting the stage for more powerful and sustainable results because success becomes everyone’s personal mission, not simply his own.
If you yearn for America at her finest — a country where your best is wanted and needed every day; where your welfare is equal to the welfare of all others; where your ideas, your voice, and your simple, consistent presence are valued for the irreplaceable gifts that they are — then Barack Obama is the only person worthy of your vote in this year’s presidential process.
People’s responsibility
Remember, however, that leadership is not the domain of a few gifted women and men, it is the responsibility of all people, not just the duty of our elected officials.
If you are ready to be part of the movement that instills faith in those feeling hopeless, courage in those constrained by fear, passion in those who have lost heart, and inspiration in those without a vision, I invite you to join millions of your fellow American citizens who support Barack Obama.
With Obama as president, and each of us as fully committed participants in this developing democracy, America can fulfill her potential and be the country we know we can be.
Shonnie Lavender, who lives, works and plays in Asheville, is currently earning her master’s degree in organizational leadership from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. In her spare time she registers voters for the N.C. primary and works to GOTV. (Shonnie is also my wife.)
Monday, April 21st, 2008ABC’s presidential debate an unmitigated disaster
My Instaletter in today’s Asheville Citizen-Times regarding ABC’s presidential debate last Wednesday:
The moderators of ABC’s so-called presidential debate must have a very low opinion of the citizens of this nation if they think we prefer gratuitous “gotcha” questions to substantive deliberation of critical issues such as the economic meltdown, universal health care, rising energy costs, global warming, eroding civil liberties, torture, education and immigration.
Update: Jon Stewart Eviscerates ABC’s Hacktacular Debate from Crooks and Liars:
The first hour of last night’s debate was a 60 minute master class in questions that elevate out-of-context remarks and trivial, insipid miscues into subjects of natural discourse…which is my job! Stop doing my job! That’s what I’m here for! I’m the silly man!
–Jon Stewart
Enough said.
Friday, April 18th, 2008Keep those letters to editor for Obama coming!
Hi, folks. We’ve had a number of excellent letters to the editor and guest commentaries in support of Senator Obama’s candidacy published in the local print media in recent weeks. To those of you who have contributed, way to go! To those of you who haven’t yet done so, I encourage you to submit a letter before the May 6 primary. I also suggest that you tell your story about why you support Obama–what inspires you, what gives you hope, your vision for a nation with Barack at the helm–for when we react to negative articles or letters about our candidate, we only give them energy.
Many of the pro-Obama letters and commentaries that have been published during the past few months in Asheville and Hendersonville may be accessed as a Word document by clicking the following link: Letters to Editor for Obama. If you know of others letters or commentaries that have been published in WNC, please bring them to my attention. You might want to use some of these to draw inspiration, or you might just want get out a clean sheet of paper (or your keyboard) and start writing.
In addition, I have included a link to Telling Our Stories Project, a Word document that provides some suggestions for telling your story in a compelling manner and shows links as well as specific guidelines for submissions to the local print media. I’ll be glad to discuss this process with you and/or provide editing or submission support if that would be helpful.
Only three weeks to go. Let’s pull out all the stops and make North Carolina a big win for Barack Obama on May 6.
Thursday, April 17th, 2008
