Asian Pacific Americans Volunteering for Obama/Biden (in droves!)

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FX7bKHjC04 Annabel and I have been volunteering three or four days a week for the Obama/Biden campaign in Northern Virginia, and will do the same down south in Charlottesville (home of Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia) this weekend.  With only a few days left before election day, duties as a volunteer are as rewarding as they are fun.  Barack Obama's vaunted get-out-the-vote effort has already narrowed the field down to people who are probably supporting Barack Obama, so as you go door to door, you'll be unlikely to be confronted with hateful idiots who still think Obama is "an Arab" (not that there is anything wrong with being an Arab of course).  Your job as a volunteer is to make it more likely that people who already support Obama/Biden will make time to go out and vote.

Last weekend, Annabel and I visited the home of a 78-year-old woman who had immigrated to the U.S. from Afghanistan.  She said she very much wanted to vote but was too old to leave the house.  We helped her fill out a vote-by-mail application and explained to her that she will be able to vote after all.  She was very happy about this, and it made us happy to know we'd given her the opportunity to participate in a historic election, and made a small contribution to the expansion of the American electorate.Yesterday, I knocked doors in a forest neighborhood in Annandale, VA, where I met 8 very enthusiastic Obama supporters and only one guy who said "I'm the complete opposite of what you're looking for."  In particular I'm happy about talking to a 22-year-old man named Jason who intended to take advantage of early voting, but had planned to go on a day when early voting is not available in Virginia (Monday, the day before the election).  Thanks to my visit, he'll be making plans to go today, Saturday, or on election day.

Over the past two years, I have seen the American electorate expand by leaps and bounds to include immigrants and minorities and many others who had previously been left out of the process.  Early on in this journey, Barack Obama has come to symbolize this national transformation, but it really is, as he will tell you, much bigger than just one person, even the future President of the United States.  This entire movement was made possible by our great democracy and the idea of government for the people, by the people.  Various measures have been taken to keep minorities from having a say in how this government should function, and the result has been disastrous, an electorate homogeneous enough to be blinded by fears and prejudices that cause them to repeatedly vote against their own interest, and against the interest of the nation.  Asian Pacific Americans can and are playing a pivotal role in a seed change, where the American electorate is becoming too diverse to allow a fear or hate-based political strategy to turn large blocks of voters against any particular minority (gays, Latinos, Blacks, Muslims, Asians, the poor, etc.).  With a diverse electorate, the only movements that can unite the country are based on values that we share across ethnic and religious barriers, across sexual orientation and cultural barriers -- in short, we will build a national consensus based on hope instead of fear.  Different groups fear different things, but we all hope for the same things: equality, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  That is the direction we can take America if all of us participate.

So go vote, of course, go vote. But voting is only one of the many ways that you can participate in your democracy.  By volunteering, you can help others who are intimidated or discouraged from voting, you can show fellow Americans how to become part of the process, and help them gain a sense of ownership and responsiblity for our government and how it is practiced.  Each person we bring into the process during this election will be an invaluable contributor to our democracy in the future (I'll expand on this in my first post after the election), all the more so because they forever remember that they participated in the historic election of 2008 -- and you will have made that possible.  So go do it!

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ky8Hvq-F0U