Hope vs Fear

Here's a reader's account of attending the Indiana rally where Obama made these remarks on racial divides and misunderstanding:

I was there, the father of four young voters, three of them for Obama including the one Republican in the family. Two of us part of a million small donors and counting. And me not a new voter but a new activist, standing for election as a delegate for the first time.

Because of our usual late position on the calendar, this becomes Indiana’s first real contested and meaningful presidential primary since 1968, when Bobby Kennedy campaigned hard here and won the state. RFK’s words in Indianapolis the night of Martin Luther King's assassination are inscribed on his gravestone and were recalled by Obama yesterday.

The overflow crowd in that Hoosier small town high school gym was white, black, rural, urban, male, female, young, old. All of us “little pieces of America”. To listen to Barack is to understand what patriotism based on open eyes, good faith and yes, hope is all about. The forces of fear and bigotry are loose upon the land, but  Obamas’s candidacy isn’t really about him, but about us. But we’ve got his back.