YES WE DID!!!!!!!!!

Barack Needs YOU NOW!!

NorCal Obama Headquarters Grand Opening!!

I drove home from the DNC to Berkeley (from Reno today) because I had a feeling that I should be at the Grand Opening for the Northern Cali HQ of the Obama campaign, and I thought it would be fun to surprise people at the event.

The East Bay Field Office is also home to the NorCal Headquarters, and tonight was the GRAND OPENING!!

When I drove up to the office tonight, I was astonished.

Before I could see any of the crowd, I could hear them chanting, "Yes We Can!"



There were hundreds of people lining the streets and clamoring to volunteer and express their support for Obama.
I got goosebumps and (finally) a parking spot...

The office was absolutely overun with people all fired up about Obama--we had over 500 people at the event!!!

Hundreds of people signed up to volunteer for phone-banking, traveling, and other help for the Obama campaign!!

I hadn't realized when I left Nevada this morning what a big event this was--I could hardly get into the office through the flood of people trying to get in to sign up to help.

We had an amazing set of speakers, who addressed the crowd from the upper balcony. Included in the program were San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Congresswoman Barbara Lee (CD-9), and Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates. Assemblymember Loni Hancock (CD-14), Alameda Central Labor Council Executive Director Sharon Cornu, Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson, and Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the California Labor Foundation Art Pulaski, and a representative from Ron Dellums office were also featured speakers.

The speeches engaged the crowd, which responded with cheers, emphatic chants of "Yes We CAN," and winning smiles!!


Mayor Gavin Newson mentioned that it is was better to be here at this grand opening event than to be watching Fox News; he continued by expressing that the Republicans are out of touch with the priorities of this country. He reminded us that the future is not in front of us: the future is within us!

Mayor Tom Bates spoke about taking our country back, and now is the time to do that together. These past years have been very hard on Americans and we have a chance right now to turn that around and take our country back.


Congresswoman Barbara Lee was stirring, eloquent, and as wonderful as a speaker can possibly be. The crowd loved her--they went wild when she spoke, when she raised her arms up, they cheered. When she finished speaking, the crowd began chanting, "Barbara Lee speaks for me." I couldn't agree more--as a fellow social worker and Obama supporter, Barbara Lee definitely speaks for me!! This was my first time meeting her, and she was as lovely and genuine in person as I imagined she would be.

Our Deputy Field Director for California, the dynamic and phenomenal Peggy Moore introduced the speakers and fired up the crowd! Her comments were inspiring and it was truly impressive to see how she was able to engage with the hundreds of people gathered below in a way that felt direct and personal, as if she were speaking to each person individually.

Peggy introduced Pam Coukos, our Regional Field Director for Northern California, and Pam gave a rousing speech highlighting the work that needs to be done in the next 60 days.

Check it out:

Peggy Moore, Barbara Lee, and Pam Coukos

America's Dream is My Dream

The first night I arrived in Denver, I had a powerful dream.

I was sitting in a cafe with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and

I was saying to him that the most profoundly important thing he had ever said was

"The time is always right to do right."

I told him that I have adopted this as my motto in life.

Upon waking, I felt a sense of peace and righteousness that calmed any worries or petty anxieties I might have about the path laid out before me.

This was the second epiphany dream I have had featuring MLK--the first one was about 10 years ago, when I dreamed that I saw MLK in the middle of a riot, and walked over to him, prostrating myself before him and kneeling down.

He was giant-sized and seemed God-like to me. I had my hands clasped in prayer position, and he bent down and took my hands.

He lifted me up with his hands until I stood with him, our eyes met and he communicated to me without words a sense that I am worthy and my work is important--I am not just a small girl at the foot of a mythic superhero.




I am an active participant in this world,

able to enact change and work for social justice.








Today Toshi and I visited the Martin Luther King Monument in Denver's City Park.

The powerful memorial was erected in 2002.

It features statues of Dr. King, Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Mahatma Gandhi.



Surrounding the statues in the four cardinal directions were stone carvings with a timeline of civil rights in America paired with Dr. King's words.






Within the stone carvings were these detailed depictions of the Black civil rights struggle in America. it was incredibly powerful, and neither of us were expecting to be affected as deeply as we were by this monument to Dr. King and others who have given their lives to the struggle for civil rights and social justice for all people.



Toshi and I both had strong emotional reactions to the monument and reflected on the moment, having just heard Barack Obama accept the Democratic Party's nomination for president on the anniversary of Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech and the March on Washington. When we got to the part of the monument which was inscribed with the quote about Dr. King's "four little children" living in a world where they are "judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character," Toshi allowed me to interview him about his thoughts and feelings about this monument and this moment in our history:



Yesterday, we arrived at Invesco Field yesterday just as the tribute to Dr. King began. We watched the video below and I cried:



Dr. King's children spoke eloquently in support of Barack Obama. His daughter began her speech: "Tonight, freedom rings from the snow-capped mountains of Colorado..."



Martin Luther King III asserted that his father would have been so proud of Barack Obama:

America's Hope, America's Promise

Tonight I was at Invesco Stadium where Barack Obama accepted the Democratic party's nomination for President of the United States!

It was amazing to be there in person to be part of history, and it was unbelievable to be one of a sea of people (84,000+ in the stadium and millions of viewers at home) supporting this phenomenal team for President and Vice-President!!

Here is a short video of the crowd going wild when Obama took the stage, so you can get a sense of what it was like to be there tonight!



Here is Barack's powerful speech, in which he outlined his platform and addressed the criticisms that the Republicans have used against him and other Democrats in the past. He did not invoke people's emotions--he spoke to our intellect and respectfully outlined the problems that Americans are facing and called for the Republicans to "own their failures" so that we can move forward together, united by a vision for an American future based on the American dream and the values this country was founded on:



I was awed and honored to be part of history tonight--it was definitely one of the highlights of my life so far. It is something I will tell my children and grandchildren about, and I feel so incredibly blessed to have been there to witness this moment in American history along with 84,000 of my closest friends!

I hope you all had the chance to watch Barack's speech live, and here's a whole new way to see it, courtesy of "Wordle" which creates these awesome collages of words (you can enter in any words and it will create a unique constellation with the biggest words being the most frequent):

It was very interesting to be there in person and then watch it on TV later--actually we watched it twice on CNN after we got home from Invesco (Toshi kept pointing to the screen during crowd shots--exclaiming, "There we are, those two little dots up there!). Some things looked better in person (the backdrop looked boring on TV but very beautiful in person; the exploding streamers looked kind of funny in person--they fell on the backdrop, the camera rigging, and obscured the view from the crowd cam--but they looked amazing on TV in the close-up shots). It was truly mind-boggling to watch the speech from our hotel room that night. We just kept looking at each other with eyes wide and mouths hanging open, "We were THERE!"

We are all part of this American moment and we all own a piece of our democracy for which we must take responsibility. As Barack Obama so eloquently stated:

"This has never been about me.
This is about YOU!"