It was a cold, windy and dark night in the big apple, a frostbiteful type of weekend, as I decided to pay a routine visit out to the suburbs of long island to visit my own immigrant mother. As I calmly increased the base on my BOSE headphones for the train ride with the tunes of siberian trance, and soothed my eyes with a book from the golden ages of cinema depicting a chapter comparing the facial expressions of Charlie Chaplin in the 30's compared to Jim Carey in the 90's in the context of narrative structures in comedy genres with limited dialogue.
I arrived to my door steps, breezing out of a cab smelling fresh of pine tree air freshner mixed with white castle burgers, and putting closure to a conversation with an old cab driver about his point of view on Apocolycse's arrival based on the realtive increase of gothic music as a supporting premise.
Brushing my dogs hair off before giving my mom a hug, with my breathe smelling like sashimi and soy sauce. The aroma of curry sauces filled the air as I saw an especially interesting look in her eyes that night. You see a week ago I had spoken to her about my current volunteer activities with the Barack Obama campaign in Harlem.
About a half hour later, as I was checking my email, I walked past her room with the glaring images of the TV reflecting poorly acted dramas capturing satellite images from half way across the world, as she continued on with her phone calls with foreign relatives about who's cousin should be attending who's wedding in a whatever location.
I asked her to hang up on the phone and call the extremely loud aunt back at a later time. I asked her did she "want to learn how to use the computer to help barack win the Louisiana Primary tonight"? She said " I have been trying to learn for the past 10 years, but this is the type of reason one should want to learn".
You See, She had expressed interest in the use of this device called the Computer to seek out the World Wide Web but not with the this type of passion, because it propelled her to motivate herself to sit in front of it for 4 hours straight as she did that night. You Ask why my friends? Its because of change, because she wanted the courage to believe, because she had no longer believed in her right to vote as material, after having flashbacks of the Florida chads debacle.
Well I knew this was going to be a challenging task but the reason enough was sufficient to excel in the task, and wanting to learn how to log on to the computer at the age of 60 yrs old, and wanting to see how she can volunteer for obama, so like myself, I signed her up as a volunteer on his website, and quite simply started from STEP 1. How to turn the POWER ON of the PC and Monitor STEP 2. CREATE A User Name
STEP 3. Open up a browserSTEP4STEP 55. After creating an an account for my.barackobama.com
I must say with his amazing dashboard tools on his website, it was highly user friendly and customizable as you can change it based on your criteria, you can see his views on each issue, and then she was given 20 peoples phone numbers in Louisiana to call before the polls would close to encourage them to go out and VOTE to make a CHANGE as she had just done herself . The polls were set to close that night at 8pm eastern time and she had 2 hours to get these to go out and vote. So she was "fired up, and ready to go"
Struggling with her broken ENGLISH, having the right to vote herself she shared stories with each individual that picked up the phone, she GOT THE COURAGE to call these people in Louisiana, and tell them get to the polls, and with his highly effective tools on his website she was able to read the pre scripted messages and based on each response provide the necessary answers,
One person asked her the nearest location where he can vote, and she was able to provide him with the answer, as I SAT THERE IN SHOCK, amazed at her courage to not only learn the computer but make a difference within minutes, The next morning some people who she had left a message for even called back and she explained to them how they can still can help themselves.
2 hours later she gotten 4 people to go out and vote so she celebrated by playing an online game of checkers which she later learned how to access on the computer.
The next morning she asked me to check the news on who had won in the polls and subsequently the answer was HOPE, and CHANGE had won the next morning!
Ali K.
