Yesterday I heard Barack Obama speak at a high school north of Denver. Barack was a few hours late because he was on various phone calls dealing with the bailout fiasco, but one thing was clear: the crowd was FIRED up and we would have waited all day if we had to. When I first approached the high school I spotted a number of people running around in bright yellow t-shirts. My first thought was…hmmm, are they some sort of wingnuts? When I got close enough I was relieved to see that their t-shirts read “Fire Fighters for Obama Biden.” These are my kind of people.
I spoke with Randy Atkinson (pictured left) who is the Vice President of the 9th District of the International Association of Fire Fighters, AFL-CIO-CLC. Randy cited three examples of why he and all his buddies in yellow had come out in support of Obama: A) McCain wants to do away with employer sponsored health insurance plans, B) McCain wants to make social security mandatory, regardless of other pension plans people may have, C) McCain wants to privatize social security. Randy said that McCain hasn’t been good for working people, nor would he be as president. He concluded by saying that Obama is who we need right now because he wants to build from the bottom up and do right by the middle class.
Indeed, when Obama finally came out, his speech was all about what he intends to do for the middle class. He brought the crowd to their feet every few minutes with his trademark passion and eloquence. He made a clear case for why we can no longer tolerate business as usual. This is one fire that will continue to spread quickly, and I for one don’t think anyone will stop it.
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