Rebuilding my faith.

My father taught me my love of country. He always said that I was extremely lucky to be born into the United States. He valued the hard work of Americans and demonstrated it through a dedication to buying American products. He taught me the importance of helping our neighbors and most importantly, the value of voting. As a result, I have always been a liberal flag-waver.

But in the last few years, I had begun to lose faith in my country.

My crisis of faith isn’t due to the failure to elect Democrats. There are plenty of reasons for Republicans to rightfully win elections. I lost my faith when my people continued to respond to non-issues. I couldn’t help but be disappointed when voters responded to cultural, racial and class warfare instead of voting based on the best interest of themselves and their fellow Americans. Polls regularly showed that people voted for one candidate, when the other candidate better reflected their own positions on issues of the economy, education and foreign affairs.

Over the last few election cycles, it seems that a significant number of swing voters have based their votes on the superficial rationale of personality or baseless insinuations of character flaws. They’ve responded to charges of “flip-flopping”, boisterousness, and exaggeration. Some voters seemed motivated by fear of gays, Arabs, blacks, or other boogie men. Independent groups turned decorated war heroes into cowards and liars.

Voters couldn’t see beyond the rhetoric and see the damage happening to this country.

Yet, my faith is returning.

On Tuesday, my country elected a man named Barack Obama to be president. The victory of a Democrat does restore my faith, but not nearly as much as the actions of the people who worked to elect him.

We all expected racism be an ugly force in this election and it was. That said, the response to the racism was truly inspiring. Racist comments and voting behavior could have been brushed under the rug, but in this election, with so much at stake, white Americans confronted and battled racism in a way they likely never envisioned.

Richard Trumka, the Secretary Treasurer of the AFL-CIO took initiative and made several impassioned speeches on race. In each of his speeches, he spoke of a conversation he had the day of the primary in Nemacolin, Pennsylvania, Trumka’s home town:

"This woman walks up to me. I'd known her for a long time, and I ask her 'Have you decided who you gonna vote for?' "

"There's no way I'd ever vote for Barack Obama," the woman responded.

Trumka said he pressed her as to why. First, she said it's because Obama is "a Muslim." Trumka responded that Obama is actually a Christian.

Then, she told him Obama never wears an American flag pin on his lapel. Trumka told her that, too, is false, then asked her why she wasn't wearing one if that is such an important issue.

Trumka said he continued to push, until "her eyes dropped down and she said to me, 'Well, he's a black man.' "

Trumka said he told her to look around at their town, the mining community where they both had lived for so long. "And I said to her, 'This town is dying — literally dying.' "

"Our kids are moving away because there's no future here," Trumka said. "And here's a man, Barack Obama, who's going to fight for people like us, and you won't vote for him because of the color of his skin? Are you out of your ever-loving mind?"

These lines would always elicit great applause and really moved minds.

(Source: NPR.org)

About a week ago, National Public Radio ran an excellent report on the individual campaigners on the front lines. They showcased ordinary union members who pleaded and fought to elect Obama and pursued the votes of people who were openly opposed to Obama based on race. Some people were shocked to learn that long-time friends and co-workers, many who worked side-by-side with blacks, were racist. People argued. Some minds went unchanged, but many did. Friendships dissolved, but others were created. Older people, who never thought of electing a black man, voted for him. Many good people asked themselves about why they weren’t comfortable voting for Obama and upon introspection realized it was race that was holding them back.

In the end, people who were never directly confronted by racism or were never personally impacted by racism stood up and did the right thing at a time when many people would have folded. These are the people who restored my faith in my country.