35,000 Philadelphia Supporters Hail Obama’s Speech on Race

Barack Obama was greeted by the largest crowd of his campaign on Friday night in Philadelphia. It was the biggest gathering of Obama supporters that the campaign had ever seen, exceeding the 30,000 who greeted Obama and Oprah Winfrey in December in Columbia, S.C. An estimated 35,000 to 40,000 people pressed into Independence Park to hear the Democratic presidential candidate, four days before Pennsylvania’s crucial presidential primary on April 22nd.

Beyond the stunning fact that more people came out for Obama’s rally in front of Independence Hall than any other event since he announced his candidacy, there was a remarkable spontaneous demonstration of support that occurred when his speech ended. At least 5,000 people had nowhere to go but up Market Street. Obama’s charge of the night: “Declare independence!” was with them. They started with the familiar “O-Bam-A.” By 7th and Market Streets, they had graduated to “Yes we can!” By 10th and Market Streets, with hundreds of supporters streaming in between cars on the road, they were just cheering. At first, a few Philadelphia policemen cops tried to move the surging crowd to the sidewalks, but it didn’t work. The police finally retreated to the sidewalks, and a full mile away from Independence Park, the Obama crowd was still marching.

Barack Obama’s Philadelphia speech is now being hailed as one of the most powerful discourses on race ever given by a politician. Obama’s speech on race recognized that some blacks and whites still harbor significant anger and resentment. While condemning their hateful expression, he conceded that these feelings exist. Obama spoke from the heart, from his true experience of living in both our black and white cultures. His life, indeed his DNA, embodies a truly American experience. Obama mapped out his vision for getting beyond the distractions of race toward solving the real problems Americans face: the war, the economy, health, education and the environment.

Obama told the crowd that the United States is at a critical moment in its history, not unlike what the founding fathers faced in Philadelphia. “It was over 200 years ago that a group of patriots gathered in this city to do something that no one in the world believed they could do,” Obama said. “After years of a government that didn’t listen to them, or speak for them, or represent their hopes and their dreams, a few humble colonists came to Philadelphia to declare their independence from the tyranny of the British throne.”

The Illinois senator called Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton a “tenacious” opponent but said that it was time to move beyond the old politics of the 1990s. Hillary Clinton “is a tenacious campaigner and is a committed public servant,” he began. But her message, he said, is “that we can’t really change the say anything, do anything special interest game of so we might as well choose a candidate who knows how to play the game.” He mocked her “kitchen sink strategy” and then stated, “I’m not running to be the president who plays the same old game. I’m running to end the game.”

Thousands Rally for Obama in Philadelphia

Barack Obama’s Speech about Race

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In the Name of Faith and Love: For The Bible Tells Me So

An NPR Audio Discussion of For The Bible Tells Me So:

“The Bible is the word of God through the word of human beings, speaking in the idiom of their time, and the richness of the Bible comes from the fact that we don’t take it as literally so that it was dictated by God,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Can the love between two people ever truly be an abomination? Is the schism that separates gay and lesbian persons from Christianity destined to be always too wide to cross? How can the Bible be used to justify hatred? These are the questions that are at the heart of For The Bible Tells Me So, an exploration of the religious right’s use of the Bible to justify shutting gay and lesbian people out of the faiths into which they’ve been born and in which they’ve grown up. One of the central figures in For The Bible Tells Me So is Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first-ever openly gay man to be elected a Bishop of the Episcopalian Church. Robinson’s consecration in 2003 (at which he had to wear a bullet-proof vest due to death threats against him) was a historical occasion, but also one that caused a rift within the Episcopal church. On a more personal level, the consecration was the quintessential moment of the path on which Robinson had first embarked some 20 years earlier when, with the support of his then-wife, Isabella, he came out of the closet after years of attempting to live as a straight man and seeking counseling to rid himself of his “gay feelings.”

The film explores, with various historians and religious figures, including Robinson and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the use of the Bible in the religous right’s attempts to portray gay and lesbian people as being abominations against God and nature. The film seeks to both put a face on the issue of religion and gay life, and to give people dealing with family and friends who rely upon the same old Bible verses about gays a Biblical perspective of their own from which to respond. But at its heart this is a film not about historical Biblical theory, but about the real lives of families with gay and lesbian sons and daughters, and how they have reconciled their faith with their love for their children.

It also narrates the story of Chrissy Gephardt, who finally came out as a lesbian to her family just as her father, former House minority leader Richard Gephardt, was about to embark on his campaign for the Presidency. Chrissy talks about enduring a sexless marriage to a man before falling in love with a lesbian friend, admitting the truth about herself, coming out and eventually joining her father on the campaign trail, with his support and encouragement.

The film also introduces the Poteats, an African-American family in which both parents are preachers still struggling to accept that their daughter, Tonia, is a lesbian. David Poteat, Tonia’s father, says in the film that when his children (a son and a daughter) were growing up, “I said God, please don’t let my son grow up to be a faggot and my daughter a slut.” He chuckles ironically and adds, “And he did not. He did not do that. He reversed it.” The Poteat family story resonates with the unmistakable sounds of truth, love, and pain. These are parents who have struggled to accept their daughter as a lesbian, but still love her immensely and have never cut off their relationship with her. But the Poteats aren’t all the way there yet. Tonia speaks longingly of a day when her parents would willingly and gladly come to her wedding with her partner. But at least they are working on it, and they haven’t rejected their daughter.

The film avoids demonizing the religious right, instead simply holding up the families who are at the heart of the story and saying: Here they are. These are the gay people you so fear, and they are your sons and daughters, your brothers and sisters, the neighbors you’ve known for years. It speaks to the central point of the religious right’s objection to homosexuality without attacking those who hold those beliefs.

For The Bible Tells Me So made its world premiere in competition at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. The film was also honored with Audience Awards at the 2007 Seattle and Provincetown International Film Festivals and The Kathleen Bryan Edwards Award for Human Rights at the 2007 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. This provocative, entertaining film concisely reconciles homosexuality and a literal interpretation of Biblical scripture. It offers healing, clarity and understanding to anyone who desperately feels caught in the crosshairs of scripture and sexual identity.

For The Bible Tells Me So

There were many responses to the classroom killing of Larry King in Oxnard, California, and the ongoing violence against gay people that it so tragically represented, which included the now well-known statement that was made by Ellen DeGeneres on her television program. Be A Voice Against Violence is a Public Service Announcement video calling for all of us to take a stand against violence. The video includes appearances by Ashanti, Andre 3000, TR Knight, and Janet Jackson and was also created in response to the Larry King murder:

Be A Voice Against Violence

Remember The National Day of Silence on April 25, 2008. This year, The National Day of Silence is dedicated to the memory of Lawrence King:

The Day of Silence: Dedicated to the Memory of Lawrence King

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Texas Students Forced to March Seven Miles to Vote for Obama

This is a political story that touches the heart. Founded in 1876, Prairie View A&M is a historically Black university in Prairie View, Texas. The school is home to about eight thousand students studying in a range of fields, most notably engineering, nursing and agriculture. They have a famous marching band called The Marching Storm, which, as you’ll see in the video below, is pretty appropriate.

The student body represents a large constituency of Democratic voters, and, that being the case, they don’t have it so easy. Texas Republicans, who run the electoral show, have historically gone out of their way to hinder Democratic voters, and the whole state was gerrymandered back in 2003. For the students of Prairie View, the Republicans in the state located their early-polling place more than seven miles from the school. As it turned out, this was just a minor inconvenience to the student body well-taught by their own Marching Storm.

Texas College Students March Seven Miles to Vote

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America’s Top 25 “Brainy” Cities

America’s Brainiest Cities

American cities have been ranked by Forbes Magazine to come up with a list of the “smartest” cities in the country, the “best-educated” metropolitan areas. The list, which includes the top 25 “brainy” locations, was determined on the basis of the percentages of people with a high school diploma, percentages of people ages 25 and up with at least a bachelor’s degree, and percentages with a doctoral or professional degree.

The cities on the list have populations that range anywhere from 4 million people down to just 80,000. The common denominator among almost all of them, likely the key to rank placement, is that they’re college or university towns. The presence of post-secondary institutions is the main factor contributing to a number of the smaller locales appearing on the list, such as Ames (IA) or Corvallis (OR), boasting, respectively, 7.23% and 5.62% of their residents with Ph.D.’s. Boulder (CO), Ithaca (NY), Washington, D.C., Cambridge (MA) and Anne Arbor (MI) each claimed top spots in the rankings, in large part because substantial portions of their populations are made up of collegiate residents.

Metropolitan areas on the list that are not necessarily college towns are usually associated with some of country’s biggest high-tech centers, which include cities like San Francisco (CA) and Seattle (WA). There are also locations that tend to attract well-educated people who have the money to pay for high-end real estate.

America’s Top 25 “Smart” Cities

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Sandor Teszler: The Story of a Passionate Life

Wofford College: Old Main Building

The Sandor Teszler Library

Sandor Teszler: Biographic Notes

Sandor Teszler had been born in the old Austro-Hungarian empire, ostracized from childhood not so much because he was a Jew as because he was afflicted with club feet, requiring many painful operations. From an early age he loved music, especially opera, and later in life he would befriend his fellow exile, the composer Bela Bartok.

Extremely successful in the textile business, Teszler thought that his contributions to society would protect him from the Nazis. He was wrong, almost fatally so, for he and his wife and two sons were taken to a death house on the Danube, where victims were systematically beaten to death. Midway through their beatings, one of his sons pointed to the poison capsule each of them bore in a locket about his neck. “Is it time to take the pill now, Papa?” he asked. Inexplicably, one of their tormentors leaned down to whisper in Teszler’s ear, “Don’t take the capsule. Help is on the way.” Shortly afterwards, the family was rescued by an official from the Swiss embassy and taken to safety.

After coming to this country and making another fortune, he set about improving the lives of everyone he met. In the aftermath of the Brown versus Board of Education desegregation ruling, Teszler noted the escalating rhetoric around him. “I have heard this talk before,” he said. And with a combination of shrewdness and saintliness worthy of Gandhi, he decided be the first in the Southern textile region to integrate the work force in his mills.

Setting up heavy equipment in an unused high school gym, he took a group of workers for a prospective mill in King’s Mountain, N.C., to live there on the premises while learning the new operation. Half of the workers were white and half were black. After an initial tour of this temporary facility, he asked if there were any questions. Following an uneasy silence, one of the white workers raised his hand and said he was puzzled to find there was only one dormitory and one shower room. “That is correct,” Mr. Teszler answered. “You are being paid considerably more than other textile workers in this region, and this is how we do things. Are there any other questions?” “I guess not,” the worker said.

Some weeks later, when the new mill opened, workers of both races were greeted by a group of black and white foremen standing shoulder to shoulder. “Are there any questions?” a black foreman asked. After some shuffling about, one of the white workers raised his hand. “Let me get this straight,” he queried. “Is this plant integrated?” One of the white foremen stepped forward, the same man who’d asked a similar question some weeks earlier. “That is correct,” he said. “You’re being paid a lot more than other textile workers in this region and this is how we do things. Any other questions?” There were none.

Sandor Teszler at Wofford College

For Teszler, such episodes served to confirm his faith that people are fundamentally good. And, in the company of this man with such persuasive cause for thinking otherwise, people did tend to discover their better selves. Through the last decade of his life, well into his 90s, Sandor Teszler graced the campus of Wofford College in South Carolina, attending so many classes that the faculty, acknowledging a wisdom and experience far greater than their own, honored themselves by making him an honorary professor.

To hundreds of Wofford students he was simply “Opi,” Hungarian for grandfather. Today, the Wofford College library bears his name. In addition, Wofford has established the Sandor Teszler Award, which is given annually to a person who has made outstanding humanitarian contributions. Benjamin B. Dunlap, President of Wofford College, told the dramatic life story of Sandor Teszler at the prestigious TED conference last year in Monterey, California. The video of Dr. Dunlap’s talk is presented for you below.

Sandor Teszler at Wofford

Sandor Teszler: The Story of a Passionate Life

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