I attended Hillary Clinton’s stump speech last Friday evening at Sarah’s Family Restaurant in Coventry. I arrived three hours before she was supposed to speak, and there was already about seven rows of people in front of the stage. Luckily, I ran into a friend of mine who had been standing there for two hours already and she was able to get me a spot in the front row with her. We passed the time and braced the cold weather by making small talk and cracking jokes. At one point everyone began chanting “Hillary!” and so I decided to stir things up a bit and yelled out, “George Bush!” This got some big laughs from the crowd and some angry looks until I reassured everyone I was only kidding. As we approached launch time, the crowd was getting a little antsy trying to spot Hillary in the line of politicians walking up to the restaurant. Deciding to rock the boat even more, I yelled out “There’s Bill!” and everyone got really excited until they realized I was only kidding again.

Finally, Hillary arrived and gave a rousing three minute speech about healthcare, education, the war in Iraq, and the economy. Afterward she walked around the perimeter of the crowd and as she came near us, I yelled out, “Hey Hillary!” and waved to her. She gave me a wide-eyed smile and waved in return, at which point I was somewhat awestruck and speechless. The only thing I could think of doing was throwing up the peace sign and saying “peace” to her. Funny enough, she returned the peace sign to me and said “peace.” It was a great moment in my short, but vivid existence on Earth. Hillary has a lot of power within her and I was reminded of it when she said “hi” and “peace” to me.

Even though Hillary told me to come out and campaign for her, I ended up going to the grand opening of Obama’s headquarters on Columbia St. on Saturday. There was a lot of energy in the crowd that day, and former mayor Graham Richard announced that he is supporting Barack Obama in the presidential race and encouraged all of us to do the same. After we started chanting, “Fired up and ready to go!” and the excitement caught up to me, I got sucked into campaigning for Obama with a few friends outside of the Wal-Mart in Southtown. I managed to register a handful of people to vote and about six or seven to volunteer their time for Obama within the two hours I was there.

It was an interesting sociocultural experience standing outside of Wal-Mart and trying to encourage people to register and vote. I was both surprised and disappointed by the amount of apathy that people had toward voting. Many people were not registered to vote and didn’t even care to register. I think some people fail to understand how important voting it is and even though it is easy to feel disconnected from politics in Washington, every vote does count and who gets elected President will make a difference to the future of our country. For a good example of the impact a President can have on our nation, look at the kind of tailspin our country has been in since Dubya was elected.

Anyway, that is enough about politics for now. The rest of my weekend was great. I went out to Columbia Street for a friend’s birthday party on Saturday night and finally saw the Freak Brothers play. I have to agree with their tagline that they are, “The funkiest band in the Midwest.” On Sunday I attended the Greater Progressive Baptist Church, a predominantly black church on John St. It was an all around enjoyable service with great gospel singing and an intensely good sermon from the pastor with lots of yelling and “Amen!”s from the congregation. It's one of the few church services in Fort Wayne where I don’t have trouble staying awake.