I had a fairly traumatic youth. My parents were excellent parents but parents cant be super heroes. They tried to do their best but external factors influenced our lives so much, and the only reason I turned out the way I did was because of my parents love and because of community organizers like Barack Obama.
I was born in Philadelphia. My mom was a stay at home mom when we were young but later became a pastor. My dad worked as a building contractor. Everything was pretty good until 1989. I was just entering high school and my mother had become a pastor a few months earlier. Well, in the middle of March, my mom ended up quitting the church because as in the words of the senior pastor there "she was only hired to shut the women up" My mom was devastated, and to this day will not attend church, neither will I. We all become cynical of the church and Christians yet never lost our faith. My mom still despises "Christians" and is very critical of people like Dobson and other nut jobs. Well at this same time, my dad became very sick. We could not figure out why. He could no longer work at all, if he tried to return to work he would become even more sick. He went in for test after test after test, but they could not figure out what was wrong. He had not been working and my mom could not work, she never had never finished high school. We tried to get unemployment insurance but were told that they believed that he was faking and refused us. We had no choice, we had to move in with my Grandparents in Quebec city. They did not have any money either but had room for us. Now moving is hard enough but also moving countries (even if it is Canada) is very difficult. Plus I had to take a crash course in French. Our financial trouble never improved. I started school in a French school and found it very hard being in a new country, even though I am Canadian, and even worse when you speak french with an accent. My dad still could not work and he didn't know much else besides construction. We were extremely poor. I remember for the entire winter I walked to and from school, about half an hour, with running shoes and on the right shoe the top had come apart from the bottom on the front of my shoe exposing my toes to the harsh Canadian winter. I remember walking home with every step more and more snow being shoveled into my shoe, wearing an old winter coat that I had from Philadelphia that barely fit me anymore. I always thought to my self that its going to get better, it cant get much worse, and luckily it did. Finally as the snow began to melt, my mom came in contact with this community group in Quebec which offered her a job offering computer training courses. We finally began to bring in a steady income. My Dad who had been trying to work as much as possible but still getting sick finally got proper testing done at a hospital in Montreal. They told him he was allergic to wood dust and could not be around any construction. The same community group that got my mom that job offered to retrain my dad so he could work in management. He was retrained and got hired to be the manager of a local hardware store (Rona for all the Canadians out there). With my dad finally making good money my mom was able to go back to school follow her passion and became a Therapist. After Graduating from CEGEP I went to McGill University in Montreal and graduated with a masters in Political Science and worked for a Bloq MP(It was a different time) from Montreal before quitting and becoming a language consultant for major companies and government operating in Canada and the USA.
So why write all this? Well because when I hear people say things like
He worked as a community organizer. (Laughter) What?...Barack Obama has never led anything, nothing, nada.
from Giuliani or
This world of threats and dangers, it's not just a community and it doesn't just need an organizer. (Laughter.)
From Sarah Palin, it sickens me. Me and my family are where we are because of people like Barack Obama. I am not where I am because of the government, it is because of community organizers who got my mom a job and retrained my dad so that he could provide a living. It is not because of the government that I went to one of the best schools in Canada, it was because a group of 14 people in Quebec City saw my family needed help and offered help. The only response we got from the government was "he is faking." When I hear stories about Cindy McCain's outfit costing between $299,100 and $313,100 it sickens me to think that she would gladly spend $300,000 on a outfit while there are kids out there who cannot afford shoes that doesn't shovel snow right onto their socks. It infuriates me that these F*#$ers think its ok to waste money on houses and expensive outfits and continue to help those that already have the means to help themselves and mock the very people that are trying to make this world a better place for everyone. Yet for some reason they have the audacity to think they deserve the right to lead this country, well I think Obama needs to show them what a true leader does for those they lead.