Reply #5: Powerful, and thank you so much for sharing this personal story.

[Tatiana]

:cry:

That's what it's all about, isn't it? Trying to make the world a little better, trying to bring a little happiness to that woman. She probably thought, what can you do for me? I've been here for years and nobody has seemed to care.

We have to reach out and tell those people that we DO care. In Chicago, I canvassed for Kerry in both the wealthy (University of Chicago) areas of Hyde Park and Lincoln Park. I also went to GOTV in very poor communities where public housing was being torn down and residents were being forced away from the Cabrini Green apartments where they had lived for decades.

I'll never forget a woman I met who had lived in one of the Cabrini Green "row-houses" for 15 years then was moved to one of the high rise units and her question to me was "Why should I bother to vote?"



"Is Kerry going to come here? Kerry don't care nothing about us." I looked at that proud woman, who had raised 4 children in the projects (one deceased) and I felt so helpless. A lack of hope was written all over her face. And I wanted so much to tell her that we care, that we want better housing for all the residents. That we wanted to give those people some hope that they could graduate from high school and go to college or learn a trade and be gainfully employed.

We need candidates who aren't afraid to go to the forgotten places, to see the forgotten people and to give them a voice. It's by God's grace that I wasn't a Cabrini-Green resident. I lived only a block and a half away from it, in Chicago's "Old Town" neighborhood and so I didn't have to worry about police not showing up if someone tried to stab or rob me. I didn't have to worry about being raped in darkened stairwell or stranded in a faulty elevator surrounded by the stench of urine.

Whether rural or urban, poverty is the same. Hopefully, we will have a Democratic candidate who will feel the same sense of urgency that John Edwards does that we need; we MUST do something about this problem.