Obama in Plainfield, IN: 'We have to come together'

MUST SEE. This is leadership:

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Background and Partial Transcript:

Before taking questions, Barack reminded the crowd of the speech Bobby Kennedy gave in Indianapolis, right after the death of Martin Luther King, nearly forty years ago...

Some of you were alive when this speech was given... He was in a crowd mostly of African Americans. And he delivered the news that Dr. King had been shot and killed. And he said, at that moment of anguish, he said, we've got a choice... in taking the rage and bitterness and disappointment and letting it fester and dividing us further, so that we no longer see each other as Americans, but we see each other as separate and apart and at odds with each other. Or we can take a different path that says we have different stories, but we have common dreams and common hopes. And we can decide to walk down this road together. And remake America once again. And, you know, I think about those words often, especially in the last several weeks - because this campaign started on the basis that we are one America. As I said in my speech at the convention in 2004, there is no black America, or white America, or Asian America, or Latino America. There is the United States of America.

But I noticed over the last several weeks that the forces of division have started to raise their ugly heads again. And I’m not here to cast blame or point fingers because everybody, you know, senses that there's been this shift...

We’ve got a lot of pent-up anger and bitterness and misunderstanding. But what I continue to believe in is that this country wants to move beyond these kinds of divisions. That this country wants something different. And so –

The crowd interrupted the speech and began to chant: "Yes we can! Yes we can!" Barack continued:

I just want to say to everybody here that as somebody who was born into a diverse family, as somebody who has little pieces of America all in me, I will not allow us to lose this moment, where we cannot forget about our past and not ignore the very real forces of racial inequality and gender inequality and the other things that divide us.

We have to come together. That’s what this campaign is about. That’s why you are here. That’s why we're going to win this election. That’s how we're going to change the country.

Also See:

• A New Hope | Jann S. Wenner | Rolling Stone
  
  
  

  "Rolling Stone Endorses Obama: The tides of history are rising higher and faster these days. Read them right and ride them, or be crushed. And then along comes Barack Obama, with the kinds of gifts that appear in politics but once every few generations. There is a sense of dignity, even majesty, about him, and underneath that ease lies a resolute discipline. It's not just that he is eloquent — with that ability to speak both to you and to speak for you — it's that he has a quality of thinking and intellectual and emotional honesty that is extraordinary...."

• The Machinery of Hope : Rolling Stone:

  "Inside the grass-roots field operation of Barack Obama, who is transforming the way political campaigns are run..."

Technorati tags: Barack Obama, speech, Politics, Indiana, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Divisiveness, change, 2008 Presidential Election