On the eve of the US presidential election, Kyle Murray, an American PhD student over here, reflects on Barack Obama's cross-racial appeal. Sadhbh Walshe, an Irish writer and film maker living over there, explains why she joined Team obama and went vote-hunting in Philadelphia.
EACH PASSING day, for the past several months, I have woken up and asked myself: "Is it over? Has he won yet?" I have to remind myself that there is yet more time to wait.
The dust is now settling, and I wait in tortuous anticipation to see something occur that I never believed would be possible in my lifetime - not a black man, but an "everyman" become president of the United States. It just so happens that it is the fact that he is a man of colour which can truly make Barack Obama an "everyman".
He is the validation to many who doubted (including myself) that the United States actually can work for anyone - at the very least, he is a living symbol of the hope that it can. This hope - after slavery, after Jim Crow, after the Freedom Riders in Mississippi, after the killings of Malcolm X and Dr King, after Rodney King, after Florida in 2000, and after Katrina in 2005 - this hope and belief that America is for everyone will have new meaning and a human face if the dust settles and we have a "president-elect" Obama - standing triumphantly for "everyman" and everyone born in and of the US or those who enter it with a dream. He is hope to this dream that America is an idea for all - and that the leadership of this idea is not limited to members of a country club reserved for those born into privilege or a skin tone.
People ask "Who is he really?" Is he a Christian? Is he a Muslim? Is he black? Is he white? They try to pin labels and terms on to him, but nothing seems to stick because he is "everyone". As a boy growing up in southeastern Virginia, I saw the shadows of an era in which this would have never been possible. My homeland is Southampton County, the same county in which Nat Turner led his slave revolt in 1831.
My parents lived through the tumultuous era of public school integration, and grew up seeing the gradual abolition of the Jim Crow caste laws that dominated the South up to the 1960s. Growing up in the early 1980s I saw traces of the "Old South", and saw the rise of the "New South". I was a minority in primary school and I attended what is known as a Historically Black College/University, or "HBCU" - where I received a free education on a "Minority Scholarship" - a quality education and a unique taught experience through the lens of "Black America", a community that made me feel at home.
I have been made welcome into African-American churches, and I frequently talked politics and religion with members of the Nation of Islam of Minister Louis Farrakhan, and would buy their weekly newspaper The Final Call for $1.00.
Needless to say, there was nothing about Rev Jeremiah Wright's sound-bytes or sermons that surprised or offended me. I had been hearing it, experiencing it . . . and even believing it for years. I could never understand why other whites - particularly many so-called "liberal" Yankees up north - never understood the discourse of Wright and Farrakhan, because I had always understood their grievances with the United States and the lie of the so-called "American Dream".
I watched with disdain as Hillary Clinton forced Barack Obama to denounce the comments made by Jeremiah Wright and the endorsement of Minister Louis. She just didn't "get it"."Most white folks never do," I thought to myself. At first, like the majority of the black community, I did not trust or quickly take to Obama. I thought he was too rhetorical and that no one could possibly be this much of a centrist. I was pessimistic, like I have been all my life - which is largely why I left America four years ago.
From the early 1990s onward, I saw what I thought to be a dangerous level of division in the United States on issues of a "moral" nature. I saw 9/11 occur and a brief moment of unity fall away into an even more nasty and divisive climate - so I got out.
When I heard this eloquent young speaker preaching a message of "hope", I thought it was all too good to be true. I remember being eight years old and fervently supporting the Rev Jesse Jackson's bid for the Democratic Party's nomination for president solely because I wanted the "underdog", a black man, to be president. Jesse Jackson's slogan in 1988 was "Keep Hope Alive". I, like so many others, wanted it for the wrong reason back then. I wanted to atone for the guilt of being a Southern, white, bleeding-heart liberal - bearing the karma from my forefathers.
Bill Clinton could speak the language, and brought blacks and whites together, but he still wasn't the empirical proof a mother of colour needed in order to point to her son or daughter and say: "Look, you can do that too." As I got to know his life story, I began to warm to Obama. Jesse Jackson has (in a roundabout way) accused him of being too white. The bottom line is that he is white, but he's also a black man. He is the son of an immigrant, the son of a black Kenyan man and a white country girl from Kansas; he is the grandson of a war veteran. These things, amalgamated, make Barack Obama the unified essence of a typically disjointed and contradictory American tradition. He is a living symbol of these separate traditions and contradictions reconciled.
I once thought that his simple message of "Change" was rhetorical, but now I view it as prophetic and prolific in a time of uncertainty, division and upheaval.
For nearly eight years now we've seen an era of prosperity and mediocrity erode and decay into a time of violence, fear and uncertainty. If this dream I have, the continuation of Dr King's dream, fails to materialise as a "reality", then I fear that I will continue to watch the "American Dream" decay for those who have tasted it, and remain unattainable for those who have lived in its dark shadow from its beginning.
Only when I see his victory, only when I see him standing in front of the seal of the highest office in the land, will I believe his message of "hope" and "change". I want to believe in him, and I want to believe in my country.
Only his victory and his inauguration will afford me such hope in change.
Kyle Murray is a post-graduate student of politics at the University of Limerick
I APPLIED FOR US citizenship in 2003 because I no longer felt comfortable being an alien in a post 9/11 United States. My green card felt as valuable then as my credit card does post economic collapse.
When my number was called a few years later, I pledged allegiance, registered as a Democrat and got psyched up to vote for the first time in a presidential election.
When the Maverick duet started to pull ahead in the polls, I called Team Obama and offered my services without preconditions. A few days later, I made the first of many trips to the swinging city of Philadelphia.
When we arrived at the local campaign office, the training session was under way. I scanned the faces of my fellow recruits. They were black, white and every shade in between. Team Obama has achieved legendary status among grass roots movements with its 1.4 million volunteers and small donor funding. Being new to the scene, I have nothing to compare it to. I can only say I was impressed.
Prior to our arrival we received numerous e-mails with detailed material about Obama's policies and talking points specific to different voting blocks. The focus of the training now was how to represent the Obama machine (Stay positive) and what to do when confronted by mad dogs or angry Republicans (Run for your life).
Shortly afterwards, armed with a clipboard and campaign pack, I was knocking on my first door. I had no idea what sort of reception we would get, but it quickly became apparent that people wanted to talk. I was surprised by how informed people were on the issues. I was surprised by how worried people in every income bracket were about making ends meet, about healthcare, and about job security.
My team registered numerous voters that day, ranging from kids who had just turned 18 to pensioners who had never voted in their lives but felt compelled to do so now. I was stunned by the level of anger at what had happened over the past eight years. I am equally stunned that it was allowed to happen.
No wonder Americans are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.
The second time I went to Philly (I get to call it that now), my friend and I were dispatched to a low income African-American neighbourhood. Everyone was registered. Everyone was voting for Obama. I wondered why we had been sent here at all until I learned that this area had only an 11 per cent turnout in the primary vote.
We were stopped on the street by an elderly gentleman sitting on his stoop. He told us we were naive if we thought white folk would vote for a black man. This was a fear we had heard voiced throughout the day, and it upset me.
I pointed out to him that my friend and I - two whites - had come to Philly from New York to make sure that a black man gets elected and that most white people are not racist and want a black president in office even more than he does.
He smiled up at me, his tired eyes twinkling. "You think so?" he said.
After I joined Team Obama, the poll numbers started to head in the right direction again. Of course I don't mean to take all the credit for this - no doubt the global economic collapse and the increasingly erratic behaviour of his opponent had something to do with it.
There was a time when I thought that if the worst comes to the worst, I could deal with a McCain presidency. He was not George Bush. He did make an admirable stand against torture. He has a history of bipartisanship.
But when, in a wanton attempt to seduce Clinton supporters, he chose a running mate who would put Paris Hilton to shame, and when his chief endorsement comes from a man called Joe the Plumber, whose first name is not Joe and who is not a licensed plumber, all respect went down the toilet. Sadly for Joe the Plumber, he is now being eclipsed by Tito the Builder. Sadly for John McCain, he is now being eclipsed by his own shadow.
So at the weekend, I trekked to Pennsylvania for the last time to do my bit for Team Obama. He is way ahead in almost every poll, yet any Democrat you talk to is in a state of absolute terror. Twice bitten. Twice shy.
But if by some delicious miracle we wake the day after tomorrow with a cool, calm, smart, sophisticated, black and white president, it will be because ordinary Americans of every race and creed banded together to make it happen.
Sadhbh Walshe is a New York-based Irish writer and film-maker