Actor Will Smith of the 1990’s hit television series Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’s little cousin “Ashley,” played by actress Tatyana Ali, visited Shaw University as a volunteer for Senator Barack Obama. Ali was invited by the North Carolina “Students for Obama” grassroots movement, to discuss current issues surrounding the economic crisis, while rallying students to register and vote.
According to the official Barack Obama website, Facebook is where “Students for Barack Obama” was founded in 2006, after a few students petitioned the Senator to run for President. The editor says the passion and dedication of thousands of students who joined the initiative has transformed that movement into the official student organization of Obama for America – which is now one of the largest grassroots student organizations in history.
Senior, John Kornegay says, “If the McCain campaign doesn’t attempt to show up with some sort of student initiative for Historically Black Colleges and University’s (HBCU) he will not receive the student votes.”
Dave Knitty of the McCain Headquarters response was that the students for McCain initiative was just initiated and it is ran by two unknown students attending Duke University. However, other officials did not respond to more specific questions about HBCU student initiatives.
Senior, Mikhail Wright response was”I don’t really care about the election anymore I was a Hillary supporter. I don’t know much about McCain so I think I’ll vote for Obama.” “I have never volunteered on a campaign before and if it wasn’t Senator Obama specifically I would not be volunteering.” Ali, currently in pre-production for the thriller Locker 13, said after declaring that she was in fact angry about the current state of the economy and understands how people can sometimes distrust the American government.
While the American family searches for solutions to end the economic crises, the Bush administration answers by deducting $600 billion plus half-trillion dollars from tax payers earned incomes. Only to take over bad debt and mortgages from some of the biggest names in American finance including investment bank Bear Stearns, loan giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the world’s largest insurance company, American International Group (AIG).
Yet, According to Ali over 8 million people are not registered to vote. “This election is very important, the issues that Senator Obama talk about are not black issues, or white issues, but they are people issues. We want volunteers, but more importantly we need Shaw students to register and vote. The Obama campaign is a grass roots campaign, the real power is behind the students.”
“Your kids are going to ask you where you were during this time – your grand kids are going to ask you — wouldn’t it be nice to tell them that you had something to do with making history?”