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Sep

19

Reason #47 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden


Because an Obama/Biden administration embraces the unrepresented and underrepresented.

This reason derives from my experience at the Obama Shaker Square office two days ago and how, when I was talking with undecided voters, I would describe why I support Barack Obama.  It really is as simple as that one line I wrote above.

How do I know that this is true?

Obama went into public interest law after being at Harvard. Yes, he worked on a book about race relations and he did become affiliated with and of counsel to a small firm in Chicago.  But, imagining what the job choices for the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review might have been, the choices he did make impress me unlike most options other law school graduates choose because I champion public interest law and have always been a devotee.  I was the one who constantly challenged my law school classmates, including close friends, who would say, I can’t afford to go into public interest law when the fact is, who can really afford it?, and I’d try to get them to re-consider their options.  People who have a certain order of priorities go into public interest law – and that order doesn’t look like the one for people who choose your more typical firm jobs (even though yes, people who go into public interest law have the same debt as the ones who go into the big firms).

This sense of commitment needed to enter public interest law is not as tangible as pointing to an Energy Policy, or an Environmental Policy, or Foreign Policy.  But it’s based on seeing how all these policies feel derived from the same general priorities for all policies: making sure that every group of people – whether they have a vote or not – are taken into consideration when devising policy.

I know what it takes to go into public interest law – the pushback against classmates, parents and other relatives, and even employers and eventual colleagues, and the sacrifice – because I went through it.  And to go through it, out of choice, says a lot to me about the caring nature of an individual. I see the Obama and Joe Biden campaign as an embodiment of that nature.

On November 4, vote for Obama/Biden.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:03 am September 19th, 2008 in 57ReasonsObamaBiden, Barack Obama, Social Issues, WH2008 

Comments

5 Responses to “Reason #47 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden”

  1. 1 Wendy on September 19th, 2008 10:26 am

    Couldn’t agree more, Jill. Did you see this piece by Roger Cohen in yesterday’s NYT? It’s closely linked to your post.

  2. 2 Jill Miller Zimon on September 19th, 2008 10:44 am

    Oh my God, Wendy – that is making me cry. Cry. Wow.

    You know – some of us are just blessed to always have felt that way about public service, always. I don’t know why I am one of those – it can cause a great amount of pain and conflict to argue for a life centered on that service. And definitely my drift over the last few years has been toward re-grounding myself in that kind of work. I felt that my work at Bellefaire embraced the nature of public interest law, with my social work background too, very well.

    I’m going to have re-post some of what he writes. There ARE people who have made those choices, for life, and who come to it later or who fit it in with other private more corporate choices.

    But that answer he repeats from new grads? OMG – that hasn’t changed in the 20 years since I came here for grad school. Chilling – utterly chilling and sad. Where is the failure – where are the pressure points to persuade?

    Why the focus on the money, and not the good?

    That is what angers and frightens me so much about the choices implicit in many GOP and conservative campaigns.

    Thanks so much for that link. Wow – I have to ask my parents if they read it – I’m sure they did!

  3. 3 Wendy on September 19th, 2008 10:58 am

    I’m glad you enjoyed it. Meant to send it to you last night, but got lost in the many family activities.

    My belief is that some of this is taught at home, but of course that doesn’t account for the very real pressures kids feel when they attend college to be upwardly mobile and make the most money.

    Even in the j-school at OU, where jobs were NOT well-paying, there was a competition of sorts to find the best paying.

    Money has never been my primary motivator and I suppose I have that philosophy to thank for the meager contents of my checkbook.

  4. 4 Jill Miller Zimon on September 19th, 2008 11:04 am

    Well, some of my thoughts on this topic will have to remain a secret until I die, in that memoir that can’t be published until everyone I write about has also died. :)

    But yes – it does go back to those priorities – there may be sacrifices, but the rewards are pretty amazing too – and for me, certainly far more long-lasting.

  5. 5 Reason #39 to vote for Obama/Biden | Writes Like She Talks on September 27th, 2008 9:39 am

    [...] Reason #47 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden [...]

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