Updated at 9:41 p.m., Sunday, June 24, 2007
Obama sends message to gathering in Honolulu
Advertiser Staff
Sen. Barack Obama delivered a message to voters in Hawai'i today that a failure of leadership was preventing the nation from meeting its many challenges from war to a broken health care system.The Democratic senator from Illinois, who was born in Honolulu and graduated from Punahou School, delivered the words in a letter his half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, read to some 125 people at Trinity Missionary Baptist Church.
"What's stopped us from meeting them is not the absence of sensible plans, it's the smallness of our politics and a failure of leadership," Obama said in the message. "It's a Washington that says 'you're on your own' when Americans need a helping hand."
Obama was campaigning in Texas today.
Christopher Pittman, a 26-year-old black Army sergeant from Whiteville, N.C. who recently returned from his second tour of duty in Iraq, attended the Honolulu gathering with his wife Elizabeth and 4-year-old son to hear what Obama had to say.
"I just want to know, if he's running for president, what he will do to meet the needs of all Americans," the chemical operations specialist said.
Pittman said heard enough to commit his support for Obama.
The rally celebrated the history of Juneteenth — or the June 19, 1865 date when the last slaves in America were freed — with a look to the future, said Bettye Jo Harris, one of the event's organizers.
