With Sarvodaya Prasad at Gandhi Smriti, site of Gandhi's assassination in New Delhi

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Comment by John Daley on August 28, 2008 at 8:41pm

Hello, Clay and Prasad. Thanks for posting your photos. I hope your trip to India is going well. I'm writing to you after just watching the most amazing speech, Obama's speech at the Democratic Convention. I went to school less than two miles away from that stadium, Manual High School, a school where black and white students went to school side by side, thanks to busing, which started in the years after Brown v. Board of Education and the civil rights movement. We grew up being inspired by the words of Martin Luther King who was inspired by the words of Gandhi. Now, my wife and I and our 5-year-old daughter Julia are watching where all that has lead to: Barack Obama inspiring the nation and being less than three months away from election as president of the United States. Julia and her best friend Nayra, whose mom is white and dad is black, start kindergarten together next week, though in my parents' generation that never would have happened. Now I hear in Obama's words echoes of Dr. King's vision for America. He's talking about fairness and equality with an eloquence and truth that would make both Gandhi and King proud. And after 8 rough years, I'm suddenly feeling much better about this country and much better about the world Julia is inheriting. Now is our time, indeed. Even better, what a great time for Julia and Nayra to be growing up, hopefully looking up to a photograph of America's first African-American president on the wall of their elementary school.