Gary open to message of hope
The Indianapolis Star | April 11, 2008
By Matthew Tully
If ever a city needed the kind of hope and rebirth presidential candidates love to talk about, here it is.
This Northwest Indiana city, with its massive steel mill and equally massive problems, welcomed Sen. Barack Obama, our latest messenger of hope, to a high school with a 41 percent graduation rate Thursday morning.
"I'm running because of what Dr. King called the fierce urgency of now," the Democrat from Illinois told a crowd of about 2,500. "Because I believe there's such a thing as being too late, and that hour is almost upon us."
He was talking about the United States. He could have been talking about Gary.
...That's why Obama's message registers strongly here.
"Every child is our child," he said, sending the crowd into a Beatles-like frenzy. "Every child is our obligation. Every child deserves a better future."
