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by Julia N. Opoti, Mshale

For Madin Dula, this election is different. The thought of casting her vote makes her smile. This is her third U.S. presidential election, but the first one in which she can vote.

Ten years ago, life was very different for Dula, an Oromo refugee from Ethiopia. Following a civil war in her country, Dula fled to Kenya with her family, settling in a refugee camp.

Dula says she had always been politically active, even when she lived in a refugee camp at the Kenyan coastal town of Mombasa. She is now a social worker, and uses her experience living as a refugee to work with immigrants in Minnesota as they face the challenges of settling in a new country.

Though she was engaged politically in the refugee camp, Dula felt that her voice was barely audible. Now, an American citizen, Dula would like to have her voice heard, her issues listened to. Like many Americans, central to her concerns is the economy, healthcare, and access to education.

Dula decided not to vote in the primaries. She did not feel that there was big policy difference between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Dula is an advocate for unrepresented people: women, and people of color in general.

“I knew that one of them would win,” she says, “and I did not want to be the one to kick either Clinton or Obama out.”

On Governor Sarah Palin, and her appeal to women voters, Dula was adamant that Palin is not progressive.

“I am a Muslim woman”, she says, “in many ways I am considered conservative. But there are many things I would rather people make their own choice, because when it comes to God, that relationship is personal.”

Dula is disappointed that Islam has become synonymous with terrorism in the rhetoric of the campaign, and with the racial undertones that the race to the White House has taken. She also knows her facts: that Senator Obama is not a Muslim.

“Foreigners think highly of America, that is why many people seek refuge in this country. I am shocked at the ignorance displayed by many people in their attack of Obama. He is half-black, half-white American, raised by his white Christian grandparents. How much more American can he get?

“It is very sad that they are disowning their own child [Obama], and are identifying him with a people and a culture [Islam] that he doesn’t know.”

Dula says that she understands that a politician cannot change the lives of people overnight. She is concerned, however, that with the current economic crisis it seems like common sense to allow the Democrats to work out solutions “for the problems that the Republicans have allowed to happen.”

Dula is honored to have citizenship of a country that she describes as the most diverse, and one that ought to demonstrate democracy to the rest of the world. “I am proud to be an American, and I will vote for Barack Obama.”

By Nicholas L. Dean
Jamestown Post Journal

JAMES TOWN, NEW YORK – In only three years, John McKay and the Awassa Youth Campus have accomplished ”a good amount” for youths in Ethiopia and the rest of Africa.

Formed initially as simply a place for youths to go, the {www:Awassa} campus has grown into a multi-faceted organization – featuring everything from a performing theater troupe, recording studio and an Aikido dojo to the only paved basketball court in Ethiopia.

”We see ourselves as providing the rock clay and the kids kind of mold the organization,” McKay said about the growth of the organization. ”We’re simply providing the tools for the kids and then letting them provide the substance.”

Now, for the first time in its three-year history, the Awassa Youth Campus’s founders, which include Meshu Tamrat and Tesfay Tekalu as well as McKay, are touring the U.S. to raise awareness about their program.

On Thursday, the group will stop in Jamestown for a 7:30 p.m. performance at the Reg Studio Theater.

According to McKay, the current tour is to put a face on the program and does not feature the full 30 youths who participate in the One Love AIDS/HIV Awareness Theater. A first step for the program, McKay said he hopes this tour will lay the groundwork to bring the full theater to the United States in the future.

Before there was the Awassa Youth Campus and the Awassa Children’s Center orphanage, there was the Awassa AIDS Education Circus – which Arts Council and Reg Lenna Civic Center Director David Schein helped found with friends from Germany. In 2002, Schein went to Ethiopia to work with Tamrat and Tekalu on building an educational show.

”They were great gymnasts and in two weeks we had a script,” Schein said. ”These young, barefoot, hungry kids started something really, really big and they do marvelous theater. At the same time, they’re realizing themselves beyond their wildest dreams. I’ve been there six times in the last seven years and that initial circus gave way to two non-profits – the orphanage and the Awassa Youth Campus.”

The initial force behind the Awassa Youth Campus according to Schein, McKay arrived in Awassa to help with the previous projects – which is where he met Tamrat and Tekalu.

”We started talking about programs and they saw the same kinds of gaps inside programs that I had seen from traveling in Africa,” McKay said. ”So out of that, we decided to build this youth campus. We wanted to separate it from the orphanage and let the orphanage focus on providing direct care and support and we’d start to take over the outreach kind of stuff.”

Reacting to the ”business” of AIDS prevention in Africa and the industry around orphan care in Africa, he envisaged a whole different way to empower African kids – and with Tamrat and Tekalu broke away and founded the Awassa Youth Campus.

”He ‘gets’ the way that the arts are a pathway to development and self-realization and has made that one of the cornerstones of the Youth Campus,” Schein said.

”We just wanted to build an organization,” McKay said of the Awassa Youth Center. ”It’s just youth-focused programming in Ethiopia. We just wanted to provide place for kids to go that basically serves the same function and works the same way as a Youth Center in the U.S. does. Through the activities that the kids participate in, they do HIV/AIDS awareness and other outreach programs – and this trip is really just to put a face on that, to show the personality of the program.”

Zogby

UTICA, New York – Democrat Barack Obama moved very close to a double–digit lead over Republican John McCain in the national horserace for President, continuing his slow push forward above the 50% mark, gaining 1.3 points in the last day.

McCain is slowly losing ground, having lost another 0.4 points in this latest report on the Reuters/C–SPAN/Zogby daily tracking poll.

Pollster John Zogby: “Three big days for Obama. Anything can happen, but time is running short for McCain. These numbers, if they hold, are blowout numbers. They fit the 1980 model with Reagan’s victory over Carter — but they are happening 12 days before Reagan blasted ahead. If Obama wins like this we can be talking not only victory but realignment: he leads by 27 points among Independents, 27 points among those who have already voted, 16 among newly registered voters, 31 among Hispanics, 93%-2% among African Americans, 16 among women, 27 among those 18-29, 5 among 30-49 year olds, 8 among 50-64s, 4 among those over 65, 25 among Moderates, and 12 among Catholics (which is better than Bill Clinton’s 10-point victory among Catholics in 1996). He leads with men by 2 points, and is down among whites by only 6 points, down 2 in armed forces households, 3 among investors, and is tied among NASCAR fans.”

The three–day rolling average poll includes 1,208 likely voters nationwide, surveyed at the rate of 400 interviews per day and was conducted Oct. 19–21, 2008. It carries a margin of error of +/– 2.9 percentage points. Interviews were conducted using live telephone operators in Zogby’s in–house call center in Upstate New York.

Daily Tracking Continues

This daily tracking telephone poll will continue each day until the Nov. 4 election. With each new day of responses that are folded into the poll, the oldest third of the survey is removed, so the poll “tracks” changes in voter attitudes following events and developments in the race. Keep up-to-date every day by visiting www.zogby.com.

By John Whitesides

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrat Barack Obama has expanded his national lead over Republican John McCain in the presidential race to 10 points, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

Obama leads McCain 52 percent to 42 percent among likely U.S. voters in the latest three-day tracking poll, up from an 8-point advantage for Obama on Tuesday. The telephone poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.

It was the third consecutive day Obama gained ground on McCain as the two begin the final sprint to the November 4 election.

“Obama just keeps growing, he has expanded his lead among almost every major voting group,” said pollster John Zogby. “McCain seems to be out of steam for the moment.”

The 10-point lead was the first time Obama’s advantage over McCain, an Arizona senator, reached double-digits in the poll. Obama’s lead had floated between 2 and 6 points in the more than two weeks of polling until stretching to 8 points on Tuesday.

Obama made gains with two key swing voting blocs. His advantage with independent voters grew to a whopping 27 points from 15 points and his edge with women voters grew to 16 points from 13.

Obama, an Illinois senator, led among all age groups and in every income group except for the most wealthy voters. He now has the support of 21 percent of self-described conservatives — his best showing with those voters.

McCain narrowly trails Obama by 2 percentage points among men and saw his lead among whites drop to 6 points from 9 points, 50 percent to 44 percent.

The poll, taken Sunday through Tuesday, showed independent Ralph Nader, Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney and Libertarian Bob Barr each registering 1 percent support.

Three percent of voters remain undecided.

The rolling tracking poll surveyed 1,208 likely voters in the presidential election. In a tracking poll, the most recent day’s results are added while the oldest day’s results are dropped to monitor changing momentum.

The president is determined by who wins the Electoral College, which has 538 members apportioned by population in each state and the District of Columbia. Electoral votes are allotted on a winner-take-all basis in all but two states, which divide them by congressional district.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)