By Teddy Fikre | Ethiopian-Americans For Change
I want to believe, I truly do. I want to believe that Ethiopians, Eritreans, the African Diaspora can throw off the collective chains of self imposed poverty and work together to a collective prosperity. I have the Audacity to think that we can actually work together—you thought Obama was hopeful! But it gets harder and harder each day, for each day I am proven one step closer towards the realization that Obama’s election was an ephemeral moment of bliss.
Why so jaded? Before I go forward, let me go back. Back to 2008, when Obama frenzy was at its peak—at least it was on November 4th 2008. However, the months leading up to that moment was arduous at best. We—Ethiopians for Obama—had our own audacious goals. Sure we were enamored with the idea of an Obama administration, but most of us were in love with an idea way bigger than that. We saw, through the image of Obama, a vision of our own where we could organize our community.
What we imagined was a bloc of Ethiopian voters (now expanded to voters from the African Diaspora) that would vote on issues that matter to our community. During one of our first meetings, we instantly settled trying on attempting to turn the Ethiopian community in Virginia into the same voting force as the Cuban community in Florida. Supposedly, there are well over 120,000 Ethiopians who reside in Virginia. No one really knows, nonetheless, there is a significant population of Ethiopians in the Old Dominion that has the potential of becoming a potent voice—if we band together. So that was our hope; a vision to give the Ethiopian community a megaphone.
Thus, as we set out to organize for Obama, we were also organizing for Ethiopia. We were taking notes for our community, we learned about phone banking, about networking, about viral marketing—we took a lot of notes. And our aim two years ago was to register 10,000 Ethiopians in the span of 8 months in the state of Virginia and thousands more elsewhere. Sure, a high number, but about 1,100 Ethiopians per month, I thought it was at least semi-realistic. So we set out to various churches, coffee shops, held debate watching parties—all for the purpose of registering 10,000 Ethiopians in Virginia and thousands more elsewhere. It was a slow and steady process; 10 here, 7 there, 12 elsewhere. But we kept faith, we thought in due time our community would catch on… [continued]