By Teddy Fikre
What is the definition of success? Is success measured by our ability to register every Ethiopian who can register before November 4th, or is the definition of success our ability to reach a few hundred? When we first set out to register Ethiopians to vote, we had a lofty goal—to identify and register 10,000 Ethiopians in Virginia and thousands more in states throughout America . We are now entering the final stretch of our long campaign, and it is time to assess where we are at and where we are going.
The hard fact is that we are far from our goal. We have conducted multiple registration drives at Ethiopian churches, at the Ethiopian Soccer Tournament, and at various locations where there is a robust Ethiopian presence. While we continue to register Ethiopians each time we deploy at these various locations, we have as of yet to see a massive desire by Ethiopian-Americans to register and vote. What we have seen in the overwhelming excitement on the part of Ethiopian-Americans for the Obama campaign has not directly translated to the yearning to register.
While it is easy to get discouraged at this fact, we know that a hesitancy to vote which has taken generations to accumulate will not disappear within the span of a couple of months. So our definition of success is not our ability to register every Ethiopian-American that we meet but in our ability to inspire a few hundred that will embrace voting as a civic responsibility. In time, enough of us will realize that the most powerful form of self-empowerment is delivered through the the casting of a ballot. “Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good: ‘Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson).
Our definition of success is thus defined by incremental steps and not a large leap towards the enfranchisement of all Ethiopians. To this point, we deployed to Kidus Gabriel Ethiopian church on Sunday July 27, 2008 in Washington, DC. We set up a registration table in the scorching heat and asked Ethiopians to register to vote. By the end of the day, we were able to register over 20 Ethiopian-Americans to vote. We had a choice to make, we could accept the conventional thinking that most Ethiopians do not want to vote, or we could have the audacity of hope to believe otherwise—we chose hope.
It is exactly because we chose hope that we were able to register 20 more Ethiopians than we did before the day started. The scaling of a mountain begins with one small step; while we will not be able to register every Ethiopian that we meet, knowing that we made the difference in even one person’s life and were a vehicle for their enfranchisement is our definition of success. We will continue to deploy to every church, to every location where there are Ethiopians present and ask them to vote.
What is currently a drip of registration will one day transform into a downpour of enfranchisement. Until that day arrives, we will keep pushing forward knowing that success is measured in small steps. One day we will arrive at the mountaintop; this is how change happens–through the collective footsteps of individual Ethiopians that have the audacity to challenge the status quo. Our success will be measured by the election of one man—Barack Obama—and through the enfranchisement of each Ethiopian who we help to register.
Please join Ethiopians for Obama at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ethiopiansforobama/
For information on how to register, go to: http://www.ethiopiansforbarackobama.com/