Over 20,000 people gathered in Washington Square Park Thursday evening
for a free public rally and a chance to see Democratic presidential
hopeful Barack Obama.
The Illinois senator was campaigning on Hillary Clinton’s home turf, trying to excite New Yorkers with a message of change.
"It is not enough just to change parties in the White House if we
have the same kind of politics,” said Obama. “It's not enough to change
parties if we continue to see the country divided. We have the ‘red
states’ and ‘blue states,’ and we end up fighting the same petty
partisan battles over and over and over again."
"I'm here just supporting and seeing how it turns out and see who I want to go with in the 2008 election,” said one attendee.
"I wanted to see politics in action,” said another. “I feel that
there's a lot of apathy around and I just feel that it's important to
get to know the candidates and hear them out and support them and just
get a feeling of what the issues are about."
A Brooklyn resident at the rally said he had to wait for hours on
line to get through security, but that he was looking forward to
hearing what the Democrat has to say.
“I’m just hoping to hear what his plan is for the future and
everything,” he said. “I’m just looking for change right about now. I
just want someone to lead us in a new direction, and basically I want
someone with fresh, new ideals. Someone to give me hope, to change what
we see in Iraq right about now and just take us in a new direction.”
When asked why he supports Obama over Clinton, he had this to say.
“To tell you the truth…I’m sure that she wouldn’t be a bad
candidate, but I’m just for Barack Obama already and I feel that he
would be a better candidate.”
Some college-aged New Jersey residents were also on hand to hear Obama.
“We hope to hear his plans on college affordability,” said one
woman. “This is just one of the events we have been going to throughout
the summer. We’re from NJPIRG. It’s our ‘What’s Your Plan’ campaign.
We’ve done extensive research on what young people care about. So they
care about college affordability, global warming and we hope to hear
from the candidates include those issues and we want the candidates to
address them.”
Obama also faced his critics head on – talking up his experience
and addressing the disagreement Clinton had with his view to meet with
controversial world leaders.
"We had an exchange about that," said the Illinois senator. "Our
unwillingness to talk doesn't make us tough, it makes us arrogant."
Earlier this week, Obama picked up an endorsement from the Corrections Officer’s Union.
