This lady has the answers why we need to vote for Obama.
Shooting shows why Obama strikes a chord
So many of his supporters are tired of feeling hopeless
Mary Mitchell
Chicago Sun Times February 17, 2008
If you're wondering why Sen. Barack Obama's message of hope has resonated with so many voters across the country, consider the shooting rampage at Northern Illinois University.
Despite a decade of school shootings, we are never prepared for the horror of someone opening fire on innocent people, then taking his or her own life.
On Thursday, five people were killed and more than 20 others were injured when a man who was described by school administrators as a former top student returned to the campus and began randomly shooting students in a lecture hall.
The shooter has been identified as Steven Phillip Kazmierczak, a 27-year-old graduate student at the U. of I.
Like many of you, I watched the televised reports on the violence feeling completely helpless, and wondering how such a horrible thing could have happened in a place where people should feel safe.
How is it that we live in a country where a young man can get his hands on four weapons, including a shotgun?
Why are people walking around armed to the teeth?
The only reason I can think of is that too many people have lost hope.
The pain of hopelessness
We are living at a time when depression seems to be as common as a cold or flu. Yet what is depression but an impenetrable cloud of hopelessness?
Hopelessness is behind the violence that erupts on street corners and behind closed doors in middle-class homes where women have killed their children and tried to take their own lives.
And it is hopelessness that condemns innocent children like Demond Reed to an early death at the hands of an abuser, and lures young men and women to throw away their futures for a drug addiction that leads to wasted lives.
If these hopeless people were easier to spot, we could devise better ways to protect ourselves. But they are not.
According to university officials, Kazmierczak's behavior while a student at NIU raised no "red flags," and he was "revered" by faculty and other students.
Yet something drove this seemingly normal graduate student to drive three hours on Valentine's Day to carry out a deadly plan that he obviously thought out in advance.
Late Friday afternoon, we had heard a lot of details about the terrifying few minutes that resulted in such large-scale carnage, but we still didn't know the motive for the shooter's rampage.
Kazmierczak didn't leave a suicide note, nor had anyone who knew the shooter personally offered a hint as to what set him off. But apparently Kazmierczak had recently gone off medications and had been acting "erratically," according to police officers.
But while law enforcement can respond to these tragic shootings, and claim that there was nothing they could have done differently that would have prevented the tragedy, it doesn't leave us with much hope.
After the endless interviews with eye-witnesses, the candlelight vigils and the heartfelt condolences from elected officials, the public is still left to bear the weight of this terrible crime.
Because without hope, nothing changes.
A gift the country needs
Last April, 23-year-old Seung-Hui Cho killed 33 people and injured 30 others on the Virginia Tech campus before killing himself. That mass shooting -- considered the worst in America's history -- may have spurred officials on other campuses to beef up security, but these officials are apparently no match for lone gunmen who have access to college campuses.
Since Virginia Tech, many parents of college-aged students have had to turn to their faith.
On the stump, however, Obama has had to defend his faith, and jokes about his critics calling him a "hopemonger." But Obama's ability to inspire people -- in urban areas as well as in rural towns -- is a gift the country needs.
Young people are killing each other in the ghettos as well as in our nation's universities. So it's not just drug wars or street gangs driving the violence.
But while young people are dying as martyrs, adults with the power to make a difference are still arguing over the merits of gun control.
Obama is surging ahead because a lot of people are tired of believing they are powerless to heal an ailing nation.