BUILDING BLOCKS - Shown here are the building blocks of not a 1.6 million dollar home but those of one of 150 ‘green’ homes being built in Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, LA. Click on the photo to go to their web site, more on my visit/photos from there in upcoming posts. photo by Erika Leigh Photography.
Political Party Disclaimer: Political Party, Schmalitical Schmarty (sound it out). This sight nor my life will never be devoted to changing your ideas, beliefs, standards, values, favorite colors or anything. YES, I have an opinion and if I had to have any mission at all here it would be solely that you would have an opinion as well… alike, different… cool, just have it, own it and allow me to comment on it. 
Barack’s speech rocked my socks off… but I still think Michelle Obama killed that Convention (killed meaning rocked, made, won, owned, stole the show of). And for this post, I’m putting aside nearly every platform issue they address and going straight to who they are or who they are publicized/made to be… which, call me a fool, I think are one in the same. Call me a bigger fool, but if they aren’t what they say… it’s real nice to believe their front. A few quotes from Michele Obama’s Democratic Convention Speech given Monday night in Denver, CO. Full text is available here.
Regarding her children: “Their future and all our children’s future is my stake in this election”
Regarding her and Barack’s shared values: “You work hard for what you want in life. That your word is your bond; that you do what you say you’re going to do. That you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them and even if you don’t agree with them.”
Regarding when she saw Barack helping workers whose jobs had disappeared: “They believed like you and I that America should be a place where you can make it if you try.” And… “He talked about the world as it is and the world as it should be. And he said all too often we accept the distance between the two.”
Regarding going for Pres: “All of us driven by the simple belief that the world as it is just won’t do; that we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be.”
The link to the full text will bring tears to your eyes, truly, and I’m not a sappy person. And then you continue to scroll down and the comments start flowing. And again, I stress the freedom of opinion, but I am in AWE of some of the thoughts people have. I believe and preach the idea of thinking NOT obeying, but with respect in mind… some of these people, again, just astound me. They’re main argument is that the Obama’s are criminals/terrible people/liars/etc… the support for these beliefs is that they live in a 1.6 million dollar house. I ask these comment-leavers to introduce me to a person that has grown up with next to nothing, fights his or her way through school, is overly (if that’s possible) charitable to others, and is successful at his or her job to reward themselves with nothing. It’s Communist thinking that they shouldn’t reap any benefits of hard work. It should be an inspiration, really, and I’m not all about those too-big, fancy-dance houses, but come on. You earn it, you deserve it. And those things I mentioned are so minimal in comparison to what the Obama’s have done together… there were no make-up artists with them as they did those things, no speech writers as they did those things, no publicists/stylists/nutritionists/etc. as they did those things… well not all of them probably. And more importantly those aren’t words in a speech… they’re actions that are concrete truths. To negate that these two have led special lives and could do great things is to negate the notion of dying…
Money is not arrogance. Ignorance is arrogance. We’ve all got a little of it (ignorance, that is)… as we should. But I think there comes a time where it can’t be an excuse anymore.
As a photographer I watch these moments and know how beautiful I could freeze them into a photograph… I’d do anything to hit the campaign trail watching and documenting history being made. I get through it knowing I do the same thing in an individual’s life… witness and document a moment in their history… which is very rewarding as well! One of my favorite campaign shots so far can be seen here (number 7 of 14) taken by Justin Sullivan with Getty Images.
keep on poppin Mrs. Obama.
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