Udauk for Barack

By Charles Cadwallader

AUSTIN - The historic Victory Grill in East Austin, TX is the home of Texas' first blues club and it was the site of the Obama Early Vote Party celebrating the end of early primary voting in Texas.

While there I met Uduak Ntuk; he's a petroleum engineer for Chevron from Bakersfield, California; and he is a volunteer for the Obama campaign who had a story to tell me.

The story began, Ntuk told me, with the first time he saw Barack Obama speak. Ntuk happened to be in Illinois when Obama began running his senatorial campaign and saw him speak.After learning about Obama, Ntuk was even more impressed because like Obama, Ntuk's father is from Africa and his mother is white. At the time Ntuk was on a football scholarship at West Texas A&M, where he said he'd been hit with a major culture shock when he moved there from California.

"My first experience in Texas was at West Texas, it was like we had gone back 50 years," Ntuk said, "there were people who said 'Don't talk to white women, don't do anything bad...' all that color stuff we all thought was over with in the United States, it seemed alive and well in Texas."

After listening to Obama, Ntuk said he was inspired and that he knew big things were happening. He went back to his university and started a campaign for the student government modeling it after the grassroots win of Obama in Illinois.

Obama had won and so did Ntuk.

"I had never donated money to a campaign before, but that first day of Obama's presidential campaign I gave what I had," Ntuk said. So down $25 Ntuk, now back in California said that he started looking for ways to help.

"I went over to Las Vegas on the first day after Christmas to help with the campaign," he said, "I was there until New Years day in the phone bank, canvassing, whatever I could do."

While in Vegas, Ntuk met Larry Lessig, a Stanford professor. "This guy came in and smiled and said 'Hey how you doing?'" Ntuk said, "and he said, 'Hi, my name's Larry, I'm a professor at Stanford."

"We talked and I asked him about his website and we talked some more," said Ntuk, "it is amazing who you meet while working to get Obama elected. I've met JD Harvard and Blake Roberts as well."

After Vegas had been decided Ntuk returned to California and became the communications coordinator for the 22nd Congressional District. He said that he ran a caucus site and really worked hard to get Obama the delegates.

"We worked hard, and even though we lost just think about how it would have gone had we done nothing at all," said Ntuk, "I'm here in Texas because voting is not enough."

In Texas Ntuk has volunteered by going from house to house answering questions about the primary and caucus system. "We speak with our feet, we speak with our voices, we speak with our money," said Ntuk, "Obama is an anomaly, if you don't push for him, if you don't speak up, this won't happen."

The campaign is a new development of politics Ntuk said, "I've never seen an organization, profit or not, that has been able to do this, that can get volunteers from dozens of states to pay their own way and do something all because they believe in Senator Obama."

"Voting is not enough," Ntuk repeated, "you can't just vote and consider yourself done, it's just not enough anymore."