Fired up! Ready to go!
I'm Edith S. Childs from Greenwood, South Carolina, and I'm the one that got Barack
Obama fired up.
And so I just want to close with a story that some of you know, because it shows you the
importance of one voice. And it's a story about my first trip to Greenwood.
When I heard that he was coming to Greenwood, I thought, ok, I'm just going to go and welcome
him to Greenwood.
Turns out that Greenwood is about an hour and a half from everywhere else.
Well, Greenwood is a little bit out of the way.
So we drive. We drive and we drive. Finally we get to Greenwood. We pull up to a small
building.
Right here, in this building. The Civic Center.
It's pouring down rain. And my umbrella blows open. And I get soaked. I'm mad, I'm wet.
We go inside and, lo and behold, after an hour and a half drive, turns out there are
20 people there.
When he first came in the room he had this grin on his face like, maybe I'm in the wrong
place. You know, it was a small group of people.
20 people. And they all look kind of damp and kind of sleepy, like maybe they aren't
really excited to be there either.
And looking around at everyone in the room, I knew we had to do something.
Suddenly, I hear this voice cry out behind me.
"Fired up!" And I'm shocked.
I know that the senator wasn't sure what was going on, because he had that look on his
face.
So I looked behind me, and there's this small woman, looks like she just came from church,
got a big church hat. And she's standing there and she looks at me, and she's smiling. And
she says
Fired up! Ready to go! I knew we needed to keep singing fired up, ready to go.
And so for the next five minutes, she proceeds to do this. Fired up, and everybody says fired
up. Ready to go, and everybody says ready to go. And I'm standing there, and I'm thinking,
she's stealing my thunder. I look at my staff, they shrug their shoulders, they don't know
how long this is going to go. But here's the thing, Virginia. After a minute or so, I'm
feeling kind of fired up. I'm feeling like I'm ready to go. So I join in the chant. And
it feels good. And for the rest of the day, even after we left Greenwood, I'd see my staff,
I'd say, "Are you fired up?" And they'd say, "We're fired up boss, are you ready to go?"
I'd say, "I'm ready to go."
Once you hear it, you will never forget.
So some people start putting fired up, ready to go on their shirts. Some people start putting
fired up, ready to go on signs. Everybody's singing fired up and ready to go.
Fired up! Fired up! Ready to go! Ready to go!
It shows you what one voice can do. One voice can change a room. And if a voice can change
a room, it can change a city. And if it can change a city, it can change a state. And
if it can change a state, it can change a nation. And if it can change a nation, it
can change the world. Your voice can change the world. So I've just got one question for
you: "Are you fired up?"
Fired up!
Are you ready to go!
Ready to go!
Fired up! Fired up! Ready to go! Ready to go!
Fired up! Fired up!
Now let's go change the world.