In the picture below, a vendor does a brisk trade after Obama’s speech selling Obama hats

Laugh if you will, but someday, when my films are as famous as John Huston’s, you’ll eat crow. When or if.

I attended the AME Conference in St. Louis Saturday afternoon to hear Barack Obama speak–with my new camcorder that I had not yet learned to use. I figured, oh well, what the hell, might as well give it a whirl. Oh, ‘scuse my language. It was a religious gathering.

And Obama spoke–as you will hear–about giving his life to Christ. In fact everything he had to say was couched in terms of what Christians owe it to their God and their country to do.

I am a person of little faith, at least when it comes to camcorders I’ve never tested. So I filmed some of the twenty minute speech, but part of the time, I put down the camera and took notes, in case the video didn’t turn out. It did, though. Wish I’d filmed the whole thing, because it was a thoughtful, rousing piece of rhetoric. (And you’ll find some odd breaks in the eight minute video.)

When I first walked into the Convention Center, 45 minutes before Obama’s talk was due to begin, I put my bag down on the concrete floor and let a German Shepherd sniff it while I got wanded front and back. (You’ll notice in the video, by the way, the Secret Service man in the lower left of the picture keeping a wary eye on the crowd.) Then a young woman who attends SLUH and ushers at the Convention Center in her spare time, led me to the press section. She told me–I kid you not–that she reads Show Me Progress.

Conversation with her was iffy, though, because the warmup band was blasting out:

Cain’t nobody do me like Jesus.

Cain’t nobody do me like the Lord.

Cain’t nobody do me like Jesus.

He’s my friend.

The crowd wasn’t especially into the music. Everybody was waiting for the main event. As soon as Obama was introduced, the crowd went wild, chanting “Yes, we can.”

The remarks I’m about to summarize were interspersed with the video I shot. (As cinematic technique, think of it as: this beginner will do better next time.)

Obama began with a nod to the history of the AME church, noting that it was founded 200 years ago by slaves who were often yanked off their knees in the middle of prayer. But he soon moved on to today and to his theme of doing the Lord’s work. There’s more to patriotism than watching fireworks. He stressed that he wouldn’t be doing the Lord’s will unless he was doing the Lord’s work.

One point he made definitely appealed to the crowd, and that was that he will want faith based organizations included by our government in the work of helping those in need. And he pointedly mentioned that he’s been saying so for a couple of years. He wanted to make sure that nobody in the press could construe this policy as merely part of his political strategy, as a bid to gain evangelical votes. (To little avail, apparently. An article in the Monday Post-Dispatch  was headlined: “In good faith? Question follows Obama initiative. Some see chance for lasting ties; others suspect politics.”)

Obama talked also about the duty of Christians to live individual lives that help heal their communities.  

When a child picks up a gun and

shoots another child, there is a hole in his heart that no government can fill. ……..

Only we can help fill that void in that child’s heart – as parents and grandparents; as teachers and neighbors. Only we can instill in our

children that sense of compassion and empathy. Only we can love them, and be there for them, and go to those parent-teacher conferences, and

help them with their homework, and take away the video games and the remote controls and read to them once in awhile. Only we can teach our

daughters to never allow the images on television to tell them what they are worth. Only we can make sure that when our sons grow up, they

treat women with respect, and understand that what makes them men is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one. So that we

don’t have more fathers out there who don’t realize that responsibility does not end at conception – who don’t abandon their wives and their children.

Obama noted that some people would wonder if he was, by these remarks, blaming the victim. But he said he’s not interested in blacks adopting the posture of victim. Of course, he said, we need more money spent on education than on jails, but we can’t use poverty as an excuse for not doing our duty.  

When the speech ended, I rode the Metrolink home, sitting next to a 65 year old black man, a retired ninth grade Social Studies teacher named Stan Bryant. He told me he never thought he’d live to see the day that the Democratic nominee was a black man. When he said goodbye, he asked me to write something that would help Obama get elected.

That’s a tall order. I just do what I can. I’m one of  hundreds of thousands of people doing what they can to get Obama elected.

As I left the Convention Center, I saw various groups campaigning for the men they wanted elected as bishops in the AME church.