YES WE CAN! YES YOU DID!

Read Technology Review: How Obama Really Did It: The social-networking strategy that took an obscure senator to the doors of the White House.

The poster designed by Shepard Fairey.

A summer night of 2004, an American politician called Barack Obama gave a legendary keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, held at the FleetCenter in Boston, Massachusetts. A powerless “Alien” with no right to vote in the United States of America—yet very concerned about the country’s disastrous post-911 foreign policy—was watching television with attention. I still hear a commentator saying something like: “This guy will go far” “How does he know?” I remember thinking. This “guy”, I learned, had opposed the “Dumb” war that was raging for more than a year. His discourse felt like a blessing—Barack means “blessed” in Arabic. For sure, Obama’s call for action was compelling because it was inclusive of everyone believing in democratic values. Events followed, the extraordinary grassroots mobilization, and Barack Obama’s—historic—nomination as the Democratic candidate for the American election of 2008; nomination he accepted forty five years after Martin Luther King Jr’s speech: “I have a Dream”.