Obama visits Scranton

By TOM KANE

SCRANTON, PA — Joking that he was joining the “green party,” Presidential candidate Barack Obama spoke at the Tenth Annual Dinner of the Society of Irish Women on March 17 at the Radisson Hotel in Scranton.

The society invited all three candidates—Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Obama. Obama was the only one who accepted. The dinner was not the occasion for any political statements. Obama revealed to the gathering that he had Irish ancestors. His ancestor, whom he did not name, came from a small village in Ireland and settled in Ohio.

“I have been adopted by the village and will visit it some time in the near future,” he said. He did not name the village.

The candidate used most of the 10-minute speech to praise the Irish who came to America and faced strong prejudices in the area.

“They had to face signs in Scranton that said ‘Irish need not apply’ and ‘Irish not allowed,’ but that didn’t stop them from making amazing progress in this country.”

The only reference to politics came when he promised to support Senator Ted Kennedy’s plan for comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate.

Earlier, Obama met with a group of veterans who had recently served campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, for an hour at the Whistler’s Pub and Eatery in Scranton, where he said that the focus of U.S. troops should have been in Afghanistan because that’s where al-Quaida is.

Without waiting for the dinner, Obama left for Philadelphia where he spoke at the National Constitution Center on the subject of race in America.

Obama’s speech on race

On Tuesday morning, surrounded by eight American flags, Obama delivered what was characterized beforehand as a “major speech on race.” The speech was in response to criticism the Presidential candidate received from various camps on incendiary comments made by his longtime friend and minister, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Obama attempted to explain his relationship with Wright, reading from Obama’s 1995 memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” about his early relationship with Wright and Wright’s church. Obama stressed his own racial background: as the product of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, he said, “It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts —that out of many, we are truly one.

“I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible,” he said.