I Love Jimmy Carter

I was a single mom of a preschooler in Austin when I realized that driving around town to honkytonks singing for tips was not going to cut it. So I took a mundane job in the personnel office of a state agency where I filed employment applications and it was pretty simple. College grads went into the high paid drawer, non grads started at minimum wage. So I got into The University of Texas as a SOTA Student Older Than Average.

As Fall semester 1976 began, I was in the quad when a whispered message spread through the crowd. Jimmy Carter the candidate who was propelling to the Presidency, was here.

In a swarm, hundreds of us ran through the southern campus onto Congress Street down towards the Capitol and siphoned in the doors of a two-story office building. By then I was close to the front of the crowd.

Jimmy Carter stopped at the landing, the Austin sky in a window behind him. He turned around and looked down at us.

And I had the Jimmy Carter experience.

His eyes were so intense that they shot out a blue-white light. I was stunned. I thought he was looking straight at me but he was looking at everyone in the crowd with that same connection.  He gave a bit of his stump speech which I’d heard before; it was why I was supporting him.  He wanted amnesty for Vietnam War conscientious objectors who’d fled to places like Canada, an issue that strongly affected persons from my generation (born 1948).  https://cityofangels25.blogspot.com/2022/06/encountering-black-panthers-and-nancy.html

Carter is also first politician I ever heard mention the plight and rights of Palestinians. In 1976. 

I was still stunned hours after that encounter with Carter. I fell in love with him then and everything he's ever done since then has made me love him still today. 

Next day I used a class that just started to get an internship with the Travis County Democratic Party that helped me connect to people and have an idea of a career, getting jobs that led to jobs that made my life incredibly interesting.

Here is the report: 

Counter culture reach-out project' for Jimmy Carter 1976, to get Vietnam war era 'dropouts' to drop back in and vote for him

https://cityofangels25.blogspot.com/2023/12/my-counter-culture-reach-out-project.html  

It jump started my career and my life.

Because I was one of the dropouts who dropped back in.

Read it to see what I mean:  

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Posted by Kay Ebeling 

Producing City of Angels Blog since January 2007

the city of angels is everywhere