Dear Senator Obama,

Thursday night I attended the last day of the Convention and witnessed you accept the Democratic nomination for the 2008 presidential election. I’m a skeptical Democrat, a leftist. But you have me committed to going home and working harder to ensure that you get elected. The energy of that stadium, the feeling that this was crossroads moment, all of our struggle for civil rights in this country, the hard work of organizers, workers and civil rights activists before us made this moment possible. If all 40 million people who watched your speech on T.V. voted then you would surely win by a landslide victory.

This week I watched the roll out of a building progressive movement in this country from SEIU talking about single-payer health care, to Majora Carter talking about Green-jobs, to the emergence of PODER-PAC a new Democratic political action group for Latinas by Latinas. The excitement of this moment was ignighted by the feeling that that we can take the country back from those who would otherwise have us indebted, in war and in environmental peril. Colorado citizens who I had always thought were Republican, stood up to support you. I walked into a stadium overflowing with 77,000 people at least half those attending were people of color.

I am a Cuban-American, part of the Cuban American voting bloc that has traditionally voted Republican (even when it went against our self-interest). But like most groups we are not monolithic. And so I have always been a Democrat. I grew up working class and was raised by a single mom. Both of my parents were immigrants to this country. They believed like many immigrants that in the U.S. there are more opportunities. But like you said the other night, “How can you pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you don’t even have a pair of boots?”

You talked about the “middle-class.” I know that is euphemism for working class because we don’t really have a middle class anymore. We have the owning class, and the rest of us who are deeply in debt. I know many people without health insurance or with health insurance that is costing them hundreds of dollars each month. I know at least two people in my immediate family that are facing bankruptcy and foreclosure. And we are only at the beginning of the crisis that I fear is going to get much worse before it gets better.

As a working-class woman and a Latina I have never ever seen myself reflected in a potential US president. But there at your speech as you recounted the struggle for civil rights, a struggle that paved the way for us to elect our first Black president, the son of an immigrant, I saw myself in you. The weight of the moment, the 45th anniversary of the March on Washington, left me proud of being part of this movement.

But before the band starts playing on inauguration day you need to know that I intend to hold you to your campaign promises, to help you make them a reality.

When you say that you intend to give tax-breaks to 95% of the people (which means you must intend to tax those 5% who own the majority of the wealth in this nation); when you say that you intend to improve schools, (I live in NYC and we have too many failing schools serving mostly Latino and African American students); when you say you want to improve the environment by investing in Green technology and alternate energy sources … I say to you that you better because our future, and by that I mean our physical bodies, our emotional health, not to mention the Earth is in peril; And when you talk about fixing health care—so that I don’t have to pay 0 out of pocket to pay for my partners health; and when you talk about equal pay for equal work I will hold you to all of this, Mr. Obama, as a writer, an activist, an immigrant and citizen.

The past eight years have destroyed our environment, the economy, the safety of the world, I protested the RNC a few years ago because I couldn’t imagine four more years of a Bush administration. And I would have protested this year if you hadn’t been the candidate because the stakes are high and I truly believe you are the only candidate that can get us through the next four years. So, Senator Obama, though I like you, like what you say, believe you mean well, respect the fact that you are not yet a jaded politician I will hold you to your campaign promises, because we can’t afford not to.

And while we still have the modicum of our civil liberties we must rally behind you and push you to remember those who elected you: the young people, the workers, the disabled, the immigrants, those who make this country move!

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