Coming Home To Vote

Like me, Americans who live abroad, wouldn't miss being here to vote for Obama for the world ...

Barack Obama might call us, as he has himself, "citizens of the world." But for Americans living abroad, it's our chance at changing the world as American citizens that is calling many of us back to our hometowns next week.

"I feel an incredible drive to get home for the election," says Tioka Tokedira, who has lived in Paris for the last five years and is traveling to Philadelphia to vote and volunteer. "Obama gives me a feeling of hope and pride, especially after dealing with negative French attitudes toward Americans."

For Vivian Juul Cintron, who grew up in the Bronx and has lived in Copenhagen for 18 years, the prospect of Obama winning is a precious lesson in history worth taking her 13-year-old son out of school for a week. "I have this unexplainable need for both of us to be there when the first biracial African American is voted into presidency. I see my son in Obama—the hope and possibility. My son may not fully understand the entire implications of this, but I see the pride in his eyes."

Having lived in Berlin since the Bush era began, I have been the sounding board for regular German rants about everything wrong in America; Michael Moore's books sold faster here than in the United States. Yet as I touched shoulders with 200,000 Germans cheering and applauding Obama's presence here, I knew I was witnessing history, and I knew that I had to return to my American home to vote for Obama ...