Asides

“Yes we Span” – Democrats Abroad video (1 min 10)

May 1, 2008,  5:45 pm

Democrats Abroad Say, ‘Yes We Span’

By Ariel Alexovich

As she kept up to date about the presidential race back home, Meredith Wheeler noticed a recurring theme in the press coverage of Barack Obama, her favorite candidate.

“I kept reading about bridges, bridges, bridges,” said Ms. Wheeler, an American ex-pat living in the small village of Lautrec, in the south of France. ” ‘He bridges gaps. He’s a uniter.’ ”

With that in the back of her mind, an idea came to her “from the ether” at a Democrats Abroad regional meeting in Brussels last March.

Mr. Obama won the Democrats Abroad primary back in February, but Ms. Wheeler still was surprised by how many of her colleagues were outspoken Obama supporters. These Americans, usually just a background presence in their adopted cities, should make their support for him more visible, she thought.

And, symbolically, they should do it on a bridge.

Right away the idea took off, Ms. Wheeler said, and the first rally was organized in Vienna in late March.

Susan Vaillant, an ex-pat in Strasbourg, France, raised the bridge project’s hip quotient by dubbing it “Yes We Span” — a play off the Obama campaign motto “Yes We Can.”

So far, bridge rallies have been held all over the world, from the Pont Neuf in Paris, to the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, to the Batavia Drawbridge in Jakarta.  Link to New York Times article in full.>>

Video “Yes we Span” France ( 1 min 10)

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