Power to Choose

Usher tells Detroiters too young to vote they can help elect Obama

Shriek filled the large conference room in Detroit with sobs and tears not far behind.

Was it a bomb threat? Or a natural disaster?

No, it was Usher, the R&B star who came to Detroit today to urge his fans to help elect Sen. Barack Obama the next president of the United States.

After meeting Obama last year, Usher told a crowd of about 200 people at the Obama campaign headquarters in Detroit that he wanted to do something for the campaign.

“I decided to get people ineligible to vote involved,” he said. “I need you to encourage your parents, your aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters to register to vote.”

He started a campaign dubbed “I can’t, but you can,” to get people too young to vote to get their family members to the polls.

Talere Anderson, 17, the shrieker from Detroit, said she plans to do just that.

“I love Usher,” she said, tears running down her face. “And I brought my sister here.”

Her sister Ingrid Bell, 30, of Detroit, brought Anderson to the event and now may even get involved with the campaign.

After Usher and rapper Doug E. Fresh, who greeted the crowd with a “Yo, Yo Yo Detroit,” spoke, the crowd got their marching orders to go out and canvass neighborhoods to register new voters.

In addition Anna Burger, secretary/treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, which has 2 million members in the nation, did a canvas of her own in Pontiac. The union is working for Obama and congressional candidates across the country.