Slimming for the Beach

Will.i.am and Jesse Dylan — and friends — go for Barack Obama

A pro-Barack Obama “Yes We Can” video mak­ing the Inter­net rounds offers an inter­est­ing pair­ing — Black Eyed Peas front­man Will.i.am and film­maker Jesse Dylan (son of Bob), plus a raft of celebri­ties. The inspi­ra­tion of the video — and its core theme — was Obama’s speech after he lost the New Hamp­shire pri­mary, which Will.i.am talks about here.

But pop cul­ture folks can treat this as a quiz — who do you recognize?

-Top of the Ticket Blog, The Los Ange­les Times

— and don’t miss the blog of the co-creator of the video, Will.i.am, of Black Eyed Peas writ­ing about why he got involved.

Here are the words

It was a creed writ­ten into the found­ing doc­u­ments that declared the des­tiny of a nation. Yes we can.
It was whis­pered by slaves and abo­li­tion­ists as they blazed a trail toward free­dom. Yes we can.
It was sung by immi­grants as they struck out from dis­tant shores and pio­neers who pushed west­ward against an unfor­giv­ing wilder­ness. Yes we can.
It was the call of work­ers who orga­nized; women who reached for the bal­lot; a Pres­i­dent who chose the moon as our new fron­tier; and a King who took us to the mountain-top and pointed the way to the Promised Land.
Yes we can to jus­tice and equal­ity. (yes we can) Yes we can to oppor­tu­nity and pros­per­ity. Yes we can to oppor­tu­nity and pros­per­ity. Yes we can to oppor­tu­nity and pros­per­ity. Yes we can heal this nation. Yes we can repair this world. Yes we can. Si Se Puede.
We know the bat­tle ahead will be long, but always remem­ber that no mat­ter what obsta­cles stand in our way, noth­ing can stand in the way of the power of mil­lions of voices call­ing for change.
We want change!
We have been told we can­not do this by a cho­rus of cyn­ics who will only grow louder and more dis­so­nant. We’ve been asked to pause for a real­ity check. We’ve been warned against offer­ing the peo­ple of this nation false hope.
But in the unlikely story that is Amer­ica, there has never been any­thing false about hope.
We want change! I want Change.
The hopes of the lit­tle girl who goes to a crum­bling school in Dil­lon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of LA; we will remem­ber that there is some­thing hap­pen­ing in Amer­ica; that we are not as divided as our pol­i­tics sug­gests; that we are one peo­ple; we are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chap­ter in America’s story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shin­ing sea — Yes. We. Can.

UPDATE
***And here’s a link to the most thought­ful video. If you have twenty min­utes to spare, this is deeply mov­ing in a dif­fer­ent way. Lau­rence Lessig : 20 min­utes or so on why I am 4Barack

Lawrence Lessig is a Pro­fes­sor of Law at Stan­ford Law School and founder of the school’s Cen­ter for Inter­net and Soci­ety.
He chairs the Cre­ative Com­mons project, and serves on the board of the Free Soft­ware Foun­da­tion, the Elec­tronic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion, the Pub­lic Library of Sci­ence, and Pub­lic Knowledge.

UPDATE 2 Here is the text of the Lessig video