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Well, that didn't turn out so well, did it?
Why did I come to Reno?
On the day we invaded Iraq I went into a deep funk. In the days, weeks, and months leading up to the war I had done all I could think of to stop it. I attended rallies and marches, wrote letters to the local newspaper, my congresswoman, my senators, and to the President himself. Despite this, the war came. My efforts had accomplished nothing and my funk came not because I felt my energy had been wasted but because I felt I had not done enough. More letters, more marches, more signs in the yard, more "friendly discussions" with my friends, family, and co-workers who supported the President's war, I felt, might have made a difference.
I've come to find since then that the feelings I felt then were shared by thousands, maybe millions of others around the country. And we millions vowed to ourselves that the next time we had the opportunity to try to influence the path of our country we would expend every effort to do so. We would not again wonder if we could have done more. That is why so many thousands of us have come together in Nevada, Ohio, Arizona, Florida, and the other swing states, under the auspices of MoveOn Pac, America Comes Together, the Sierra Club, People For the American Way, and many other local and national groups to "leave no voter behind."
The miles we walk, the doors we knock on, the voters we speak to face to face and over the telephone, we do this to ensure that the President will soon be able to go home to Crawford to stay. This is not, as Mr. Bush, might say, "hard work." It's physically tiring and the hours are long, and it's sometimes frustrating, but the potential reward is great and the consequences of failure are unacceptable. We derive our energy from our mission and from those who are out here with us.
We who are here doing this are able to do so largely because of the support of those we left behind at home; our families, friends, co-workers, employers, and lonely pets. Of you people, I ask one more thing. Call somebody you know, preferably somebody living in a swing state, and remind that person of how valuable his or her vote is, of how much is riding on this election. Convince that person to go to the polls tomorrow and vote for John Kerry for President so we can remove George Bush from office and begin restoring our nation's honor.
One more thing. This name of this blog, It Looks Like This, is the answer to a question, "what does democracy look like?" And this is what it looks like; thousands, millions of people coming together and taking the responsibility to change the direction of their country.
Okay, so I'm still here. Via Scaramouche, I found this nifty little clip, Visualize Winning.
Click on it.
Watch it.
Do it.
Now I'm really out of here.
Not that there's been much to read here lately anyway, but this'll probably be the last entry before election night. I'm going to Reno in the morning for MoveOnPac and it occurs to me that I ought to start planning to pack something.
Think positive thoughts, get out to vote, and get out the vote. For my next entry I hope to be writing about our new President-elect.
This, my friends, is why we need the ACLU.
A gay high school student in Kansas was twice sent home from school for wearing gay-pride t-shirts because the school administration feared they might offend other students, though no other students complained of being offended. This in a school whose parking lot is full of cars and halls full of lockers bearing bumper stickers in favor of Missouri's recently passed anti-gay marriage amendment.
"This school allows its students to freely express their views on gay and lesbian rights - but only if they're on the anti-gay side of the issue," said Jolie Justus, a member of the legal panel for the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri.
Thanks to Pete M of The Dark Window and Richard of Scaramouche for organizing an evening of drinking last night for Bay Area Bloggers and Readers. As John at blogenlust mentioned, it was neat to meet some of the people whose work we read and appreciate daily.
Photos, courtesy of Generick, are up at The Dark Window and this is the shit
Thank god the Red Sox won the World Series. With their special status as cursed losers shed, they can now be treated just like all the other teams (like the Giants, Indians, Phillies, etc.) that can be counted on to win a championship once every fifty years or so when the real champions have an off year.
Move On Pac has prepared a wallet sized card advising you of what you should do if you feel harassed or intimidated while voting on Tuesday.
You just couldn't make this kind of stuff up...
"'A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief,' Bush told supporters at an airport rally ."
Anybody got an argument with that?
If you want to see your eminem and MTV won't show it, just click here.
For the lyrics (in case, as with me, your ears don't run at the same speed as eminem's mouth), click here.
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