Why I'm in Reno; Why You Need to Vote 

Why I'm in Reno; Why You Need to Vote

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.