The Time is NOW for Kerry to Name John Edwards as VP

Ghandi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world."

I believe that applies to the situation we are in with the 2004 Presidential election. We need for Democrats to take ownership of getting our Independent and Republican-leaning-away-from Bush friends and associates out to vote for our party.

We won't need a protest march if Bush is elected again- we need it NOW. We need your vote, we need your time, we need whatever funds you can scrape together.

In my opinion there is no better candidate to raise the energy and involvement level in November than John Edwards. When he talks about two Americas he means two competing ideologies. The America where the opinions and values of the citizen are the motivation for the country and a foreign country I know nothing about, where people are classed together, told what to do and how to think. These words resonate with average Americans who sweat over how we're going to pay the bills each month and how we're going to pay for our children to go to college. To putit plainly, there was no candidate in the field during the primaries with as much power to inspire as John Edwards. He can connect to a group of voters that frankly, Kerry will find it difficult to penetrate with his message and presence.

I have been glad recently to hear John Kerry co-opting Edwards' rhetoric, as well as asking him to speak at many State Conventions. I will be attending the Texas Democratic Convention as an At-Large Delegate from my district in June. We had a well-attended meeting last Thursday evening where it was announced that John Edwards will most likely be our keynote speaker. There was an almost unanimous positive reaction to this news and much speculation we would be hearing from the Vice Presidential candidate- what an air of excitement was felt in that room!

I invite anyone with questions about John Edwards to read "Four Trials," which you can find at bookstores and on Amazon.com. There is a passage in it regarding the closing speech made at the conclusion of the final trial. In the speech, he contrasted Valerie Lekey, a little girl he was championing who was eviscerated by a swimming pool drain, as pure innocence, lifting one hand. Lifting the other and making a fist he characterized the negligent pool manufacturer as corporate indifference. Then he made the two collide to illustrate to the jury what happens when the whims of powerful corporate interests meet a defenseless individual.

His point was, and is, well-taken. WE must be the defense of the people. It is you, I, our neighbors, the people we grew up with and who live next to us today who have the power to stand up, draw a line and tell those who would continue this nation on the course it is following that we will allow it NO MORE.

This election, with an honorable man like John Kerry as Presidential candidate and a champion of the people like John Edwards for VP, will mark a turning point in our nation. Will we go forth in the optimistic spirit of my grandfather's generation, who overcame a Great Depression and won a World War? Of Martin Luther King, John and Robert Kennedy, who dared to rise against two centuries of oppression? Or will we succumb to the anti-values of the current administration? Are we blind consumers or producers? Tearers-down or builders? Soulless shells that shuffle our feet to the whims of a ruling class or living, breathing embodiments of the hope and dreams of our daughters and sons?

It will do nothing to protest later. You'll be a gentle breeze in the middle of a cyclone. NOW is the time for your wind to howl. NOW we have the power. NOW we have our say. NOW we win the nomination and NOW we take back what is ours, what is entrusted to us, has been bled for and will always belong to every American- our sovereign government.

The time is NOW for John Kerry to name John Edwards as his running mate- for our country's future

MBT