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Here's a link to a great election map at CSPAN, and a long message from a hardworking peace activist who has gone to Florida. There's no reason I should be the only one to read this message...
[Letter from a friend in Florida on Nov. 2 2004]
My Friends,
It's 3:48 a.m. I distinctly remember this feeling before I have run marathons. You can't wait for it to start, and you can't wait to get it done. Excited, slightly nauseated, scared and confident. After months of preparation, you can't predict how it will finish.
But there the comparison ends. Because I know we have already won. Yes, we have.
Look at this magnificent sea of Americans - millions of us - who have already come together to take our country back. That's the miracle. This state of aliveness, of piercing, painful concern for the future of our United States.
I think of my beautiful friends back in my Mar Vista neighborhood in California - our perpetual (19 month) Friday night vigil for peace. We have witnessed the shift of opinion against the war, learned to laugh at the nasty Bubbas in their trucks or fine cars. Through the marches and the fliering and tabling and the pot lucks, I have found my community, my home. My heart. I am miles and miles away, but they stand with me.
Think of all the MoveOn bake sales that brought more of us together in just a few months... It was like underground springs that suddenly shot up, out of the earth, as people found their passion, their hope, and donated time and hard earned money to bake sales, house parties, phone banks. Who would have ever imagine themselves, traveling to another state get out the vote. Look what we are all doing. We are all in a new place. We have come to believe that we can make a difference.
Here in Ocala Florida, it truly is the front lines of this battle. Right now, back at the Democratic HQ, a one floor office suite about the size of two double garages, the decorations are hung, waiting. Robert the field organizer and a couple other buddies are probably crashed out on the floor. I left at 11:00 last night, as the computer team was shifting the hardware in place. Cases of water and handouts were flying out the door, into cars that will take them to our 12 key polling stations at 6:45 am. These stations will be manned in shifts by our Watchers, inside the polls, and our Greeters, out on the lines, who are charged with keeping people hydrated and happy. More clipboards and t-shirts, ( all purchased by California donors) are going to a church and a union hall in key neighborhoods, where volunteers will canvass relentlessly. Waves of updated data will be driven out to the staging areas by a team of runners, so the canvassers will know exactly who has yet to vote. Another team of drivers will stand by to take folks to the polls. Oh, and add to that more runners with dozens of doughnuts and sandwiches.
I will man the volunteer line, as people call in, desperate to do some thing, any thing to help. And, I will try to direct confused volunteers to their shifts in unfamiliar neighborhoods. I will also have to turn away a good number of retirees who wanted to come in and help on the phones, getting out the vote. All the phone banking has been handed over to our friends in California. No extra folks inside the HQ today. We can't afford to have any Bubbas cutting the phone lines. (Yeah, they do that here.)
It's absolutely incredible to witness this volunteer army readying for battle. After all this is over, I will send you the photos of these ordinary heroes. Right now, count your self among them, no matter where you live. We are all together in this. We are the change.
This IS the victory.
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© Copyright 1997-2003 George D. Girton.
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