MY QUESTIONS FOR OUR CANDIDATES: FIRST OF ALL, DO YOU CARE?

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_linda_mi_070304_my_questions_for_our.htm

MY QUESTIONS FOR OUR CANDIDATES: FIRST OF ALL, DO YOU CARE?

by Linda Milazzo


This past Friday I attended an event featuring Presidential candidate, John Edwards. It wasn't a fundraiser. It was a homey speech/Q&A thrown by Palisadians for Peace at an upscale hotel in Santa Monica. Equally lavish as the feted fundraiser I attended recently for Barack Obama, but costing substantially less. Just twenty dollars per person to cover the price of the room, filled to capacity with Progressives deciding on 2008.

Yes, deciding....

WE are, after all, the deciders. The energized, knowledgeable, truth-seeking, web-searching, fact-finding, peace-loving, media-reforming, money-raising, non-fiction devotees who work on campaigns. We are the activists. The die-hards who worked tirelessly in 2000 to win, then watched incredulously when etiquette superseded truth and the duly elected President conceded too soon. When pregnant chads and hanging chads paved the way for America's decline.

Then again in 2004. It was the activists who watched in disbelief as an entire campaign, an entire Presidency, was thwarted by the terms swift-boat and flip-flop. When multi-lingual and international became slurs.

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- Have you paid attention to the anti-war protests on the streets since then? To the letters and emails from activists? To the pleas from Cindy Sheehan? To the plights of Sergeant Camilo Mejia and Lieutenant Ehren Watada? Did you notice? Do you care?


- You're asking for OUR involvement. But in the past two Presidential elections, the lack of involvement has not been from US. It's been from the candidates themselves and their incompetent handlers. They've run unsuccessful, ill-managed, poorly planned campaigns. Will YOU vow to fight as hard as WE do, and not acquiesce unnecessarily to defeat? Then, when in office, will you maintain a dialog with a representative group of US?

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