(Photo courtesy of The Arizona Republic)
On Friday morning, 7,000 students, seniors, veterans, and community members filled Arizona State University's Hayden Lawn. They gathered to hear Senator Obama decry the smallness of today's politics and declare a new direction for the future:
"We don't need somebody who knows how to work the system. We need somebody who knows how to change the system. We don't need somebody who knows how to play the game better. We need somebody to put an end to the game-playing…People want to sense that somehow we can still rally around a common purpose, that we can recognize ourselves as Americans and rally around a common destiny. People want to sense that we can be proud of being Americans and we can get things done again."
Obama did not only focus on 2008. He called on Arizonans to pressure their legislators to support a change in course in Iraq. He insisted that the Bush Administration's failed yet stubborn strategy is too costly to continue until the next president takes office in January 2009:
"We can't wait 15 months, because too many of our young men and women are dying. We can't wait 15 months, because we're spending $10 billion to $12 billion every single month that could be spent on college scholarships, that could be spent on health care, that could be spent on infrastructure, that could be spent on clean energy."
The message and vision that Obama laid out in his speech was enough to win more than a few new supporters in the crowd. Farryl Bertmann, a 32-year-old graduate student from Mesa, Arizona, came to the rally as a curious Clinton supporter. But after seeing Obama and speaking to others in the crowd, she had changed her mind: "Now I'm 100% behind him. So many things he said resonated with me."
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