Tony Cannella of Henderson, Nevada is a 64-year-old retired veteran of the Vietnam War. He supports Senator Obama because he believes Barack will help bring “our brothers and sisters back home” from Iraq. But he also sees Barack as a once-in-a-generation leader.
Periodically, people like Mohandas Gandhi, John Kennedy, and Martin Luther King come along who touch our souls. They inspire us with their ideas. They offer a clear vision of a better world. They have the values, integrity, insight, and empathy that we long for in a leader. Barack Obama is a man who offers us a new type of politics; one without hostility, with a cooperative spirit that reaches across party lines for the common good. Barack Obama is a man that we need. And his time is now! Sam, that is why I am working to elect Barack Obama the next President of these United States.
Tony decided he wanted to do everything he could to convince Barack to run, and so he served as state director of the Draft Obama movement. Since then, he’s connected with Joshua Murphy, who heads up Southern Nevada for Obama, a group that already has about 150 members, according to Cannella.Tony’s throwing a Hope Action Change get together with “about fifteen or twenty” Nevadans tomorrow at his house in Henderson. “It’s a small place, but I wanted to get as many people in as I could,” he says.“It’s very rare when someone comes along who you vote for,” says Tony. “Usually you vote for the better of the two. It’s not the case here with Barack. I’m voting for him.”Billy Howard, another Nevadan who supports Barack and is throwing his own Hope Action Change party, concurs. “For many of us Barack represents not just change, but a very intense, very real kind of change.”Billy and his mother Dorrie, who just turned 87 (but certainly doesn’t look it!), have joined a group called RENObama, and are hosting an event tomorrow in Reno as well. For both Billy and his mother, the Iraq war is one of the main reasons they’re throwing support behind Barack.
Dorrie is a World War II veteran. She was serving as a nurse on the USS Comfort, taking care of wounded soldiers, when her ship was bombed off the coast of Okinawa. “She’s been strongly antiwar ever since,” says Billy. Dorrie began supporting Barack after seeing him talk about the Iraq war on television a few weeks ago. “Tears came to her eyes,” says Billy. “She said, ‘You look into the man’s eyes and you can just see his intelligence.’ She believes him, she trusts him, and she likes him. And she thinks he can end this war.”
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