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Linda M. Maloney, of Enosburg Falls

I support Barack Obama for President with all my energies, and I particularly want to be at the Convention for him because I am a member of the clergy. The Republican noise machine will be using "Obama's pastor" the way they used "Dean's scream." It's just as relevant and just as valid. And we need some clergy up front to say so.

Like so many Vermonters ("Moonlight in Vermont -- or starve!") I work several jobs, some of them paid. I am (part-time) the priest of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Enosburg Falls. Also part-time, I telecommute to my old job in Minnesota, as book editor and translator. With other parts of my time I volunteer with Democracy for America and with my local food bank and Strategic Prevention group addressing problems of young adults in Franklin County. I do some volunteer lobbying in Montpelier and Washington: Last summer I was on the Hill on behalf of Oxfam America. The photo shows me being arrested in Washington a couple years ago while protesting cuts to Medicaid in the federal budget. I'm Secretary-Treasurer of my town Democratic Committee and Franklin County's first alternate to the State Committee.

I went to the Boston Convention in 2004, as an at-large delegate from Minnesota. It all started when I became a field organizer for the Dean campaign; I won election at the State Convention with a 30-second speech that started: "What I want to know is who made George W. Bush the Pope of the Polarized States of America!" During the Convention I was featured on Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, highlighting why people of faith support Democrats, because the Democratic Party stands for the fundamental principles we all believe in: equality, fairness, care for the disadvantaged. I was part of the crowd on the stage in Boston when Barack Obama gave his great keynote speech, and I knew then that he would be President one day. I want to help make it soon.

By the way, I'm one of those older women from the Second Wave of Feminism who's supposedly behind Hillary Clinton. Guess again! I'm for Obama all the way!