Outside of parenthood, working on the campaign just ended has been the proudest accomplishment of my adult life. I started working in late December of 2007, worked through the primaries and into the summer. Just after the convention I attended a mini Camp Obama to learn some basic organizing skills. With my wife and another active community member I helped organize and coordinate a 170 volunteer member grassroots campaign group that we called Cherry Hill for Obama.  Along the way I met many terrific people, some famous (Rahm Emanuel, James Carville & Howard Dean), and have made new friends. We helped to elect a new Congressman in New Jersey's 3^rd Congressional District (the first Democrat to win the seat since 1882), and, a new President. We're all very proud of our work. It was a great victory, but now it's time, after a little bit of a rest, for us to effect the change that we helped to begin.

This was the first time in forty years that I became directly involved in a political campaign. I became involved because of the critical nature of the issues facing the country and because the country was so clearly in need of competent leadership. I decided to support President Elect Obama because I wanted my country back and because he has such a clear strategy for how to move the country forward - that is, that change is created from the bottom up by asking for participation through shared responsibility and shared sacrifice, while at the same time providing accountable and inspired leadership from top.

But he can't do this alone. We have to continue to be involved in one way or another.

To that end my watchword moving forward is purple. Why purple? Because to me purple signifies unity, not just the obvious mixing of red and blue, but the unity of purpose of America. The result of all of our hard work on this campaign has provided us a chance to improve our community and our country. But we can only do that if we stay involved. Sometimes our involvement will be symbolic. For instance, following the lead of one of our terrific group members, on November 5^th I took down all of my campaign signs and in their place put up American flags. Just a symbol yes, but also a reminder to me of our common purpose and our obligation to find common ground. And sometimes our involvement must be active participation. This is a time for each of us to start considering how we can actively stay involved. In the months ahead our new President will call on us to participate, but we need not wait until he asks; we can start thinking about and organizing that process right now.

We must continue the job. I'm looking forward to the work ahead.