rivka | Entries tagged with dean for america

The Baltimore Sun ran an article about our local Meetup for Dean today. It filled up most of the cover page of the "Today" section and ran over to the back page, and had four good pictures - so we got lots of good exposure.

I think it's a great story. It gives a good sense of the flavor of the Dean Meetups - the excitement, the commitment, the anger, the humor. It shows the diversity of Dean supporters and the involvement of people who are totally new to politics. And it quotes me! Anonymously, unfortunately. (I'm "the volunteer behind the table of Howard Dean buttons and bumper stickers.")

My favorite part of the story, albeit for content rather than prose style:

Political parties and compasses aside, perhaps the most interesting aspect of this month's Dean Meetup in Baltimore was that moment when you looked around and saw a group of people in the moment. And in this moment, there was hope and excitement, even optimism. Defeat was not on the table. There was a sense of political empowerment.

Unfortunately, the pictures from the Sun story aren't online. You can, however, see pictures of the July Meetup here. (I'm the one in the turquoise shirt who looks seriously overheated.)

Current Mood: pleased

Tonight was the July Meetup for Dean.

I volunteered in advance to help out, and when I showed up at 6:30 I was immediately put to work signing in newcomers. (We collect names, contact information, and interests, and pass the info on to the national campaign if the person permits.) Because I was the only person behind the sign-in table, I also wound up selling buttons and bumper stickers. From 6:30 until after 7:30, when the meeting began, there was a steady stream of first-timers - about 70 in all. I did my best to try to make everyone feel noticed and welcome, even if I only spoke with them for a few seconds. It was hectic, but fun.

One hundred and twenty people came to the Meetup, not counting the media. (The City Paper and the Baltimore Sun were both present.) There were nowhere near enough chairs - the crush was incredible. After a couple of brief speeches and announcements, we were put to work writing letters to Iowans. Each of us got a sheet of paper with the names of three Iowa Democrats or Independents, and were asked to write personal, handwritten notes explaining why we support Dean and inviting them to write back to us. People all over the U.S. - and more than 50,000 people are registered with Meetup for Dean - were doing the same.

I think it's a truly inspired project. I love the personal touch. I love that it gets each of us involved, on an individual level, attempting to make a genuine connection with someone else. I love the idea of handwritten, handsigned, personal campaign literature. I love that each and every person who came to the Meetup tonight got to do something to help their candidate right away - which will strengthen their willingness to come back and do some more.

It's also a cool project because it takes advantage of something Dean has that other candidates don't - a huge grassroots volunteer network. In addition to, hopefully, being successful in its own right, the fact that we have the resources to pull this off makes a statement about how broad and deep Dean's support is running - sixteen months before the general election.

I came home tonight so excited, so energized. Working for Dean makes me feel so good. It's... I was about to say "it's been a long time since a politician made me feel this way," but I've never had a politician make me feel this way before. It's great to have something to believe in again.

Current Mood: bouncy

minnaleigh and I went to the pride festival in DC today to leaflet for Howard Dean. We had two hundred half-sheet flyers emphasizing Dean's gay rights positions. They were gone in about fifteen minutes. I totally underestimated how many we'd need. Yay!

Current Mood: tired

If you haven't been following the 2004 Presidential campaign obsessively, you might not know that the Democratic Leadership Council recently savaged Howard Dean as a far-left elitist liberal. It's hard to know where they get that - for lord's sake, this is a guy whose stump speech says that "white folks in the South who drive pick-up trucks with Confederate flag decals on the back ought to be voting with us because their kids don't have health insurance either, and their kids need better schools too." This is a guy who gets a perfect score from the NRA and the National Abortion Rights Action League. This is a fiscal conservative who tells Democratic audiences that if they want to fund social justice programs, they have to balance the budget first.

And, curiously, this is a guy that the DLC themselves used to claim as an example of "New Democrat" success. Until he ran for president and started threatening their guy, Lieberman.

I just sent this letter off to the Washington Post:

To the Editor:

I was shocked to read that the DLC now views Dr. Howard Dean as a
far-left liberal. This is quite a change of heart: as recently as
2002, the DLC praised then-Governor Dean on their website as a fine
example of a New Democrat. And it's easy to see why. Dean champions
fiscal conservatism. As Governor, he balanced Vermont's budget, put
money aside in a rainy-day fund, and cut taxes twice. This put him in
a position to provide generous increases in education and health care
spending - social priorities that really matter to everyday Americans.

The DLC is not only out of touch with average Democratic voters, they
are also apparently out of touch with their own past opinions.

Rebecca Wald
Elkridge, MD

Current Mood: irritated

I've been following Howard Dean for a while, but I didn't know a lot of the things covered in this New York magazine profile.

Like, for example, this:

Back in 1974, his younger brother Charlie, 24, was traveling through Laos, paddling with a friend down the Mekong River taking pictures, when the two were seized by the Communists and charged with being American spies. Months later, word came back that they had secretly been executed; the bodies have never been recovered.

Dean never mentions this family tragedy in speeches and usually moves through the topic briskly with reporters. Unsure what to say, I tell him that my own brother died-of an asthma attack-and that I am still haunted by his death. Dean gives me a look of recognition-which leads to a running conversation over several days about the agony of losing a sibling, how it changes you, the pain of watching your folks suffer. "It was awful for everyone, but it was worse for my parents," says Dean, who shared a childhood bedroom-complete with bunk beds-with the irrepressible Charlie. "It just wastes you. Everyone falls apart; they just fall apart in different ways."

His mother recalls the family’s desperate efforts to save Charlie; the Deans have long believed that their globetrotting son worked for the CIA but have never gotten confirmation. Her husband flew to Laos and knocked on all the diplomatic doors, trying to ascertain at what jungle location Charlie was being held; Andree Dean followed a month later. "I kept going from person to person," she recalls. "It was so awful." Thinking back now, she also regrets the family’s stiff-upper-lip reaction afterward, wondering about the impact on her other three sons-Howard; James, now a Fairfield, Connecticut, market researcher; and William, a Boston bond trader. "We could never discuss it at home, because Howard’s father would get so upset," she says. "That wasn’t the era when you talked about things."

There's so much that fascinates me about this man, and his life.

To my shock, I seem to have wound up on what looks like it's going to be the statewide steering committee of Maryland for Dean - at least, until the national campaign opens an office here.

We met last night in a pub, ten of us. Our primary goals for the meeting were to coordinate efforts between the Baltimore group and the group from the Maryland suburbs of DC, and to decide what we'll do as we start getting too big for the Meetup for Dean concept.

We agreed that we need to focus our efforts on three things: (1) community outreach and promoting name recognition, (2) fundraising, and (3) volunteer recruitment. Teams of people will be working on different aspects of the campaign, and the Meetups will be a way of directing new volunteers to work teams and having teams report back to each other. We agreed that it didn't make a lot of sense to try to plan strategies and work out details at the Meetups - gatherings of 50+ people in a bar aren't really conducive to that. Meetups should be a way of energizing people, educating them about what our organization is doing, and funneling them towards opportunities to get involved.

As a start, we're going to be putting together packets of information that we can distribute at Meetups: what do you need to know if you want to make and pass out flyers? who's in charge of organizing efforts in your county? who should you send letters about Dean, and what makes for a good letter? how do you host a house party? where do you get Dean paraphernalia?

I reported on my efforts to organize a trip to the first presidential debate in South Carolina. Unfortunately, it looks as though we're not likely to get seats for the debate itself. It's being held in a 300-seat auditorium, and for obvious reasons the hosts are giving priority to South Carolina Democrats. However, the Dean campaign would still like us to go and rally outside the hall. The debate will be televised live on ABC, and almost certainly the accompanying news coverage will include footage, and probably interviews, of supporters outside the hall. A good showing for Dean is essential, especially since the debate in the South and he's a New Englander. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be able to get at least a few tickets, but mostly I'm planning to arrange for outside agitators. *grin* It looks like we'll be carpooling down, and we're trying to arrange for local hosts through South Carolina for Dean and Students for Dean. I think that it will be fun.

Nine months to the Iowa caucuses. Wow.

Current Mood: geeky

As those of you who attended the Meetup know, the first official debate for the Democratic Party will be held in Charleston, SC on May 3. Dean, Kerry, Lieberman, Edwards, and Gephardt have already agreed to be there, and the other candidates may attend as well.

We thought that traveling to the debate would be a great opportunity to show our support for Dean, and I volunteered to find out what we need to know. Erin [lastname] and Matt [lastname] are both kind enough to be working on this as well.

Tickets to the debate are $25, and a limited number are available. Thus, if this is something we're going to do, we'll need to get on it quickly. We'll have information about how to purchase a ticket on Monday, which is two days before the information will be available to the general public (thanks to Matt!). There's also a pre-debate reception at $100/ticket, but I'm guessing not many people will have that kind of money to spend on a non-Dean-specific fundraiser.

I'm guessing that we would leave in the early morning on Saturday (say, 6am) to be sure of arriving in time for the debate in the evening. We'd return on Sunday May 4.

I'm looking into transportation options. If 40-50 people want to go, it will probably be cost-effective to charter a bus. For a smaller group, carpooling will probably be a better idea. I have three quote requests in with charter bus companies, and expect to hear back by Monday.

My questions for you all are:
(1) Would you be likely to attend the debate if we organize a trip?
(2) Would you prefer to carpool or rent a charter bus?
(3) How high would the total cost of the trip (debate ticket + transportation + lodging) have to be to keep you from attending?

I hope to have some more concrete costs available to you soon.

Rebecca

Current Mood: excited

Tonight was the Meetup for Howard Dean. Dean supporters across the country meet at 7pm on the first Wednesday of every month to organize - in many places, including Maryland, well in advance of any official campaign presence in the state.

I had a lousy day for a variety of reasons, so I wasn't in the best of moods when I left work. Fortunately, I was required to claim my car from the garage and re-park it a good hour before the Meetup began. I spent the hour sitting on a bench, looking out at the water across the Fells Point market plaza and enjoying the glow of the setting sun on the bricks. It was perfect weather, clear and in the low seventies. I'd calmed down considerably by the time I found the bar where the Meetup was being held.

All told, about 55 people showed up. The Meetups have been going on for a few months now, and several people already had campaign tasks they were working on - for example, identifying public events where we can pass out leaflets, researching campaign expenditure laws, holding fundraising house parties. Oddly enough, one of the people who's already quite involved is my old high school friend Prescott. I knew he lived in Baltimore, but somehow we've never managed to get together. I guess we're likely to see a lot more of each other on the campaign.

At some point in the future, the Dean For America campaign will open a Maryland state office. We're not sure when that will be. Maryland is currently trying to move our primary so that it will be earlier in the process, before Super Tuesday - and if that happens, you can bet that we'll have an official Dean headquarters sooner rather than later. Our goal as a grassroots group is to be able to hand them an organized, active, productive, financially solvent system with a ready-made corps of volunteers.

It seemed to be a politically savvy group. Lots of people have experience working on local and state campaigns, and understand the structure of party politics in Maryland. There was some rah-rah stuff in the meeting, and a lot of informal conversations beforehand about what inspires people about Dean, but for the most part it was a meeting focused on the practical aspects of how to make things happen. I had been wondering if the tone would be more like an anti-war rally, given that I think most of Dean's volunteers are probably motivated by opposition to the war, but there wasn't all that much in the way of rhetoric.

Which is what I was hoping for, honestly. I don't want to sit around and complain about how bad things are. I think about how bad things are a dozen times a day. I want to work to change things. I need to work to change things. And I think that the electoral process is the most promising way to do it.

Current Mood: Dean For America!

I do have one reservation, though: if this guy is supposedly so much like Jed Bartlet, why on earth are his supporters meeting on Wednesday nights? Don't they have to be home by nine?

I'm so... Sad. Anxious. Ashamed. I hate this.

I haven't been talking about the war in my LiveJournal because I haven't known what to say that wouldn't seem pointless. I'm not a pacifist, but I think that this war is wrong. I think it's been internally propelled by motives within the Bush administration, rather than being proportionately responsive to external events. It frightens me to see my country alienated from its allies of long standing. It humiliates me to see the bribery and bullying and intentional misdirection that has been done in my name, to force this conclusion.

But I'm not comfortable with all aspects of the anti-war movement, either. I got an e-mail urging people to call the U.N. and ask that the weapons inspectors be left in Iraq so that the U.S. wouldn't start dropping bombs. That innocent people - people trying to avert war - should be nonconsensually abandoned to Saddam Hussein as hostages, in the name of peace.

From where I stand, long ago the Bush Administration let their sense of righteousness overpower their senses of reason and compassion. I don't want the same thing to happen in the anti-war movement. I don't want to have to cringe back from people turning their contempt onto the nineteen-year-old boys and girls out in the desert waiting to be shot. But nor do I want there to be nineteen-year-old boys and girls out in the desert waiting to be shot. Not for this. It's the wrong war.

It's no coincidence, I think, that tonight I was spurred by this article at The American Prospect into taking a long look at Dean for America... and getting excited. Probably disproportionately excited, in that I wanted to sign up right away to volunteer my heart out. Dean looks really good. But I think that also, tonight, I'm desperately yearning for something political I can feel good about, some leader I'd be proud to follow, some way to work for change. It's tempting, tonight, to believe that there's someone out there who can be the fulfillment of my hopes.