Please share your stories of offline political activism here. (More)
This week I attended the steering and campaign committee meetings for my county Democratic Executive Committee. In most states, the DEC is the Democratic Party’s most local official body, and most DECs have several working committees that organize party activities. The steering committee consists of the DEC officers, the chairs of the working committees, and the leaders of the Democratic Clubs sponsored by that DEC. Our campaign committee both recruits candidates for state and local offices and plans our coordinated campaign. The first step in that coordinated plan – collecting petitions to get our candidates on the ballot for 2014 – began this week and will continue through January.
Your local DEC should soon be beginning or have already begun that same task, as well as registering voters and other activities in preparation for next year’s elections. Please contact your state Democratic Party to find your local DEC, and help them turn your state and our nation bluer!
The weeks are running together in my mind. I wrote some state legislators and some federal elected officials emails. I am more involved in the mining proposals in Minnesota and am letting my elected officials (and my Facebook friends) know that 500 years of treating the water from mining for 20 years of around 300 jobs is a foolish tradeoff.
Thank you for your activism, addisnana! 😀 I hope your and others’ efforts convince the Minnesota legislature that the long-term costs of that mining far exceed the gains.
Not much this week. Signed a bunch of online petitions for various and sundry progressive causes.
I did have a one-on-one with our local DECs 1st VP. Lots of noises being made about replacing our chair because of his propensity to cross endorse. (We cross endorsed several down ballot positions this year.) The 1st VP wanted to know my take on all this. As a former Chair I have some ex officio influence and can play a role either way.
My position is that I want to see less cross endorsement, but don’t want to replace the chair. I’ll probably have to be part of a group that negotiates between the chair and the insurgents.
Thank you for your activism, Mike! 😀 I hope you’re able to help resolve the issues at your local DEC. We’re far more effective when we focus on the work we need to do rather than intra-DEC politicking.
After a hectic week and a race toward a deadline I’m going to miss, I don’t have much to report. I focused my donations on charity, although I did break down and make a small one to a Senate campaign.
Signed petitions, wrote a few e-mails. Not nearly enough.
When phone banking season gets underway, I’ve decided to put a reminder prominently on my computer so I can see it as I use Vote Builder: “Each call is for a poor person.”
Thank you for your activism, winterbanyan! 😀 This …
… is an excellent idea. Perhaps your DEC could print up copies for all phone bankers and canvassers.
I signed the Credo ALEC petition. http://act.credoaction.com/sign/alec_supporters?ak_proof=1&akid=9550.321810.UvfZFJ&rd=1&t=5
“Tell Amazon, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Kraft, McDonald’s and other former ALEC funders: Don’t go back to ALEC.”
Thank you for the link, Jim. I am a signer.
Thank you for your activism, Jim! 😀 I agree that ALEC is a problem. On the plus side, it’s now a visible problem. Were ALEC to disappear, I’ve no doubt it would be replaced … and we would again have an invisible problem.