Antidotal A Little Something to Fight the Poison |
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Friday, February 27, 2004
FIRST KERRY MEETUP REPORT: I got there a bit late, accidentally going to a venue of the same name first but in the wrong town (oops). When I finally got the correct venue, though, did I ever get a warm fuzzy feeling from seeing a gaggle of my local Clarkie friends there, making up nearly half the remaining crowd! One of them was even sort of running the show--this was only the second Meetup the Kerry people had managed to organize in the area (the first one drew 7 people), and so they didn't really know what they were doing. So our old ex-Clarkie friend, who we hadn't seen in a while, was collecting everyone's names so we could start up an email list. Apparently, the "indigenous" Kerry people had been pretty much outnumbered by new refugees all night, because just before I had gotten there, a bunch of Greens who had wanted to sign on with Kerry had just left. The indigenous Kerry people there were really friendly, but completely wide-eyed about this whole Meetup deal. I mean, pretty much like the draft movement 8 months ago--they were waiting for people to contact them, and a lot of them sort of assumed we wouldn't have much to do, because "everything is done by party insiders anyway." Wow, did we ever have a lot to share with them! I think this is going to be neat--it was telling that the last 4 people to leave were all ex-Clarkistas. I'm a bit tired of campaigning, but I'm kind of thinking that if you're an ex-Clarkie (or ex-Deanie) and would consider signing on with Kerry, you could easily take a big leadership role in your local Kerry Meetup, since we have so much more experience. I don’t know if the Kerry staffers are really ready to handle us, but I’m hoping they’re smart enough not to turn down the kind of fundraising and volunteer capacity that Dean and Clark had if offered to them on a silver platter. |