Tag: Democracy for America

It was a tough loss, 10,000 votes. Bill Halter might have even upset Blanche Lincoln in the primary run-off had his stronghold of Garland County not dropped the number of polling places from 42 to 2, or had a few thousand more of us called to get Halter voters to the polls. But despite an unnamed Obama administration official attacking attempts to defeat Lincoln by telling Politico’s Ben Smith  “Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members’ money down the toilet on a pointless exercise,” I believe the groups who tried to unseat her made the right choice.

originally posted by Mitch Malasky at Sum of Change

This week, we are going to follow up on last week’s post on the numbers you need to win your election.  This week, we’re looking at special circumstances and unique elections and how that may or may not effect how you set your numbers.

originally posted by Will Urquhart at Sum of Change

This week’s Training Tuesday takes us back to Democracy for America’s Campaign Academy in Gettysburg, PA 2009. For the last couple weeks we brought you lessons from the Organizing 2.0 conference, and we still have plenty more to come.

Anyways, first things first, a little history on the DFA campaign academy:

originally posted by Will Urquhart at Sum of Change

Last week, we covered the basics of managing and organizing a campaign budget. If you know little-to-nothing about campaign finance but would like to, or if you are just about to start putting together the budget for a campaign, you should definitely check out last week’s Training Tuesday. Today is not for the basics. Instead, we are using this Training Tuesday to share with you four very important tips that will help you out along the way:

Originally posted by Will Urquhart (Rusty5329) at Sum of Change. Please check out the new comment widget from Ameritocracy that we just recently installed at the bottom of every page at Sum of Change

Every political campaign and organization must spend money to maintain serious levels of activity. Increasingly, campaigns must raise significant amounts of money to become and remain competitive. Although we can protest the growing costs of campaigning, the reality for any campaign is that without these funds, there can be no staff, no office, no phones, no computers, no signs, no media coverage – no campaign.

-From the Democracy for America Campaign Academy Training Manual

Well, it is all your fault. That’s right your support for the Dog has resulted in the great folks at Democracy for America awarding the old hound a Netroots Nation Scholarship!

For those who don’t know, Democracy for America is Dr. Dean’s social activism group. DFA provides all kinds of great things; it provides a place to get hooked in with other progressives from your area, it provides training in candidacy, campaign management and activism and this year along with last, it provides scholarships to the Netroots Nation.

“Originally posted at Squarestate.net“

There will come a time when you have a chance to do the right thing.

I love those moments.  I like to wave at them as they pass by.

I want to talk with you today about Netroots Nation and applying for and funding Scholarships so that people who would otherwise not be able to do so can attend.

I can hardly be more eloquent than kid oakland in his original plea nearly a year ago.

This year Democracy For America (you know, that Dean place) is sponsoring 9 Scholarships which will include only registration and hotel.  Scholarship recipients will still have to come up with money for transportation, meals and everything else.

Right now there are 87 applicants and only 9 scholarships.

You can help.

There are many ways to contribute.  If you registered, but it turns out you can’t go, you can donate that registration.  These donations have raised the total number of scholarships to at least 16.  So far.

You can also donate frequent flyer miles (I repeat that transportation costs are explicitly not covered by the DFA Scholarships).  You can encourage those who’s participation at Netroots Nation will make a huge difference in their own communities to apply for a scholarship if they need one (deadline for submissions is June 9th).  Nominate them yourself if you have to (don’t nominate me, I have conflicting personal engagements and will not be attending).  Screen names are OK, Carnacki is among the applicants.

You can vote for the applicants at the DFA website, but since this is not American Idol community support is not the only factor that will be considered.  Affirmative action to achieve diversity is a core Democratic value and the quality and impact of an applicant’s body of work will be considered as well.

So it’s pretty much like applying for that Jaycee scholarship that your High School Guidance Counselor kept nagging you about.

But I’m not going to kid you, I’ve got the tin cup out today and I’ve even dropped in a couple of quarters myself so I can shake them around and be really obnoxious and noisy.  If your contribution is not the monetary kind you should get in touch with landenchantment at that gmail place.

Lando’ was kind enough to send me a list of future diaries in this effort which so far include-

• 6/2 Monday PM – Meteor Blades
• 6/3 Tuesday AM – pastordan
• 6/4 Wednesday PM – hekebolos (dmsilev, mention in FAQ Forum)
• 6/5 Thursday PM – noweasels
• 6/6 Friday PM – LoE, combined with Friday Night at the Movies “Come Fly With Me” (dmsilev, mention in Photoblog)
• 6/7 Saturday PM – mcjoan