Geodog

Blogging Camp Wellstone: Day One, Working on a Campaign, Trainees

After the welcoming speeches, we Camp Wellstone attendees were divided into the three different tracks based on what we had previously signed up for: Citizen Activism, Advocacy and Organizing, Working on a Campaign: Tools and Tactics for Success, or Being a Candidate: How to Run and Win the Progressive Way. I had selected the Working on a Campaign group, since I wanted something that would be immediately useful, and given my shyness in person I'm more likely to fly to Mars than be a political candidate myself.

Once we got into our meeting room, we did introductions, which went on for much longer than planned. People were very nice, but some of them really liked to talk, myself included. There were some long-time political activists, like blogger "Christian Liberal," but most were people who hadn't been active in politics recently. Many of them had fascinating stories about what motived them to get involved in politics, some for the first time, some after a long hiatus. There was a woman who had suggested volunteering on a political campaign to her teen-age daughter, who had then had so much fun that she convinced her retired mom to join her full-time. There were numerous stories of people like me who had political childhoods, but then had gotten far away from politics (my favorite was the person who spent 7 years working on America's Funniest Home Videos, then went on to be a dot-com executive), but who had decided that the stakes for our democracy in this election were so high that they had to get re-involved in politics. There were people in the early twenties, and one fabulous woman who didn't say her age, but talked about having played hookey from her job in Washington, DC. to go up to the hill and watch the McCarthy hearings (for my younger readers, those were in 1954).

An encouragingly large number of people were planning to travel to swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida to do voter education, voter persuasion, get out the vote, and election defense, and were taking the Camp Wellstone training so that they could arrive at the state campaigns ready to contribute on their first day. One of them, Ethan, a really smart guy who I predict will be a formidable candidate himself some day, has even put up a web site about his trip, www.BacktoPA.com.

It turned out to be a great group of people to spend a weekend working and learning with.