Well, Howard Dean stopping by our Watch Party last night certainly stirred up Durham, N.C.-- and pulled in a whole lot of new volunteers for our county party. We could not be happier here. A lot of us have been working nonstop since the 2004 elections and we needed this boost and reminder of why we are putting so many hours into grassroots organizing and voter education.
The support from the DNC was outstanding -- their people worked like dogs, stayed all day and night and went out of their way to make sure our local volunteers felt appreciated. It was great to see so much excitement, touch base with other county parties and sign up new volunteers. But most of all, it was fantastic to hear someone speak so plainly and directly about what is wrong with the direction our country is taking right now.
Our venue, a local restaurant and bar called Satisfaction was filled to capacity and the fire marshall made us start directing people across the street to another bar and restaurant called Devine's. Dean showed up right on time, and there were four networks and a local station there to cover his speech. They didn't just film him, but also interviewed people in the crowd as well: which was great for our party and great for our state. It was a very diversified crowd: young, old, middle-aged... black, white and in-between. Lots and lots of just regular, hard-working Americans -- and they were cheering and clapping and most definitely getting behind Dean.
Dean -- who was preceded by North Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Jerry Meek and introduced by our Durham County Party Chair Floyd McKissick -- spoke very straightforwardly about all the important things: taking the goverment back for the people though campaign finance reform and honesty in government, healthcare, the war, special interests controlling government policy, civil rights, you name it: he addressed it. He spoke quite a long time and the crowd was respectful yet extremely enthusiastic. He was on a small, low stage right in the thick of things, surrounded by people and only inches from the front rows. He ended up with a very powerful statement: at least within the Democratic Party, we *are* our brother's keeper.
After about half an hour (longer then we expected), Dean headed across the street to the overflow venue to speak. Along the way, he stopped to greet a group of North Carolina Central student volunteers -- a good move on Dean's party. We have been working hard to get younger people into our local party to serve a future leaders and Dean's visit to Durham finally did the trick. We touched base with more new Central students last night than in the entire year before.
There were lots of Dems from surrounding counties as well: Wake, Orange, Chatham and Person that I know of. We got quite a few new volunteers to sign up and I notice our website has had a lot of traffic since last night -- but give it a few days, as we have a newly refurbished site not open to the public yet. Maybe today or tomorrow, we'll open it up to the public. We do have some great sections on What's At Stake in 2006 from an election standpoint and some other areas people may find find helpful. We'll be using this data to follow up on all the new volunteers we snagged last night.
One thing that helped us in getting our message out last night: we created a large display of materials based on the DNC 50-State Strategy presentation used in last November's national Kick-Off events. We pulled out the heart of the presentation, made a flow chart out of the bottom-up grassroots organizing concept and highlighted some major points. We added in some photos of our volunteers, and some local volunteering needs and highlighted precinct organizing especially since we have our annual precinct meetings coming up. It was a great way to get the word out. We also had volunteers circulating through the crowds all night with clipboards holding either volunter sign-up sheets or voter registration forms. Finally, we hit the idea of Democracy Bonds hard and had plenty of sign-up sheets for them, not to mention lots of tee shirts and water bottles prnmoting the bonds as well.
Lastly, I just want to say that this whole thing started because two precincts in Durham, Precincts 8 and 9, decided to throw a Watch party. they had no special in to the DNC or anywhere else. it's just that their organizers, Troy McLean, Milo Pyne and Noni Simmons, went for it. And it sure paid off for us here in Durham! Thanks, guys!
Oh, yeah, when Howard Dean was done, most people left but quite a few stayed to play lingo bingo during the state of the union address (which failed to address the state of the union) and to engage in additional discussions.
- Katy
