Lone Star Democracy Builders Association

This entry is split between what I witnessed, and my opinions about it. The opinions are at the end.

The meeting was held at Shultz's Beer Garden, and filled the inside hall. Many of the folks that showed up were first-time visitors.

The Agenda:
1. David Holmes - a DNC member from TX
- He ran through who was running for the DNC chair. All those running are interested in supporting all 50 states, not just the battleground states. Dean is running, to great applause (DFT started as Dean For Texas). Simon Rosenburg is running, someone who started their own Dem think tank. Donnie Fowler is running, someone who's been active on the blogs. Martin Frost from TX is running, he's been involved in the DCCC and has supported down-ballot campaigns in all states. Wellington E. Webb and Jim Blanchard apparently have not been campaigning hard.
- The DNC has traditionally been a fundraising group.
- Democracy For America (the parent group for DFT) may be a better organization for changing elections.
- The DNC meets twice a year. In the four years that David has been a member he's made one vote, where Terry McAuliffe was the only choice on the ballot.
- DNC leaders are usually selected by sitting presidents.
- DNC members are chosen at their state Dem conventions. In TX, the 10 members are split between 5 seats spread around various lobbies (negro, latino, and one or two more) and 5 at-large members. David is at at-large member.
- David has started a yahoo group (texasdnc at yahoo.com) to foster discussions among democrats in TX.
- The DNC finally has a real office in Washington. A few years ago there was just a small office with a laughable list of dems.
- The impact of DNC members depends on the individual. David's been working to get folks trained to be local precinct leaders.
- McAuliffe's goal was mainly fundraising.
- The DNC basically follows the plans of it's chairman. It really doesn't have a group consensus.
- The 60-65 members of the "executive committee" are selected by the chairman. They're the real voting members.
- The TX DNC members aren't very happy with the national organization, since the DNC took $$$ out of TX and spent it in battleground states.
- You can send questions to David at texasdnc at yahoo.com.
- The last DNC meeting talked a lot about values and the growth in the exurbs.
- Before the last election the thinking was that we just needed to get "our family" out to vote. The grassroots voter turnout efforts were astounding. But just getting the existing family out there wasn't enough. To win in the future we need to grow our family.
- One gentleman in the audience harassed David as "part of the problem", saying that the DNC needs to be scrapped and restarted. David's response was that we shouldn't wait for the DNC/DLC (Dem Leadership Council) to fix themselves. We should start making things happen within other organizations like DFA/DFT.
- As a side comment, if you look at the DLC web site you'll see that Dean has been very involved with it.

Some DFT members will be going to the DNC meeting where the next chairman will be elected.

[For more on the DNC elections, the Washington Post has a recent article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48514-2005Jan4.html]

2. Dem Fest working group and committee head introductions
Work has begun to prepare for this year's Dem Fest to train in learning grassroot's organizing, which will be held in Austin this June: http://www.democracyfortexas.org/Demfest/index.html

3. Library (Jim McElroy)
Jim's started a lending library. One suggestion at the meeting was to bring in "conservative" material so we can read up on what they're saying.

4. Latinos for Texas
- Has been formed under the umbrella of Latinos for America (which started as Latinos for Dean).
- Their goal is to support, train, and recruit latino candidates and volunteers.
- You don't have to be a latino to join.
- Their tax status keeps them from aligning with any specific political party.
- Their kickoff meeting is Tuesday, Jan 18th. Regular meetings will be held the third Tuesday of each month.
- For more information: info at LatinosForTexas.com, http://www.LatinosForTexas.com.

4.5 Call for RapidResponseNetwork.org
- They follow the news, and when something jumps out spreads the word to other members who then will write letters to the editors to local newspapers and TV stations.
- It's done through yahoo groups.
- There's a national group and a local TX group.
- The national group has suggestions on how to frame the messages. The TX group may start helping with framing as well.

5. Lakoff DVD
To be described under "How to Communicate". It was projected from a PlayStation2.

Conference calls with Lakoff will be held next Monday/Tuesday for folks that are interested:
http://democracyforamerica.com/meetuphosts/framing.php

6. Preview of February meetup
Chris Bell will be in from Houston. Chris was the one that brought forward ethics charges against DeLay.

7. Open mike
- There will be a rally to support Vo (who beat Heflin, where Heflin will ask the legislature to seat him anyway) next Tuesday at 2pm on the south steps of the Capitol. The legislature's swearing in happens at noon on Tuesday.
- Stick has withdrawn his similar complaint against Strama.
- The TX youth (35 and under) voters' next meeting is this Friday at 6:30pm at the TDP HQ, 707 Rio Grande. It's the dues/nomination meeting. [I'll cross-post info when I get it.]
- Another Dem group (?) will be meeting at Central Market at 7pm next Tuesday. They'll be talking about "Buying Blue" and supporting "Not one Damn Dime Day" [a movement to protest the war by not buying *anything* on Inaguration Day, Jan 20th].
- A mother came up to tell people that the military (Marines in this case) came into Travis High School to recruit those 15 and up. Because of the "No Child Left Behind" Act, students could be required to fill out forms with their information on it, which would otherwise be protected. The mother's supporting groups trying to help financially disadvantaged students find non-military work.
- Someone suggested a vigil on Inauguration day, lighting 1300 candles for the US soldiers fallen so far.
- Jesse Jackson's "The Word Network" show on TV has been nailing the republicans recently. It's a show about religion and politics.

Attendees included Margot Clark, Bruce Elfant, and Greg Mack (local candidates and/or officials).

A gentleman passed out talking point fliers at the beginning of the evening, but didn't follow-up with a discussion. The fliers mentioned "RPGAttack.org", which doesn't seem to be live.

There was also a flier passed out for the Progressive Democratic Summit in DC at the end of January. www.pdamerica.org

Opinions:
- This was the first "working" meetup since the elections (the Nov meeting was for catharsis, the Dec meeting was a fundraiser).
- It's a very good sign that many of the folks that showed up are new. The usual membership turnover is something like 10%/month. Having a lot of new bodies to keep things rolling is encouraging.
- I'm still not sure about the layout of "who's who" locally and/or nationally. If Carrie can't fill in the details, I'm still interested in taking out some of the DFT organizers to ask them about the lay of the land.
- The number of local groups is good, and I know there was a "coordinated campaign office" for the last election. But it seems like it would still be good to have some kind of more formalized cross-communication between the groups.
- It was good to have an activity to do with folks at my table. I'll admit that my first reaction to comments made by a table-mate were "I agree that I care about the same issues you do (sep of church/state), but I'm leery that they'll resonate with those in the middle".
- As usual in volunteer organizations, some folks rambled on during the presentations of the exercises we did. And there was the heckler against the poor guy from the DNC (who knew the DNC wasn't very strong but joined it anyway to do what he could to change it). Actually makes me wish some of the folks had taken the communication/team training I got at MOT (ack!) [Only speak if you're moving the room forward, etc.]