Okay, so Tuesday’s installment of the Booman Tribune Electoral Politics Project…which was about generating the names of Our Progressive Elected Officials and then linking those names to issues from our Progressive Platform Planks…generated 33 elected officials. Viera Visionary’s XLS spreadsheet is a thing of beauty:
1 US Senator. 17 US Representatives. 2 Governors. 1 Mayor. and 12 Local elected officials…all linked to two core issues from our Progressive Platform.
To those who responded, I say thank you so much, great work. To those who haven’t yet, perhaps thinking that we’ve already named them all…I have to say, in all seriousness, you’ve got to be kidding me! There’s so many more names!
This weekend I hope we are going to hit at least 100…my goal is 250. If I have to repost on Sunday morning…and again on Sunday evening. So be it…I think we can do it!
Friends, I know that when you count local politics that there are easily 1000 Progressive elected officials here in the USA. And we’ve got one Mayor? Hmmm, I bet there’s one hundred. Dare I say that we can do better?
Now, in the last round I asked for five names apiece, no more than two to be “repeats” from elsewhere. Maybe that requirement intimidated people…maybe folks didn’t want to have to check the previous reponses. Fair enough.
This weekend that rule is OFF. List as many names as you want. Don’t worry about repeating them. (Viera Visionary’s database software will take care of that.) If you can make your list follow this format (name, office held, location, key issue tags), great! If you can add links, as booman did so that our fellow Bootribbers can LEARN about your officials, all the better.
We want State Representatives, local officials, Senators, Governors, anyone that YOU see as standing for a progressive issue. And yes, more than one Mayor would be a nice touch! Local is all to the good…no office is too “small”!
To help with the project, I’m going to list some tools you might use in your research, please feel free to mention more and I will link to them as well:
Progressive Punch. (A great resource for tracking national officials)
Politics 1 (A great State by State resource.).
The Congressional Progressive Caucus (Gold mine. Take a look.)
the Urban League Mayor profiles
People for the American Way Young Elected Officials Network
Progressive Democrats of America
And here’s a rough list of Tags you can use to give us a sense of your officials core issues. To those who had issues with an Tag being excluded, by all means, put your issue in, this is a collaborative project, it’s about what we make it:
Health Care
Education
Retirement
Living Wage
Green/Environment
Globalism
Anti-War
Science
Populism
Privacy
Sunshine Provisions
Election Reform
Corporate Reform
Dealth Penalty
Equal Rights
Gay Rights
Media Reform
Tax Reform
Campaign Reform
Church/State Separation/Secularism
And here are the 33 Progressive Elected Officials already named:
Rush Holt
Bernie Sanders
Russ Feingold
Marcy Kaptur
Pete Gerken
Joe Moore
Miguel De Valle
Jesse Jackson Jr.
John Lewis
Sherrod Brown
Kathleen Sebelius
Luis Gutierrez
Jim McDermott
Barney Frank
John Conyers
Henry Waxman
Maria Chappelle-Nadal
Raul Grijalva
Ed Pastor
Janet Napolitano
Jose Ibarra
Steve Leal
Carolyn McCarthy
Betty McCollum
Chris Coleman
Jim McDonough
Dennis Kucinich
Ellie Kinnaird
Jan Schakowsky
Maria Ruud
Okay, so this weekend’s goal is 100 names minimum…and 250 as the “kid oakland challenge”. I think we can do it, or, at least come close.
And, to those who are doubting me, let me say this, this is the kind of open source group project where we can actually create something of value that is greater than the sum of its parts. This is what netroots is about.
This list DID NOT EXIST before we started this project. When we’re done, we’ll have a list of officials, candidates and organizations that we created…in collaboration with each other and based on our values. That means something.
Coming up with five names, still my suggestion, should be doable with 15-30 minutes of Googling and research. I highly encourage you to participate. The more of us who contribute, the more valid the results.
Thank you in advance for joining in…personally, I think we can make the “kid oakland challenge!”