At the end of Seattle’s Drinking Liberally gathering each week, David Goldstein of horsesass.org moderates a podcast with local bloggers, elected officials and activists. This last week, in David’s vacation absence, Lynn Allen from Evergreen Politics gathered together a gang of political and social activists from the Vietnam War era who are still active locally. We talked about activism then and now and how activism gets transmitted across the generations. Joining Lynn were Don Hopps of The Institute for Washington’s Future, Alice Woldt of the Washington Association of Churches, Michael Hood of the blog, blatherWatch, and me. We discussed the demise of political parties, the impact of right-wing consolidation of the media, the impact of the blogs and much more. You can hear it here.
My brother and his nine year old son flew in from eastern Canada last night and our two families are heading out today to the Olympic Peninsula for four days of hikes and campfires. Before I take off, I have to do some last minute grocery-shopping. I also have to clean out some thoughts that are kicking around in my head about the need for progressive Democrats to get our fellow citizens fired up and engaged in the political process as we approach the fall elections.
One of the points that was made in the podcast is that people have a hard time believing that they can make a difference by “doing politics.” Sadly, this feeling even extends to the act of voting. In Washington state in 2004 we witnessed an election where Democrats came together and achieved a victory in the governor’s race with the help of recounts and the judicial system. The effort was partially financed by Howard Dean’s leadership as well as John Kerry’s campaign and many progressives who got involved via Air America. Our opponents attempted to discredit this effort, but failed. I am told that should the initial results this fall return either or both houses of Congress to the Democrats, our opponents will attempt to overturn any victories with charges of voting “irregularities” and once again seek to discredit the political process and manipulate the system, as they did so successfully in Florida and elsewhere in 2000 and 2004. We need to be prepared to win, again.