Progressive Democrats of Buncombe County meeting/Kucinich Meetup on 01/08/08

Minutes of the meeting on 01/08/08
(Photo is of Eve's car and some attendees of the meeting. Taken in the parking lot of N. Asheville Library.)

Attending: 15 people

Minutes taken by Susan

Next meeting of the Progressive Democrats of Buncombe County/Kucinich Meetup is January 22, 2008. This will be held at 7 PM at North Asheville Library.

Susan started the meeting by encouraging everyone to become paid members ($5/year) of the Buncombe County Progressive Democrats in order to pay for the room and printing costs. She also encouraged everyone to contribute directly to the Kucinich campaign. Any payments to Progressive Democrats over $5 will become gift memberships for someone else.

Everyone (except one person) present is on the email list from Progressive Democrats. Those without email (three people) will be on a phone call list, and Connie will contact these people to keep them informed.

The South Carolina Democratic primary is January 26^th. A discussion was held on possible actions down in Greenville, and Susan will head up a group to go down there on January 19^th to hand out flyers and post on cars. We have received various flyers and some teeshirts from the NC coordinator, Gloria, and we will use these for the events in SC. We will meet in the morning for this and car pool, please email Susan at dancewater2@gmail.com for meeting time and place.

There were some other events discussed – Buncombe Country Democrats will hold a chili cook off on February 2^nd. This is a fun event, and a great time to wear your Kucinich materials. It starts at 1 PM and costs $10 per adult, $3 for children under 12, and free for children under age 3. Some of the cooks will be Asheville Mayor, Asheville City Council persons, Sheriff of Buncombe County, and candidates for various local and state offices. To volunteer for this, contact Marianne Cote at 298-9503 or email cote7232@bellsouth.net

A play called “The Pentagon Papers” will be held at Diana Wortham theatre on January 19 and January 20^th. Some members thought this would be a good time to hand out flyers for Dennis Kucinich.

Buncombe County will hold a clean up on January 12^th, and that is a good way to help the local Democratic party out. There will be a march on February 9, 2008 in Raleigh, organized by the state NAACP. The purpose of this march is to promote a progressive agenda in the state of North Carolina. This is called the H (historic) K (thousands) on J (Jones Street) March. There will be buses organized by the local chapter of the NAACP, but we do not have information on time or cost or reservations yet. More information on the march at this website: http://www.naacp.ubernc.com/ This would be an excellent opportunity to march together wearing Kucinich materials and hand out informational flyers to people there.

There was a brief discussion on precinct meetings and how to get involved on this level. Several people got involved on this level in the past and there were several stories about having a progressive precinct and promoting resolutions. Several people have locally been successful at this, and feel that is where we start to influence and change the Democratic Party. This lead to some discussion about resolutions and how the resolutions get passed from precinct to county to district to state convention. It requires a lot of progressives to get them passed at the district and state levels. We also discussed how we need delegates to the national Democratic Party convention to promote the progressive platform that Kucinich is running on.

There were suggestions by Gayatri and Debralee that flyers be made up to show where contributions to the presidential candidates (who are running for the Democratic nomination) come from. They will work on making up such a flyer. Connie felt that a flyer on Kucinich should include information on the Iraq Oil Law, and how stopping our US Congress and other US officials from promoting this oil law is imperative. Connie gave me information on the National Day of Action on this – February 23, 2008. (Right now, nothing is planned locally, but there will be actions in the USA and UK.) Kucinich has issued a statement about the US Congress and their blackmail of Iraq via the oil law on his website.

Eve mentioned that she has painted her car with KUCINICH (and we did a group picture, shown on the blog post). There was also discussion on freeway blogging and making a banner for Kucinich. We felt we would like some more signs here.

We had some reports from committees:

Fundraising – One young lady raised $30 from busking for Kucinich, and she will send this directly to the Kucinich campaign.

Flyer – Paul has printed up some flyers and delivered to Susan. There was also some flyers and materials mailed to Susan from Gloria. These were all put on the table and everyone is urged to take what they want and bring back anything they don’t use. There are flyers made up to promote the Kucinich Meetups in Asheville, and everyone is encouraged to put these up around town. There are lots of bumper stickers available also.

Media – There has been a list of media contacts made, and several people on this committee have written letters to the editors of local papers. There was discussion of other ways to get the information out – shop dropping, pamphlets, and actually being the media yourself. A mention was made of URTV and getting programs on there. More letters to the editor is encouraged.

GOTV –Cicada talked about the organizing of phone banking for Kucinich. He has done that on a couple of Sundays (from 3 to 7) at North Asheville Library. The last one was for voters in New Hampshire, and the next one will be for Michigan voters. He found the input from the website to be slow. He is planning on holding these on Sundays up until Super Tuesday and maybe longer. Please contact him directly for more information and confirmation of planned phone banking at clafey@main.nc.us. Cicada also mentioned that people can do phone calling from their own homes, just go to Kucinich website and download a contact number. The website is www.call4dennis.com. Cicada said that Buncombe County Democratic Party headquarters was not available for phone banking or meetings on candidates. There was some discussion on phone calling and how that can get annoying.

One person mentioned that he had sent out letters to Iowa (addresses from the DFA website) asking them to caucus for a progressive candidate and the letters were all returned to him. Susan mentioned that everyone needs to make a list of people they know who will vote for Kucinich and then call them and remind them to go vote. Susan knew of three people who would have voted for Kucinich in the 2004 primary, but they forgot about it. Locally, we felt it was too early to start GOTV in our state, but not too early to plan for it.

Internet – This is about going to websites and posting information on Kucinich. There was no report from this committee, although we thought it was important. Everyone is encouraged to post more on websites.

Events & tabling – Connie reported that they did the SiCKO bus event and it was successful. There was discussion around tabling at the play called The Pentagon Papers, but we have not been invited to do this. The Orange Peel was also mentioned as a location for handing out Kucinich information. Susan mentioned doing tables outside of Earth Fare in Westgate. Most local grocery stores and malls will not like people handing out literature, but Earth Fare is supportive of this in the past. Susan also mentioned that balloons were very popular with children at public outdoors events. We don’t know of any events like that at this time.

Networking –no report from this committee.

Please post corrections or admissions in the comments section.