Starting At The Grassroots

Not sure where this was taken but agree with it completely.

My friend Jim likes to remind me that easy as it would be to move to a blue state and say fuck Texas, I am not needed there. I am needed here - or in a swing state. I know he is right, and that is why, yesterday, I went to the Dallas County Democratic Party and got my packet to be precinct chair for precinct 2100, my home turf. I won't actually be a chair till I can be sworn in sometime in January or February, but since "the other Democrat in the district moved" I don't anticipate a challenge. I will appear on the primary ballot in 2006. It doesn't much matter if I win or lose. If I lose, I will go to the winner and ask how I can help them.

Forget the bitching. Get busy building. I will go door to door and introduce myself and see who is who. That is how it starts, from the ground up. I will visit churches and tell them about our values: a strong nation with broad prosperity and opportunity for all, effective government that can deliver and mutual responsibility, community where we work with each other to achieve these common goals.

Make no mistake, I am not delighted about this. The Democratic party is, as it stands, deserving of contempt, not respect. I intend to work to reform the party from the inside and turn it into a powerful, respectable institution for progressive values and positive change in society. Someday, probably decades from now, that party will lead our nation back into a postion of respect in the world. We will rehabilitate the stained honor of this country by showing that Americans are not thugs.

Its going to take hard work. But unlike our current president, we won't complain. We'll just go and get the job done.

Image courtesy of Oliver Willis' Brand Democrat.