I invited everyone in my "Unfogged" FB friend list which I compiled like ten years ago and never returned to. Any oversights were accidental, but if you want to get mad and start shit, this thread is wide open.
I'm just impressed that the title is still yellowish orange in the sidebar.
That's how you can tell this is high quality activism.
FB isn't letting me send you an invite, which I think means that k-sky already did. Look at his feed or mine and click on events to see if it shows up that way? If not I'll just email you the Zoom link.
Hey, there I am. Must have missed it initially.
I'm a huge stan of this guy's candidacy.
Oh my goodness, look at that orange! Strong work!
I'd have gone just a bit more on the red to get a darker orange.
The precise shade was determined by typing the words "color=orange" after "font". My HTML is primitive.
When I ran for office there were such kind offers of financial support from this place.
While very grateful for the support, I ultimately was not able to accept it because at one point I realized that I had a choice between spending my time and energy on navigating the various bank/campaign-finance/Act Blue-related roadblocks that were getting in the way of my accepting checks, or spending that time and energy on connecting with voters.
Fortunately, the whole campaign only cost $900, so just paying for everything out of pocket was a feasible alternative.
Anyway, I just chipped in. This campaign is clearly more organized than mine was.
With almost 1000 votes cast I won by a margin of 26 and now people call me "Councilor."
And His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
the moment has come to move on to the second stage of the revolution and establish..
..
..
HALFORDISMO!
Confiscated robber baron mansions. Monorails. Sex grottos. Compulsory Crossfit in the public square. Ruthless enforcement of intellectual property. You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win.
19: The name of the Messiah is called "Haddocks' Eyes".
One of the things about being elected is that now I seem to get roped into all sorts of things. For example, tonight there is a caucus to elect officials of the local Democratic party. We've put together a slate of candidates to fill about 20 different party offices and delegate slots, including a lot of people who have never run for anything before. These are all progressives, a lot of whom previously volunteered with the Warren and Bernie campaigns.
All of this is to the chagrin of the long-time local party boss, who was on Team Amy and has been shutting out the left for years. But we've organized the shit out of this and it looks like we will get close to 100 folks to show up to vote on this zoom call, so I like our chances.
Welp, we got 115 people to show up for a caucus meeting that usually draws 30. That was evidentially enough to have warded off the opposition, and so our entire slate was elected without a fight.
Now people can call me "local party treasurer," although, for reasons noted in 13.2, that may not actually be my strong suit.
22, 23. Funny. All over the country, county Democratic organizations are electing officers between now and mid May. Ours is May 11. But only people elected to the central committee can vote -- this is a matter of state law -- so no one could pack the meeting.
I think only 2* of 10 positions will be filled by incumbents; our local self-styled king of the Berners is an insufferable jerk, and his endorsement of any candidate has a strong negative value. Lots of newish people don't really understand this about the guy, so they'll be killing their candidacies. Outsiders think it's about ideology, but it really isn't. I've encouraged a couple of substantially lefter than me people to run, but I'm afraid they'll get the "progressive" endorsement (objectively correct) which will kill them among the electorate. We'll see. I'll speak up for one of them, and maybe it'll help.
* Our treasurer is running for re-election, surely unopposed. It's a big job getting all the state reports done correctly and on time. We have a bunch of channels for money in and out, and she's had to be on top of everything.
But only people elected to the central committee can vote -- this is a matter of state law -- so no one could pack the meeting.
That's a shame. It turns out that Zoom+homebound people makes packing meetings easier than its ever been, activists be advised.
AIMHMHB, my one experience on jury was as an alternate for a murder case. I knew was an alternate the whole time. The whole thing was a shitshow. Massive gaps in testimony and evidence; I was annoyed that they were trying it as 1st degree murder as there was in my view *very* sketchy to nearly non-existent testimony or evidence about intent (IIRC correctly one of the two accused showed someone that they had a gun with them the day before and that was about it). I did not learn of the result until I ran into one of the jurors several years later. They had convicted. I expressed surprise as the evidence really was a big pile of barely-connected shit. Ah, but someone had noticed in one of the pictures that there was red bandana on the ground so they figured it was somehow gang-related and therefor guilty as charged. (Trust me there was absolutely zero evidence or testimony about gangs.) If I needed a scared straight experience being on a jury with those self-righteous dimwits would have worked wonders.
Oh yeah, our attendance has been up substantially.
Drinking beer together after the meeting is way down, though.
This is sooooon I better make sure my wacky costume is pressed
I went as far as moving a lamp so I wouldn't be unsettlingly backlit. A year of work meetings, I've been fine with looming unsettlingly from the shadows, but for you people I messed with my lighting.
And remembered to switch laptops so I wouldn't be electioneering with state property.
I have a premonition that we'll all just be furiously chatting in the chat box, while out loud conversation is stilted.
I think that was a roaring success!
It was so lovely. I got a little hyper making dumb jokes.
but I compensated by kicking in more money as penance.
Great to see so many of you! Sorry I haven't been hanging out much. Turns out pandemics aren't actually good for me dicking around on the Internet.
Sorry I wasn't able to make it! I did donate though.
Very nice to see everyone and show off my green screen!
This was really great.
What if we tried to have a general Unfogged zoom in May some time? Why wouldn't it work? OK, yes, time zones -- finding a time for teo/DaveLHI and The Europeans can't be easy.
Time zones shouldn't be a huge issue for me (this one would have been fine for timing); it's mostly just that we've got a lot going on in general these days. We're just one hour behind the West Coast.
That was fun!
For nearly a year, I have been doing a monthly Zoom call with some high school friends and their spouses -- around 10 of us, most of whom I've known more than 40 years -- and it's quite nice. I honestly didn't expect it to work at all. One of us appointed herself moderator at the outset, and that was a brilliant move, but we've become better at it as time has gone on.
LB, send me some kind of link to a donations page?
I'm sorry to have missed it. Its always nice to see people in real life.
Sorry to have missed this but I do intend to donate.
It really was lovely to see all of you in person (sort of) again. Kinda can't believe we're approaching 20 years of this. Everybody is all grown up!