Mass. Dems Convention Evening Post
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 05/14/2005 - 19:29At the Massachusetts State Convention, Representative Ed Markey introduced Democratic National Committee Chairperson Howard Dean saying that Dean reached out to young voters and gave them faith in party politics.
Not only has Chairman Dean reached given young voters faith in party politics, but he has made them feel welcome. In his speech before the convention, he said that the most important thing that he wanted to tell everyone at the convention is, “We need you.”
He spoke about needing people to get out and knock on doors. He said, “We need a Democratic Governor in Massachusetts in 2006. We can’t do it without you. We need you to exercise some discipline on the party. We do not want to destroy ourselves before we get to the primary.”
Blogging the Massachusetts Democratic State Convention
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 05/13/2005 - 07:13After a week of driving down to Virginia to pick up my daughter from college and attending the fiftieth birthday party for Mayor John DeStefano, who is running for Governor in Connecticut, and whose campaign I work for as BlogMaster, my email inbox has grown to over 350 emails behind, and I suspect it is going to get worse before it gets better.
In a few hours, I will leave for Lowell, Massachusetts, where the Massachusetts Democratic State Party will be holding their State Convention. Last year, I covered the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. There was a lot of talk about the role of bloggers at conventions and questions about what will happen at future conventions. There wasn’t a lot of talk about conventions other than national conventions, which I think is unfortunate. The state and local conventions are incredibly important. In many ways, it seems as if the state and local conventions are where the real work of party building takes place.
Plainfield Greyhound Update
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 05/11/2005 - 14:22A couple days ago, I posted here an email I had recevied about the Greyhounds of Plainfield Connecticut. In following up, I found this news about what is going on:
"Great news! The greyhounds at the Plainfield, CT track that is closing Are no longer under a May 15th deadline"
"It is still unknown how many dogs are at the track, and of those how many will be continuing to race at other tracks, and how many will need to be placed in homes."
They point out that the email which has been circulating is outdated and no longer has accurate information. However, they do encourage people to continue trying to find homes for the greyhounds and other pets at sites such as www.petfinder.org.
Extreme Democracy
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 05/11/2005 - 11:39Last year, I wrote a chapter for the book Extreme Democracy. My chapter, like several others, dealt with DeanSpace. DeanSpace has now evolved into CivicSpace, and is being used for many non-profits, campaigns, and even businesses. Two examples that are particularly important to me are DeStefano for CT, and Toomre Capital Markets.
The book has been available for download for quite a while. Now it is available as a book at http://www.lulu.com/content/125298. Pick up a copy today!
Homeless Children, International
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 05/10/2005 - 08:30A key phrase of the DeStefano campaign is ‘Expect More’. He talks about how the only thing that people in Connecticut expect to be number one at is college basketball. We need to expect more in terms of economic development, protecting our environment and open spaces, caring for the health of everyone and so on.
With this as a backdrop to my thinking, I went to church on Sunday. The church we go to is in backcountry Greenwich, one of the wealthiest areas in our country. Megan White, who grew up in Greenwich, went to a top class private school in there and then went on to Harvard, was the guest minister. She is a missionary in Kenya with Homeless Children International. She spoke about how people brought up in backcountry Greenwich have great potential. They have had every opportunity to get the best education and make the best connections. They have learned social graces, but are they living up to their potential. Yes, many of them go on to major roles in business or government, but are they living up to what God would have them do.
