Where we started, Where We’re Headed
Back in the year 2004, there was an election – a Presidential election. Leading up to that fateful day there was a primary. In that Primary was a candidate named Howard Dean, a Doctor who had been Governor of the tiny state of Vermont.
Sure there were other candidates, some of them quite good, but Dean had a message that resonated with many of us who were looking to change the Republican tide that had swept over the country 4 years earlier: You Have the Power.
From those 4 words, a movement was born – a movement that accidentally united average folks with computer geeks, creating the phenomenon we all now call the “netroots.” The netroots isn’t just bloggers, it’s people committed to democracy using tools that provide tremendous power for networking and information sharing. Tools that were truly in their infancy until some tech-savvy folks decided to attach them to the Dean campaign, morphing those words – You Have the Power – from slogan into reality.
[more after the jump…]
After the campaign was over, people who had experienced the sweet flavor of empowerment were not content to go home and wait a couple of years for the next call to action by one candidate or another. Instead, they kept working, kept learning, kept sharing, kept networking, and kept blogging.
One group decided to have a party, to celebrate all we had learned, and added some training so we could learn more – to become better at politics, organizing, and doing all the things necessary to build the infrastructure that could support candidates at all levels throughout the country. That party was DemocracyFest. The first DemocracyFest was not the last. Due to popular demand there was a second, and a third. From the second came Yearly Kos.
And now, we’re ready for the Fourth Annual DemocracyFest. Once again there will be speakers, trainings, and celebration. There will be the famous Blogger’s Breakfast, there will be candidates, and there will be music. And there will be US – the netroots coming together with average people, to get even better at what we’ve learned to do.
After the tremendous victories of last week, we need to gear up to take it to the next level.
We know many people here plan to go to Yearly Kos, as do many of us. Luckily, the events complement one another. There is so much to learn and there are so many more people to meet and network with, even if there were 100 events or 1000, we would not cover half the territory between what we know, and what we have yet to learn.
We also know that some people can’t make one event or the other, and we encourage everyone to make it to whichever one you can. There is still too much at stake to rest for long.
Are you ready to join us at the 4th Annual DemocracyFest, taking place at the historic Wayfarer Inn, in Manchester, NH on June 9 and 10, 2007?
When you buy a ticket for the weekend you get:
– 2 Breakfasts (including the one-and-only Blogger’s Breakfast),
– 2 Mid-day snacks,
– 2 Dinners,
– All speakers,
– All panels,
– All entertainment,
– Free parking at the Wayfarer Inn,
– Optional Friday night Meet and Greet
And to top it off, all of this is available for a limited time at a special Election Celebration Discount Rate of $135. This special price expires November 20, so be sure to order today!
While supplies last, early purchasers will also receive a free November 7 commemorative T-shirt.
Are you ready to carry the momentum from last Tuesday’s election forward into the 2008 Primary Season? Then be sure to buy your tickets today.
If you don’t think you can make it, but want to support our training and networking events, become a sponsor! And don’t forget, if you can’t make it to DemocracyFest, please consider YearlyKos. We need to keep our skills fresh and our enthusiasm strong for the long hard slog into 2008.
If we do keep learning, networking, listening, and celebrating our victories, we can ? no we will ? make the US safe for Democracy once again. With last Tuesday’s election, we made a great stride toward a future in which our children will have a future. That is where we’re going. Let’s keep working together to get there!
And let’s show the nation and the word that, yes, indeed, We Have the Power!