So we did it, the KosKats met up the other weekend at Pie 5 for pizza, brownies and talk of voter registration. There were 10 of us all together.
I got there first to make sure they had saved us the tables I wanted. There was one woman at one of them and I realized that I had met her at the TN Democratic Christmas Party. She’s in the Legalize Cannabis Coalition and also told me about a group call Women for Tennessee’s Future. They are actually called WTF.
A few days later I interviewed the head of the group. They have 23 women running in down ballot races which is pretty damn impressive. I made sure that their name was indeed WTF and she assured me that it was. She also told me yes, they all know what it means and chose the name on purpose. Well, all right then, I’m hoping some of them will want to come to the next meet-up where we hope to talk about local candidates.
This meet-up was specifically to talk about voter registration. Oddly though, just like the online DK, the in person KosKats spent the first hour talking about Trump. The second hour was devoted to campaign finance reform.
Then a non DK friend of mine who wants to register voters showed up and asked how the brainstorming about registering voters was going. We hadn’t gotten to that but Rook gave a brilliant recap of what we had discussed. It was hilarious. You could Kosmail him to see if he remembers.
We did get around to brainstorming and came up with the following places that might be good to register voters:
~all the farmers markets around town
~YMCA’s (hat tip to the NC folks for this idea)
~the hipster coffee shops
~college campus’s
~local book stores
~the many craft and art fairs
~the city bus station (Metro, not Greyhound)
~the VA (a retired pilot friend of mine had shown up by then and suggested this)
~50 Forward (a senior citizens kind of place with some hip activities)
~the clinic at the public hospital
~the specialized street parties for all different kinds of groups of people, some that highlight pets
Nashville Flatz had a very knowledgeable friend with him who knew all the rules about registering voters and was able to give a lot of concrete info and good suggestions.
I, of course, talked about some of what I’ve learned from Dr. Reid Sr., from 90for90, about voter registration.
About 4 of us want to do voter registration and 3 are already doing it. We gave out the way cool T-Shirts, aprons and pens provided by Gordon20024 and said any donations for such would go back to him. We were able to send a nice little check. He really is a DK hero, he does so much for others.