This is the front page lead story in the local paper about about my assistant taking off on the spur of the moment to visit Camp Casey in Crawford. It's a tale of what the Democratic Party's fearsome activist base can mean for taking advantage of organizing opportunities that pop up unscheduled. Republicans -- with their top-down management style -- could never pull something like this off.
Here in Humboldt County, California we've had almost twenty years of timber wars, with, now, generations of local activists taking on the Houston-based Maxxam Corporation. Because we've been fighting all these years, we have a very deep bench when it comes to people who know how to whip out a press release in minutes, know who to call to get stories in the paper and on the radio, and who to get to help with fundraising.
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I run a small law office that focuses on environmental law, mostly private enforcement of toxics laws. Alison works for me as a way over qualified legal assistant. A 36 year old former Homecoming Queen from Traverse City, Michigan, Alison's worked for almost a decade on wilderness preservation -- working for land trusts, wilderness coalitions, and foundations bent on keeping Michigan, California and West Virginia wild and unspoiled.
As part of her experience as an environmental activist, Alison has friends and contacts who, like her, have organizing, fundraising, and media skills.
So when Alison decided on the spur of the moment Friday that she wanted to go to Crawford, the activist community stirred, and without hardly lifting a finger, raised the money to pay for her plane ticket, found her transportation and places to stay in Dallas before and after her sojourn to Crawford, and got her on the front page of the local paper and as the lead story on last night's news on the most listened to local radio station.
This in a rural county whose economy until just recently was based on timber and fishing.
This is what we can do and this is what real democracy looks like. It's something the Democrats could take advantage of if they weren't so afraid. And, to me, people like Alison and our local environmental community are the one ace in the hole we have to take on the Orcs and win.
Hats off to all the political geniuses in the Emerald Triangle.