Good morning!
This is the weekly DKos Asheville open thread where we try to get together every Saturday morning around eleven, and then drift in and out throughout the day. We hope this group serves to reinvigorate us locally and regionally here on Daily Kos, building on the sense of community that's grown through our online engagement. DKos Asheville can give us all a better sense of connection, a better understanding of who these people are that we stand with, work with, and share with in the political process. We hope, through this community, that we can do a better job of leveraging our orange passion for progressive politics to help elect more and better Democrats.
If you would like to host a weekly open thread, please let us know.
So our second Voter Registration event was this past Tuesday, and it was both fun and productive. Randall, LC, and I were staffing the table, helping folks out and engaging in conversation, and basically just enjoying a real nice day in town. Randall posted a great review of the activities here, including pics!
Since we're primarily interested in registering left-leaning folks, we chose our location with that demographic in mind. A nice side benefit of such a location is that we've yet to deal with any Tea Party members. However, on both outings we have had some folks from the "left" wishing to debate, and perhaps a bit overzealously so.
As there have been in the threads here at Daily Kos a few rather enthusiastic debates from time to time between left-leaning folks, it isn't much of a surprise to find folks who want to stop and engage us in debate. However, I'm thinking this may put some passers-by off, giving them an excuse to just keep walking rather than stop and ask about registration, especially when the debaters are standing right in front of our table.
So, since out primary objectives are to register voters and to get people thinking about the upcoming elections and how important they are, I'm thinking that, as a generalization, we should endeavor to keep ourselves from getting drawn into debates, unless of course we can quickly dispel some wrong thinking with our superior kossack knowledge base. But my guess is that extended debates just for the sake of debate in front of our registration table can be something of a distraction to us and a negative vibe to folks walking by.
But those incidents have been pretty mild so far, and I'm rather pleased with what we've accomplished so far. Several DKos Asheville folks have said they will try to make it this coming Tuesday; so were looking forward to getting out there again.
We'll be there from 3:00 to 6:00.
Westgate Earthfare.
Every Tuesday in November. (Go ahead and take a moment to mark your calendars now.)
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This coming Tuesday is also election day; and here in Buncombe County we'll have municipal contests on the ballot. So we might be getting some questions on where precinct polling stations are located.
And of course here at Daily Kos, there will be a number of interesting election results from around the country to follow that night as well!
That's all I've got at the moment.
Enjoy your Saturday!