Hey Pacific Northwest friends, we survived another election. More than survived actually, we flipped the Washington State Senate back to Team Blue! Thank you to everyone who worked so hard to make this happen! Not just that, but glorious victories were achieved in Virginia, New Jersey, Oklahoma and even Alabama looks set to deliver for Team Blue. There is no lack of electoral events to get excited about.
But what do we do it for? None of us seems particularly narcissistic, and honestly if you are a narcissist, being a volunteer diarist on DKos is probably not the best profession to satisfy that need.
Rather, instead we do it because of the issues, and because we care about leaving the planet and country a better place. Unfortunately since 2016 we seem to be in a spiral of preventing things from getting worse, instead of constructively making them better. Anyway, I digress.
The Seattle and Puget Sound Kossacks met on short notice in October, an intimate gathering with good food and drinks. And a simple mission was established for our group (so far): To remedy for the era of fake news and Russian trolls by meeting each other person so we can better support each other online. It really is that simple.
And it kinda worked so far, I’d like to think. The first several weeks after our meetup, we communicated frequently about the election, we sequenced several diaries that were well-read and recommended. One member from our group wrote this, which absolutely made it all worthwhile: “This email thread is the most productive and best exchange of information and ideas this group has had since inception.” Well, OK, that sounds like we should keep trying this.
And hey, we won the most important race of the night. We are NOT claiming any credit for the win, but I think we can take credit by creating a focused presence here on DKos that repeated the mantra about electing our new Senator Manka Dhingra.
Blah blah blah, shut up and get to the point, right? OK, the point is we decided that we should do it all again, and meet up in January after the holidays are over, cast a wider net and decide how we want to approach perhaps the most important off-year election of our lifetimes in 2018.
Saturday, January 20th was selected, but I wanted to take a poll about location before setting one. Please weigh in on the poll below, so we can iron out the logistics of our next meet up!
Seattle & Puget Sound Kossacks Meetup
Noon on Saturday, January 20th
Location: TBD (see poll)