CollegeKos: D.C. Federation blog, College Democrats, YearlyKos, etc.

I figure that since we've had Black Kos and Latin Kos diary series, we should also have a College Kos diary series, and so I decided to start by writing about what's going on at my college, The George Washington University.

More importantly, I also need more college students from DC schools to contribute to the blog for the DC Federation of College Democrats. I convinced our president that entering the blogosphere is crucial, so she's put me in charge of setting it up. I figured that rather than going through each individual school's site, I'd post a request here.

Although it's irrelevant to the diary's topic, I have also found the truth (and it's not what anyone expected) about John Edwards and the DLC.

More below the fold.

More below the fold.

GW College Democrats
Thanks to our being located in the nation's capital, we have one of the most energized and active chapters of the College Democrats in the country. This is partly due to GW's location attracting very politically active students and partly due to the fact that GW's location enables our chapter to bring a lot of high-profile guest speakers to our campus.

So far this year, we've had the following political guest speakers at our campus:

1. Senator Barbara Boxer

2. Senator Byron Dorgan

3. Senator Chuck Schumer

4. Mary Beth Cahill (ran the Kerry campaign)

5. James Carville (by the way, his problem with Dean turns out to be that Dean spent almost none of the $10,000,000 loan the DNC took out on the election; although he was clearly wrong about firing Dean or about replacing him with Ford, Larry Kissell, Jim Esch, and some other Democrats really could've used a last-minute ad buy ...)

6. Representative Robert Wexler

7. Representative Frank Pallone

Representative Steve Israel is coming to speak this Wednesday.

We got to attend the DNC Winter Meeting and saw Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Tom Vilsack, John Edwards, Wes Clark, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson and Mike Gravel all speak. The College Democrats of America Leadership Summit was taking place at the same time at the same hotel (Hilton Washington), and we hosted a welcome party for College Democrats from around the country who came to the meeting.

We've also had some great campus events, like, for instance, our election night party. I'm in dark blue on the left below, grinning as I load and re-load and re-load the election results at cnn.com.

One area where we could have done better was in campaigning. We did go on 3 campaign trips, but 2 of them were to Pennsylvania (ostensibly for Bob Casey/against Rick Santorum, and although we did hang Planned Parenthood literature urging votes against Santorum on doors, our real mission was to get Ed Rendell a majority in the state House; sadly, the Democrats narrowly lost the races we worked, so we only ended up with the current quasi-majority) because they'd been set up months before (the other was to Virginia to get Jim Webb elected; we also took trips to Alexandria, VA to see Barack Obama and Bill Clinton speak in campaign appearances on behalf of Jim Webb).

On my own, I worked some, although probably not as much as I should have, on Jim Webb's campaign (as far as I'm concerned, the Arlington precinct I worked on election day is the one that put him over the top), and I did some phonebanking on behalf of the DCCC (where I spent way too long talking to a Green party supporter trying to get him to support Christine Jennings). However, I felt we could have done more as an organization on behalf of Democratic candidates.

That's where the DC Federation of College Democrats comes in. All states have a statewide federation of the College Democrats which helps organize campaign events and helps chapters bond. The Massachusetts federation has been especially active and effective, but most states have a pretty decent state federation.

However, while the DC Federation has existed in the past in theory, it hasn't done anything in practice. My good friend Emily Brooks recently got elected to be president of the DC Federation, and after some explaining/cajoling, has put me in charge of getting together a blog for the DC Federation.

Here's what I sent her to convince her (i.e. this is what I want the blog to do)

Blogs generally serve as a method of covering news and of getting news out. Here in D.C, there are so many non-college hosted Democratic-oriented events that the federation could and should organize around, and blogs are a good way to get the word out about them and cover them.

(Censored to avoid possible outing/personal information)
It would therefore be useful to have the blog both announce and cover school-specific events , some of which we might be able to make into federation-wide events. (censored to avoid possible outing/personal information)... or I could post something on Daily Kos and other blogs asking about D.C. students who might be interested, and I'd be likely to get some response.

Also, Virginia's state house of delegates is up for re-election this fall. The Federation will presumably want to get involved to help continue the Democratic momentum in Virginia which will hopefully culminate in it voting Democratic for president for the first time since 1964. Virginia has one of the strongest state blogging organizations and has good connections to the state party (www.raisingkaine.com) Bloggers were instrumental in getting Jim Webb into the race and to victory in the Democratic primary, and helped the campaign stay afloat until "Macaca" got the DSCC and big donors involved. The federation blog could help us integrate with the Virginia grassroots and such things.

Of course, there are other things that the blog can and should cover, like local DC politics, which we really ought to pay some attention to as we do live here during the year, even if very few of us actually vote here.

So, if you're a College Democrat from a DC school, or for that matter, if you're a College Democrat from an outside-DC inside-the-beltway school like George Mason or UMD College Park, and you have even the slightest interest in writing for the DC Federation blog (irregular writing is fine), friend me on Facebook (my name is Jacob Alperin-Sheriff, I go to GWU) and send me a message, and we'll go from there.

Also, if you're a college student from anywhere in the country, join the College Kossacks Facebook group. At the very least, I'm interested in finding out what other college students (if any) are planning on attending YearlyKos (I'll be there unless my summer internship makes it impossible for me to be there).

Or if you're on Facebook but not a college student, I urge you to join the more inclusive DailyKos Kossacks group

Finally, the subject you've been waiting for:
John Edwards and the DLC

After seeing yet another argument on this subject, this afternoon I decided to send the DLC an e-mail asking for clarification on this subject. For such a corporation-loving, people hating organization, they got back to an insignificant college student like me extraordinarily quickly.

Here is their response (emphasis mine):

The DLC doesn't have members, per se, so I don't think you can say he was a member. Sen. Edwards, along with many of the candidates in 2002, attended and addressed the DLC's National Conversation in New York. You'll see on that agenda that Tom Daschle, John Kerry, Mark Warner, Evan Bayh, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt also spoke.
Link to 2002 National Conversation

So I fully retract everything in my previous diary Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the DLC?, and I expect people to stop claiming that so-and-so is a member of the DLC, since they aren't.