Brian Keeler brought the netroots revolution to the Hudson River Valley yesterday. We haven't had any battles for democracy around here in, like, two hundred and thirty years, so it's great to see how the technology's improved. From bayonets to the Internets!
Another big difference: our enemy's not the British, but the Brutish. The Greedy, the Corrupt, the Bigoted, the Benighted, the Befuddled. They've hijacked our country and turned it into a craven corporatocracy. They've destroyed our nation's reputation for fairness and decency. They've dragged us so far down into the muck that while Superman's still fighting for truth and justice, he's crossed defending "the American Way" off his to-do list.
But we don't need a superhero to save our democracy when we've got a guy like Brian Keeler campaigning for NY State Senate. NYBri, as Kossacks know him, is brimming with brains, energy and idealism. He rallied a roomful of Dutchess County dems and fellow Kossacks at Rhinebeck's Desperado café yesterday.
Dutchess County hasn't elected a Democrat for state senator since a freshman state legislator named Franklin Delano Roosevelt won in 1910. And, as Howie Klein noted in a
great post about Brian last month, FDR subsequently" helped save America and the rest of the world."
Is NYBri the next FDR? I have no idea, but I do know that we need people with Brian's populist passion and integrity to help us reclaim our country.
"Daily Kos changed my life," he told us. And now NYBri could change my life, and the lives of my friends and neighbors. The Hudson River Valley is so scenic it inspired a whole school of landscape painters; we'd like to preserve those stunning vistas.
But developers see another kind of green in all our rolling pastures. Sprawl is gobbling up precious farmland and jeopardizing our quality of life (see rhinecliff.org to get an idea of what we've got here, and what we're up against. It's a microcosm of what's happening all over the country.)
"You're not going to stop development," Brian acknowledged, "but
development should be guided by the ability of our resources to sustain it, not by how much political power a developer's money can buy."
Unprincipled politicians have corroded the foundation of our democracy, but we can rebuild it one seat at a time, on the local level. As Howie Klein pointed out, supporting candidates like Brian Keeler is "the only way to turn the mess around. He's one of us -- someone who sees the problems for what they are and dreams the dream of a fair and equitable America that we all have a stake in."
I couldn't have said it better. Saddle up your laptops, Kossacks; the Netroots are Coming!