Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington all are very diverse states, but they share one thing in common: An explosion of interest in local level Democratic parties.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_58ac7f3ce4b0c4d5105717e0
The jobs that are hardest to fill are receiving an overwhelming number of volunteers allowing local parties them to build out their infrastructure.
“I’m as busy this year as I was at any time last year in the heat of a huge election,” said Mark Fraley, chairman of the Monroe County Democratic Party in Indiana. Fraley said he received 65 emails in a single weekend from people requesting to become precinct chairs, a thankless job that normally requires begging and pleading to get someone to fill. The county party has restructured and added five deputy chairs to channel all the energy, and created six new committees.
This is a completely organic movement. People are finding their way to the local party on their own as in Oak Park, Illinois and Davidson County, Tennessee.
“Our meetings are bursting at the seams these days,” Oak Park Democratic Party Executive Director Karen Fischer said. “We literally couldn’t get them in the door. There were people out on the street who actually couldn’t get in.” Fischer emphasized that so far, the party hasn’t yet increased its advertising in the new year; all these new folks are finding their way on their own. People are walking in off the street every day and asking how to get involved.
The Davidson County Democratic Party in Tennessee maybe gets 10 people, beyond the executive committee, at its regular meetings. But in January, it had nearly 200 people show up, and 180 people filled out forms to start volunteering. “They’re self-identifying and self-gathering,” Pastorek added, stressing that all this energy is organic. “They’re not waiting for the Democratic Party to tell them what to do. They’re doing it themselves, and it’s great.”
Many veterans of the party say they’ve never seen anything like it before from blue Arlington, Massachusetts to red Greenville, South Carolina.
“Our town is hopping with resistance. I know, it’s Massachusetts, but it’s still extraordinary to see the number of young parents and those new to protest and to politics,” she added. “Believe me, I haven’t seen this before.”
Greenville is “the reddest part of a very red state,” according to Kate Howard Franch, the chair of the local Democratic Party. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who led the Benghazi committee, is their congressman, if that gives any indication of the area’s leanings. Franch said that in her nine years there, she’s never seen this sort of engagement. They had a gathering at Furman University after the Women’s March to build upon the momentum and figure out next steps. Even though the meeting took place on Super Bowl Sunday, there were about 1,000 people in the audience.
They're right: This is something new. Political activism that has never happened before and it's happening from coast to coast. I only included a few of the blurbs (let me know if it violates fair use policy), but the whole article shows people everywhere are active and engaged building the party from the ground up from the smallest towns to the biggest cities.
I leave you with my own personal quote:
From the reddest of the red to the bluest of the blue, beware Republicans because we are coming for you.