A little over a month ago, I met with 12 other members of Daily Kos at the Panera in Silver Spring, Md. There were 15 of us if you count my husband and Tamara's husband who are Democrats, but not members of Daily Kos. Meeting other Daily Kos people is something that I've been thinking about since I joined 5 years ago.
Before DK4, there didn't seem to be a feasible way to meet others. The closest I came was in 2010, when there was supposed to be a meetup of Kossacks at the One Nation rally in DC. My husband and I borrowed orange tee-shirts from my son in the hope of finding other Kossacks, but couldn't seem to find the place that the gang was meeting.
After two hours of wending our way through the crowd on both sides of the reflecting pool, we encountered one person -- Genius at Work -- who asked if there was a reason we were wearing orange, and when we told him we were looking for the DailyKos group, he said he was too, and he'd already looked pretty much everywhere, so we suspected we weren't going to find the group that afternoon. He decided to go in the direction of the Washington Monument, and we were headed back toward the Lincoln Memorial, so we didn't spend any time together.
I posted a diary about it that evening, and in the comments, learned that the DK group was together on the second level stage, but by the time my husband and I found it, that area was blocked off.
When I learned about the new features in Daily Kos 4.0 I had hope that I could actually start to meet some of these people. The group feature appealed to my librarian instincts to classify people. I started a Virginia Kos group and invited anyone who mentioned Virginia in a diary or comment to join the group. A few months ago someone posted a message to the group asking where everyone lived and I was shaken when I realized that Virginia is very very big compared to my home state of Maryland. Nevertheless, I saw that a lot of people lived in Northern Va, and though I was pretty isolated here in Loudoun, there were a few from nearby Fairfax. I also became one of the moderators for the Maryland Kos group. I don't live in Maryland anymore, but I still feel connected to Maryland and I'm up there a lot.
The other new feature in DK4 which opened up more possibilities was the messaging system. One member of Maryland Kos, sreeizzle2012, messaged me and asked if he could friend me. Currently there isn't a way to "friend" someone on Daily Kos, so I gave him a link to my facebook page and we've been friends since then. We met up a few months ago in Columbia, Maryland.
Sree was so enthused at the idea of meeting other members of Daily Kos, so I thought it was time to have a meetup. I put the idea out there in a diary and the response was amazing. I decided to schedule it sooner rather than later because I am so tired of being the only liberal around and was really in the mood to meet some fellow Kossacks.
Of course, as anyone who read my Md/VA/DC meetup liveblog knows, the meetup was a great success. The attendees were:
(me) JamieG from Md & husband
mollyd
Diana in NoVa
a gilas girl
mimi
NinthElegy
VexingEyes
webgenie
JanetT in Md
JTinDC
Tamar and her husband
stevenwag
sreeizzle2012
I've been doing voter registration here in Virginia since the spring, and while I've met a lot of nice people from the Obama campaign and the local Democratic party, I haven't really met anyone that I've become friends with. We put in our 2 - 3 hours at the library or in front of the supermarket, then go our separate ways. I was hoping that some of these people would like to go out for lunch or something to drink afterward, but so far I haven't felt like there was much interest in a social connection.
When I met with the Maryland/DC/Virginia Kos group, I felt an immediate connection with the group. I felt that with any of the people there that evening there was the potential to be a good friend, and I have found this to be true with some of them already. Molly and I got together with our grandchildren later that week at a local park. Interestingly, when Janet and I friended each other on Facebook, we found we had a friend in common -- someone who doesn't live in Maryland, DC, or Virginia, but in Massachusetts. Talk about 6 degrees of separation!
The conversation at the Silver Spring Panera was lively -- just being Kossacks we already had a ton of things in common. At one point, Diana asked the people at our table what we hoped to have come of this. Did we want it to be just a social group or were we hoping for more? This caused me to stop and think.
I do want a social group of people who are not just Democrats, but people who are passionate about being Democrats, people who follow the news and post on their blogs about what's going on with the current political situation.
I want friends who are interested in getting involved, so while I want this group to be a social connection, I want us to be able to get together to reach our Democratic goals. For example, I'm interested in doing voter registration. I feel like getting more young people registered to vote here in Virginia is our best hope for Last week, VexingEyes drove with me to George Mason University to do voter registration. Having a friend to do it with energized me. It was so much better than the times I did voter registration with people I was assigned to do it with here in Loudoun.
Inspired by our Maryland/DC/Virginia meetup, Sree hosted a Baltimore meetup last weekend.
Before I forget, I want to thank Navajo for helping to publicize both of these meetups.
Webgenie, Sree, and I were chatting on Facebook today about scheduling another meetup, maybe in about 2 or 3 weeks.
Are you interested?