Gordon Smith
Sarah Zambon
Last year, about this time, I was inspired by a
New Day diary enough to reach out to
DKos Asheville founder davehouck. He was familiar as a Kossack but we had never met, online or in person. We even worked separately on the same campaign that defeated Charles Taylor (R). Once we connected, everything simply changed. We became friends and that led to holding three meet ups, attending rallies together and starting our first experiment with voter registration. That steady groundwork of three quarterly meet ups coupled with action, is now showing some signs of maturity. Please jump the orangy for why meet ups can matter.
The DKos Asheville meet up on Saturday, January 25th from 1:00-4:00 pm, will feature two guest speakers, Asheville City Council member Gordon Smith and Sarah Zambon from the League of Women Voters. More on our guests below.
The food arrangements will be new this time. Thanks to a loyal DKos Asheville food lover who wishes to remain anonymous for now, we have managed to cover the costs of a room and catering for twenty five! Indoors. Hopefully we can draw more than twenty five Kossacks and folks will have to order more food. Which we can then sample! We have nineteen guests signed up with RSVPs so far and we have another half dozen Maybees. So if you are on the fence, you better jump off that thing and make the reservation! Just kosmail me. We promise fast and courteous customer service.
The restaurant is The Cantina in the historic Biltmore Village in Asheville. It looks like a great choice with a local farm to table effort as a centerpiece of how they reach out to the community. You can see pictures of the place and the food at their website. Looks yummy.
The goal of DKos Asheville is clear in our weekly blog post on Saturday mornings.
DKos Asheville can give us all a better sense of connection, a better understanding of who these people are that we stand with, work with, and share with in the political process. We hope, through this community, that we can do a better job of leveraging our orange passion for progressive politics to help elect more and better Democrats.
Hopefully this meet up will move us closer to that goal. Gordon Smith has proven that local progressive political power can be built on the new infrastructure of shared information. Gordon is the founder of
Scrutiny Hooligans, Asheville's pioneering progressive blog since 2004. Sarah Zambon is proving every day that information is sometimes still best delivered face to face with pamphlets. She will be bringing the most current information from
The League of Women Voters about the new voting laws. Robust knowledge of the changes in North Carolina voting requirements will be invaluable for registering voters. Bringing these two talents together should give us all a spark to help move this election. We have to move it our way. We must. Please kosmail me if you plan on coming. Would love to have you.
*More about Gordon in a DK election diary here.
Council Member Gordon Smith was elected to the Asheville City Council in 2009. Councilman Smith serves on the following:
Affordable Housing Advisory Committee (Liaison)
Americans With Disabilities Act Compliance Committee (Member)
Asheville Regional Housing Consortium Board (Chair)
Board of Electrical Examiners (Liaison)
Community Relations Council (Member – Voting)
Finance Committee – City Council (Member)
Governance Committee – City Council (Member)
Homeless Initiative Advisory Committee (Liaison)
Housing and Community Development Committee – City Council (Member)
Sarah Zambon is a board member for the Asheville Buncombe League of Women Voters and is spearheading its voting rights program.
She is originally from Western New York. During her undergraduate studies, she interned at the White House for 8 months during the Clinton Administration working on health, education, and income issues. She then attended Johns Hopkins University and received her Masters in Public Policy. While in Baltimore, she conducted 2 intensive survey studies on Baltimore's homeless community for the Soros Foundation and the City of Baltimore.
She attended UNC Chapel Hill Law school where she designed and implemented the state's first comprehensive Election Protection campaign in 2004, recruiting hundreds of volunteers to staff a call center and polling locations.
Sarah has been a local public interest attorney in Western North Carolina for 7 years where she volunteers with the Campaign for Southern Equality, North Carolina Legal Aid, and the League of Women Voters.
Please check in daily around 10:30 Eastern at the
New Day diary where you can see the guest list as it grows every day!
Saturday, January 25th
Asheville Kossacks Meet-up with City Councilman Gordon Smith
Also speaking is Sarah Zambon from the League of Women Voters.
TIME: 1:00 PM
LOCATION: The Cantina
10 Biltmore Plaza • Asheville
ORGANIZER: Send randallt a kosmail to attend.
RSVPs:
1. davehouck
2. LamontCranston
3. randallt
4. joieau
5. Gordon20024
6. flwrightman
7. Otteray Scribe
8. emmasnacker
9. GordonNC (UID 5123 & City Councilman) GUEST SPEAKER!
10. cultjake
11. DawnN
12. Captain Sham
13. Mrs Sham
14. SteelerGrrl
15. SteelerGuy
16. Alecia
17. Mr. Alecia
18. Nic Goodman
19. Sarah Zambon (League of Women Voters) GUEST SPEAKER!
Maybees:
Munchkn
One Pissed Off Liberal
people power granny
Burns Lass
Aviator Doc
stellaluna
eternallyvigilant
Latest diary: This one!