We had an organizing meeting and party for Carol in my clubhouse. At first there was a lot of running around handling details, but after the guests started arriving we settled down to the meet and greet type stuff. The room filled with the bubbling sounds of interesting conversation. People started enjoying the good food that Carol had made for us.

     

After a while we gathered in the seats for the meeting part of the party.

  

We all took a turn saying something about our personal activism and/or what we were doing for Carol's campaign while everybody else listened.

  

     

Dave Chapman said that he is running against Eshoo as the Republican candidate. He had a list several things she has done that made him furious. Things like take enormous sums of money from big pharma at a meeting in San Diego so it wouldn't make the papers here. He talked about going on a tour of the VA Hospital in the district and seeing people with severe injuries sustained in Iraq and Afghanistan. His summary "those guys aren't going to heal soon." He said it with a grimly unhappy look on his face.

Jonathan said that he had come out from Brooklyn to help with Carols campaign for at least the next couple of months. Back home he is a widely known activist.

     

Dana said that she is going to be donating some money, but beyond that it's difficult for her to do much more than her job and the other things that life requires from her right now. She is glad that Carol has taken on this role, and will at least get a lawn sign and talk up the campaign as she gets opportunities to do so.

Don said that the problem with our system is too much self dealing at the top. He feels that "It's worse than Africa!" Also, he is giving Jonathan a place to sleep while in town, and is also going to see what he can get the rest of his house mates to do for the campaign.

Gerry mainly works with 350.org and has done some stuff with Move to Amend. He is mainly here supporting Dana and finding out about the campaign.

     

Jay Blas Jacobo Cabrera said that he is running against Zoe Lofgren as an Occupy candidate, not really affiliated with any political party. He just wants to see change. He is hoping that being Latino in a 40% Latino district will help some.

Dave Chapman said that there are three R's that are going to define the campaign. Those are Redistricting (a third of the district she now serves has never heard of Anna Eshoo), Rules (the new top two primary is bound to have some effect on the way the election proceeds), and Romney (that's going to get the Republican vote out!).

Carol talked about her many years of being a monetary reform and environmental activist. She also talked about her joy in having Jules as her campaign manager. Because of the top two, she needs to get about 25,000 to 30,000 votes in June to be in the top two. The campaign now has bumper stickers, door hangers, and a good flier she is hoping that all of us will use to help get the word out about her campaign. She also fed us a lot of really good food.

     

After the focused meeting some people left, and the rest of us talked in ever shifting gaggles and pairs for quite a while.

Don feels that we need to exploit the power of decentralized media. He has lots of ideas for bumper stickers. Click his picture to see some of the other ones.

Ron thinks it's important that everybody know that Congress's money creation powers derive from Article one, section 8, paragraph 5 of the United States Constitution.

After people left I cleaned up for a while. There wasn't much mess, so it didn't take long to get the room ship-shape. It had been an interesting evening. We raised $333 for Carol's campaign.

I have some of these stickers. They look great on cars. If you want one, tell me where to mail it and I'll drop it in the mail for you as soon as I can.