First Political Meeting
I just attended my first bonafide political meeting with a variety of Seattle Civic activitsts in attendance. The breakfast meeting held at the Greenery Cafe at 2205 7th Avenue and held monthly was hosted by Kent of the Seattle Neighborhood Coalition. I was invited by Ballard civic leader Capt'n Eddie a.k.a. work confidant Stephen Lundgren. I had also forwarded the meeting notice to Christal Wood & Co. who was previously planning on attending. Luckily, food was being served so that I could bring son Connor, 9 who would normally have a low tolerance for a room full of adults talking about (to the average citizen, let alone a child) obscure topics. Thank you Connor for being quiet and respectful throughout the three-hour's of speeches and discussion.
The speakers and attendees: included Robert (Bob) Ferguson, Dem, 2003 Seattle City Council Elect who gave a lengthly speech about strategies he used to conduct and underfunded local political campaign, which included garnering wide support from friends and family, having the liberty to take one years' leave of absence from full-time employment and essentially circumventing the media by ringing doorbells on 22,000 local homes to get his message across, having the physical endurance and confidence to run a successful campaign.
Michael Grossman, Seattle Neighborhood Coalition and campaign strategist
Greg Hill, of "People for Modern Transit"
Dwight Powells, Seattle City Councilman
Jeff Logan, an independant legislative activist who gave a concise, articulate update on The Public Disclosure Act and I-1758.
James Bush, Journalist with Soundpolitics.com and The Stranger
Linde Knighton, campaign strategist for the Progressive Party of Washington
Christal Wood, outsider Seattle Mayoral Candidate http://cw4mayor.notanumberinc.com/ and daughter Jasmine Wood
Armen Yousoufian, of yousoufian.blogspot.com
In attendance were also a wide variety of other citizenry, whose names were mentioned too quickly and quietly for me to accurately transcribe.
The above list is primarily for my own reference in making sense of the notes I scrawled on a tiny, almost useless notebook for my loopy-handwriting. My current interest in this is in only the most remedial phases. I have been perplexed for many years about how to learn anything of real substance about local political machinations beyond the Op Ed pages of our two similar newspapers. The Seattle civic website is primarily PR, touting the great things that government is working on for our city, but opportunites for involvment with serious civic issues are reduced to: read about our initiatives on the website, watch government tv on public access cable, volunteer as unpaid staff for a wide variety of underfunded but laudable city agencies. or "donate here" (using PayPal,). While the issues of the day have been a preoccupation of mine since the days of Jeanne Hahn's classes in 1997, active participation did not seem real to me until recently. Until I started actually meeting regular people that are commited and vested in the course of history. My only effort in this page is to identify the players on the stage and learn enough to be useful to our fair city. More to come.
The speakers and attendees: included Robert (Bob) Ferguson, Dem, 2003 Seattle City Council Elect who gave a lengthly speech about strategies he used to conduct and underfunded local political campaign, which included garnering wide support from friends and family, having the liberty to take one years' leave of absence from full-time employment and essentially circumventing the media by ringing doorbells on 22,000 local homes to get his message across, having the physical endurance and confidence to run a successful campaign.
Michael Grossman, Seattle Neighborhood Coalition and campaign strategist
Greg Hill, of "People for Modern Transit"
Dwight Powells, Seattle City Councilman
Jeff Logan, an independant legislative activist who gave a concise, articulate update on The Public Disclosure Act and I-1758.
James Bush, Journalist with Soundpolitics.com and The Stranger
Linde Knighton, campaign strategist for the Progressive Party of Washington
Christal Wood, outsider Seattle Mayoral Candidate http://cw4mayor.notanumberinc.com/ and daughter Jasmine Wood
Armen Yousoufian, of yousoufian.blogspot.com
In attendance were also a wide variety of other citizenry, whose names were mentioned too quickly and quietly for me to accurately transcribe.
The above list is primarily for my own reference in making sense of the notes I scrawled on a tiny, almost useless notebook for my loopy-handwriting. My current interest in this is in only the most remedial phases. I have been perplexed for many years about how to learn anything of real substance about local political machinations beyond the Op Ed pages of our two similar newspapers. The Seattle civic website is primarily PR, touting the great things that government is working on for our city, but opportunites for involvment with serious civic issues are reduced to: read about our initiatives on the website, watch government tv on public access cable, volunteer as unpaid staff for a wide variety of underfunded but laudable city agencies. or "donate here" (using PayPal,). While the issues of the day have been a preoccupation of mine since the days of Jeanne Hahn's classes in 1997, active participation did not seem real to me until recently. Until I started actually meeting regular people that are commited and vested in the course of history. My only effort in this page is to identify the players on the stage and learn enough to be useful to our fair city. More to come.
