Thursday's Meetup at Cobb Hall (Hyde Park) -- 8/26

Report from Tanya Baker:

Hi!

We had a wonderful meet-up in Hyde Park. 29 people were in attendance -- 20 of which are new to our group! Yay! Many thanks again to Heather Afra, Jo Thompson and Sheila Hori for distributing flyers and to all of you for helping to get the word out.

We were able to raise $98 (awesome!) which will go directly to ordering Kerry/Edwards buttons, stickers and yard signs to distribute here in our neighborhood and on campus. THANK YOU! These supplies are very much needed for our upcoming events. If you were unable to attend, we will still readily accept more donations for our supply fund.

At the U of C, O-week is rapidly approaching -- it begins on Saturday, Sept. 18! Check out the schedule here. We have yet to plan any detailed events on campus for this week, but keep your calendars clear because we will need your help with a lot of voter registration as well visibility/tabling for Kerry to recruit the incoming students, both graduate and undergraduate, to join our Kerry team.

We can recruit these newbies right away to join us out in the city for some of our fun summer festival events. Brian, one of our Kerry campus coordinators, will be back in town on September 14, so we eagerly await his leadership for our O-week campus efforts. Please send him an email if you have specific ideas for what we need to do. Megan, Emily and Erik are working hard at planning a VR strategy for campus, and they will post events to our list as they are planned.

Nathan Zeke led our meet-up, going over the many ways to get involved in the campaign, while cookies, chips and sodas were served. Please continue to check regularly www.chicagolandforkerry.com for upcoming events, including visibility (please set aside Sept. 10 for a huge city-wide Kerry day -- we'll need your help!), VR, and traveling to swing states, and for support for your letter writing/media response efforts -- we need your help to speak up for Kerry in our local papers!

It was decided that we will start meeting informally on Thursdays at 7pm. This is our local Kerry/Edwards supporter social. Come hang out, talk some politics and have fun! Place your vote with me (by Tuesday, Aug. 31) for where it should be: Bar Louie, Jimmy's or Lucky Strike. We'll start next Thursday, Sept. 2 at 7PM -- please vote for where you'd like it to be!

Eric Rogers talked about his house party on Sunday August 29th, 2004 at 4:30 PM (more info). Please support this excellent fundraising effort!

Thank you Eric for doing this! Please continue to try to raise $$ for a big Dem win in November. You can easily set up a house party of your own using the Kerry Volunteer Center of which all of you should be a member by now. Let me know if you need any assistance with this. Donations to the DNC can still be made online on the JohnKerry.com Contribution Page.

The Dobry's guided us through the steps we need to take to have effective voter registration by October 5th and GOTV mobilization on election day in our own neighborhood. We are fortunate to have them join our group and help lead our neighborhood VR and GOTV efforts.

Welcome, Alan and Lois Dobry!

John Moore took our group picture =) We hope to have it up online soon.

Finally, we broke up into small groups to discuss various aspects of involvement, with John Moore leading the discussion on visibility, Daniel Biss discussing swing state phonebanking and canvassing, the Dobry's discussing voter registration and GOTV, and Nate Zeke discussing media outreach, while I encouraged everyone to take with them fun Kerry souvenirs from the Democratic convention. Please post to the list any events organized or decisions that were made as a result of these group discussions!

Unfortunately, our featured guest was unable to attend. Avis LaVelle got tied up (she is a busy woman!), and we forgive her because she is doing such a phenomenal job at the challenging task of leading and organizing this campaign statewide. We have her to thank for the great new campaign office downtown at which you are all welcome and invited to help out. We hope to have her visit our campus in the future, though, as her schedule permits.

Our next meet-up will be on Thursday, September 23 at 7PM again at Cobb Hall room 103. Please mark your calendars!

Thanks again to all of you for being so involved! With your help we are going to have a big Kerry/Edwards victory!!!

TGIF!
Tanya

[from Tanya Baker, Cobb Hall (Hyde Park) Meetup Leader]