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November Meetup at Crackskull's


Wed, 11/03/2004 - 6:00pm

Newmarket, NH
We had a good meeting at Crackskulls, including a number of new faces. Maggie Hassan and Marcia Moody, who both won their elections, gave a report on what they learned during their campaigns for NH Senate and House and we had a good discussion about health care and health coverage and the prediction that the system will have to collapse before it is "fixed" permanently.
At eight we participated in a conference call with Howard Dean, the particulars of which can be found on the blog http://blog.deanforamerica.com
read more
Marcia Moody, Carol Perry, Amy Pollard and Dennis Kepner (who's email address I don't have) agreed to form a committee to plan some sort of event (dinner, lunch, pot-luck) in honor of Governor Dean when his schedule permits.

We also agreed that it's important to make a start at keeping our voter registration lists accurate and updated.  Anyone who has such lists or access to them should let us know so we can set up a data base and avoid
some of the useless and duplicative efforts we went through both in the primary and the general election.  Even the state party lists were out of date and direct mailings revealed that between 25% and 30% of the addresses were wrong.

It would be nice to have a report at the next meeting about what the rules and regulations for updating voter rolls are. Paul Twomey wants to work on disconnecting voter identification from the motor vehicle laws.
He would like help and we could use a report on the issue. polotuama@comcast.net

Governor Dean mentioned during the call that DFA would not be asking for money in the near future.  The sense on the blog, however, seems to be that fund-raising should go on.  Some people are promising to disconnect
themselves from cable TV and send the money to DFA instead.  I don't know about the rest of the country, but New Hampshire has local elections every spring.  If we are going to influence the positions on the very local level, it doesn't seem too soon to start thinking about it.  If we want candidates who favor good government, rather than candidates who favor government that's good for business or some other special interest, then we should get started soon.  I expect that DemocracyforNewHampshire will play an active part on the local level, as well as the state.  Any spare cash you can send their way is sure to be well used.
http://www.democracyfornewhampshire.com

M/H

http://hannah.smith-family.com
By monica smith at 10/05/2004 - 06:55 | DFA | Rockingham/Strafford | Maggie Hassan | login or register to post comments | calendar

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Meetup Summary

While nothing earth-shaking happened at our Meetup, there are a couple of reasons for me to send an update right away.
First of all, I noticed a Meetup.com survey in my mail and, although I was quite happy to respond, I also noticed that there is no choice to opting out of signing up as a paying member for 3-12 months. So, I didn't complete the process and would encourage the rest of you not to bother with it either. I understand the desire to generate income on the part of the organizers. However, a token sum of $5 a year strikes me as much more appropriate than $3.25 a month.
There were fourteen of us at Crackskull's--a smaller number than usual. But, we have to remember that there are now many, many political events and activities to which people are giving time. Speaking of time, the group pledged to contribute 193 hours of political activity per week between now and Nov 2.
The Kerry/Edwards team now has an office in Portsmouth and our old friend Garret Brogens is back, ready to provide assistance to local groups, including phone lists and help with mailings. He is particularly looking for precinct leaders in each community with whom the campaign can co-ordinate. The Portsmouth office # 766-5580

Perhaps you will find it helpful to have a copy of the list of upcoming events we handed out. If not, don't bother reading beyond this point, except to take note of the fact that we will have a VICTORY meeting at Crackskulls on November 3.
Actually, in the interest of efficiency, I'll post that list in a separate comment
By monica smith at Thu, 10/07/2004 - 5:11am | login or register to post comments