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September 03, 2003

Howard Dean Meetup

I went to my first Howard Dean meetup this evening, at the May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society in Syracuse/Dewitt. Dan and Stephen were in attendance (Dan drove me over in his turbobrick, which is quite a riot).

The meeting was a disappointment.

meetup-crowd.jpg
Quite a few people showed up

There was quite a crowd. I'm no judge of numbers, but I'd say it was somewhere around 75-100 people. That was a pretty good turnout, seeing as how the last time I stood in that room of the May Memorial church, there were 10 of us (including Lucy Kaplansky). The problem certainly wasn't the attendance, but the people.

meetup1.jpg
Or perhaps person?

No offense meant to whoever the gentleman was that ran things, but the first hour seemed dedicated to bureaucracy -- rambling jaunts on what effect campaign finance reform had on our ability to print out signs, as well as non-rules as to how a meeting shouldn't be run (ie it's supposed to be disorganized. Funny that the moderator of this "disorganized" event had a checklist of things to discuss). This little meeting reminded me of why I like to bitch about politics but hate to get involved.

One thing is for sure, whoever came up with all the nitpicky rules of the latest round of finance reforms definitely had foresight and has put a cockring on the shaft of grassroots campaigning. The whole thing seems like a great idea until the little guy actually wants to do something. I suppose the strength of numbers is something that even the reforms won't be able to deal with; if individuals can only contribute $X, well there are a whole lot of people in the Dean Camp.

To be fair, I really didn't know what to expect from the gathering. I suppose part of my non-existant expectation included some kind of "organized mingling" with the locals, to get us talking and find out about each other. I sort of assume that we all know what the Dean platform stands for, now we're at the phase of finding some friends and hitting the town with some signs as tiny de-centralized units, and having a few beers afterwards. By the time attendees had the chance to talk, patience had worn down to the thickness of a third-hand emo kid's sweater. I managed to get a few names, snag the email address of one person for a possible coffee date, and shoot out of there in one piece.

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