I Want My Country Back!

Howard Dean in the winter of 2003 began to ask the question that many of us were already thinking. He Said

What I want to know is why in the world the Democratic party leadership is supporting the president's unilateral attack on Iraq.

What I want to know is why are Democratic Party leaders supporting tax cuts. The question is not how big the tax cut should be, the question should be can we afford a tax cut at all with the largest deficit in the history of this country.

What I want to know is why we're fighting in Congress about the Patient's Bill of Rights when the Democratic Party ought to be standing up for health care for every single American man, woman, and child in this country.

What I want to know is why our folks are voting for the president's No Child Left Behind bill that leaves every child behind, every teacher behind, every school board behind, and every property tax payer behind

I'm Howard Dean and I'm here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.

If you, if you if you want young people to vote in this country and if you want the 50 percent of adults over 30 to vote in this country that don't vote, that do not vote in today's election, then we had better stand for something because that's why they're not voting.

Dean's Speech

Howard gave many of us hope that we could take our country back from cronyism, corporatism, racism, and pessimism. Howard inspired many, me included, to take on the challenge of making our community, state and country great through hope, hard work, and pragmatic solutions to our community and national problems.
It seems to me that focus has become a problem. DFA was envisioned as organizing to run candidates in every single election from Dog Catcher to School Board to State and Federal offices. What we have found is that it is easier to garner support on national issues and national candidates, but the important local elections go untouched. Every candidate that runs in a local election runs on local issues. My one hope for Geauga DFA is that we begin the task of finding those local issues, develop solution to the local problems, and becoming those candidates to make sure those problems get fixed.
A new way of making our community better: while DFA remains an issue and candidate oriented group with an eye out on the national as well as the local, we have begun a bold new experiment to develop independent non-partisan action teams to identify local problems, work on solutions for those problems, and to inform the public. These groups will form collations of groups and people concerned about making sure problems in our communities are fixed right. They will be non partisan to take some of the politics out of the solution so we can achieve the goal for our communities greater good.

Two test groups have been formed: one on school funding and better community schools, and the other on local government accountability. We will be talking about these two DFA coalition groups at the next meetup. Come join us October 19th at 7:00pm at the Chardon Public library meeting room to hear more.

Or as Howard Dean put it way back when we all began to dream it would be possible:

We're going to bring hope to America, jobs to America, peace to America; we're going to bring pride to the Democratic party. I need your help. Let's go get it; let's go do it.

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