The Vermont Grassroots Organize to Elect Bernie Sanders

Most of you probably know who Bernie Sanders is, but just in case...He represents the great state of Vermont as the only Independant in the US House.

Bernie is running for the Senate this year to replace Independant Jim Jeffords who is retiring. No Democrat is running, but there is a Republican running who happens to be the richest person in Vermont. Not second or third richest, but THE richest. He is predicted to spend $5 million of his own money for his campaign.

So how do you compete with that kind of money? The same way Bernie has always won elections. With Grassroots Power!

Bernie is holding organizational meetings in every county in Vermont to organize the grassroots and win this election. The Rutland Organizing meeting was today. Here's my report, orginally posted on Bernie's Blog: http://www.progressiveamerica.us/

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About 60 people came to the Rutland Organizing meeting. I got there at 11:30 with the tv recording equipment from our local access tv station and helped Ethan (from the campaign) set up the sign-in table.

The people coming in were all friendly and ready to help. Many people that came in from the "suburbs" of Rutland said it was really foggy out there so some people probably didn't come. Lots of familiar faces from the regular political crowd came, but also many people I didn't know, so that was great. (Ethan seemed obsessed with asking people how they heard about the event: postcard, phone, or email. The responses seemed about equal to me.)

Bernie sat at my table for lunch, and ate his whole lunch in about 2 minutes...no time for eating when you're busy fighting the right wing!

He then got up and spoke about the terrible economic situation the Republicans have put us into, the need for Universal Health Care, the dispicable way that the Republicans use "support the troops" for political gain but underfund veterans' needs, and the need to continue to protect Social Security. He was interupted several times by the audience's applause.

There was a Q&A session where people asked about verified voting (Bernie thinks Gore should have won FL, but that Bush really did win OH), IRV (Bernie thinks the VT legislature should work towrds passing IRV), and other issues that I forget (sorry!).

Then Phil (from the campaign) got up and outlined the field plan for Rutland, which included canvassing, registering new voters, advertising, rallies, and tabling. There was a volunteer sign-up card that everyone filled out. There were more volunteer opportunities on the card which I think were the same as the ones listed here: http://bernie.org/volunteer.php

So that's about it. The campaign will contact people that signed up for certain activities, we'll all do everything we signed up for, and the grassroots will win this election Bernie.

As Bernie said at the meeting: The Republicans will outspend us, and people will see their ads, but we will have a neighbor-to-neighbor campaign, and one neighbor talking to another is more powerful than any amount of advertising.

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