What a great turnout at our Aug. 14 meeting! We had 53 people there with a few folks from Andrew and Buchanan Counties and at least 8 people from Atchison County. If you couldn’t be there, you missed a good one – as one attendee said, he was so happy to “breath all this Democrat air.”
Stephen Webber, chair of Missouri Democrats, spoke for about an hour and half. He highlighted a number of different issues, including:
• The broad idea that Democrats are focused on progress and looking forward, while Republicans for many years have been looking to the past as when things were better (they are worse now and must return to the past). NCD Note: We are already aligned with this as a group because we chose “For Progress and Justice” as our tagline just after we organized!
• Three ways in which the current Republican Party is pushing forward ideas that will hurt rural America:
- HEALTHCARE – Republicans have nothing, especially nothing that will improve the healthcare for middle class and working class people; instead their plan involves tax cuts for the wealthy and worse care for the rest (not only is this bad but simply not fair),
- EDUCATION with the push to privatization and the voucher system (few private schools in rural areas – how does this benefit us? instead it acts as a subsidy for people in urban areas – you are helping them send their kids to private schools, and
- INFRASTURCTURE improvement through private businesses (because they will only build will they were make money, which is in high traffic urban areas – they lose money in rural areas).
• Goals of the Democratic Party: have involvement from 4 areas :
- Big, long-term, established interest groups – Examples of what this could be: Planned Parenthood, ACLU, NAACP
- Grassroots orgs (more recently established) – Examples of what this could be: groups like this, Indivisible, PSNKC, Blacks Lives Matter
- Candidates themselves
- Democratic party!
• Missouri Democratic Party, in the gear up for 2018 elections, will be providing training for groups like ours in how to recruit and support candidates, how to more effectively use social media to create change, how to canvas, etc. They also have training for people running for office.
Let the MDP know when there are candidates so that the MDP can start them on this path. Interested persons should contact run@missouridemocrats.org.
To help the effort to combat misinformation, dishonesty, and deception on the internet, join the Show Me Truth effort. See this page for details.
Finally, the MDP has hired a communications person to help provide some messaging for people who are running for small offices so that they also have the main party messages, know what issues and ballots to support and how to talk about them, and can help with what will be the big areas of focus in 2020 (ex: governor and McCaskill).
• Main points:
We HAVE to get people on the ballots for all of the spots. A huge number of rep/senate seats at the state level were entirely unopposed. We HAVE to work to win back the governor’s seat in 2020, hut we also HAVE to make progress in 2018.
(Post written by Elyssa Ford)
Nodaway County Democrats 