DFA Training: Introduction

I promised that I would post somethings about the DFA training I went to in the Quad Cities. It's finally here!

The training took place on a Saturday and Sunday from 8:30-5:00 and covered a lot of topics from campaign fundraising, canvassing, recruiting volunteers, phone banking, the media, framing your message, and planning campaigns. Bascially it was a lot of information in a short period of time.

The first thing I learned at the training was that I was not normal, actually I was very strange. They were not talking about mulitiple peircings, purple hair type strange. They were talking about people who are willing to give up an entire weekend to come and talk about politics. So I am strange, and because you are reading this blog, you are probably strange too. Once I got over being strange, I could focus on the them of the entire training:

"The biggest lie told by people like me to people like you at election time is that, 'if you vote for me, I'm going to solve all your problems.' The truth is, the power to change this country is in hands, not mine." -Gov. Howard Dean

It was discussed a lot over the weekend that the Republicans are doing great harm to the nation and a lot of people want to change. The people that can change the country are the people who attended the training and the people who read political blogs online. There are too many people who are stuck in watching reality TV and too many people stuck working 2-3 jobs.

"We are the people that we have been waiting for."
-from the Hopi poem, "The Great River"

Since we are the ones that must work for the change and that we are strange then we must remember that for the strange to talk to the normal, the strange must talk normal. We can't go out and start talking about the Downing St. Memo, single-payer health care, geothermal heating, TIF districts, CAFE standards, the Iowa Values Fund, and on and on. Sadly, a lot of people don't know enough details about those topics. We must talk about the values that make up our message and then work on developing that message in a clear, concise way.