Update from Burlington

I’ve now been in Burlington for 24 hours, and already I’m adopting the peculiar patterns that appear to be standard: I’ve slept less than 5 hours. I’ve worked on the blog (look for “Most recent comments” and “Most freqent commenters” coming soon), had some far-reaching discussions about “what’s next?” and been an outsider’s voice sharing my two cents with various people about what’s working and what’s not.

Some observations:

• the motivation of the people who are here is pure. A sign hanging over Garrett Graff’s desk says that “This campaign is about: Bringing people back into the political process; Restoring our role as an idealistic moral force in the world; and building a new American community.” Everyone I’ve talked to believes this.


• Ideas truly are coming from outside in, not the other way around. While building the “most recent comments” functionality into the homepage, I noticed this comment from “Med Student for Dean”. He (she?) was watching ESPN Game Day, and noticed that some enterprising Wisconsin for Dean supporters had strategically placed themselves around the Game Day hosts, so that every time the cameras pointed at the hosts, you saw Dean placards (and one guy even had some Dean masks!). I told the media guys (whose cube is opposite the Net Roots area) to turn to ESPN; sure enough — there were the signs. The media guys got it on TiVo, and John Pettit is working on getting a photo of the broadcast up so Joe or Matt can blog it.


• Everyone here is in awe — seriously, in awe — of what we are doing. By we I mean the grassroots. They speak about the people leaving comments, the people planning events, the people writing letters — as if even they can’t believe how much we’re doing. (And they don’t realize that we are in awe of them. So I guess it’s fair.)

• People just walk in — at 9am on a Saturday morning — offering to help. Two women showed up this morning from Indiana. They’re visiting friends, and they wanted to know how they could get involved. One woman, who’s retired, is planning to go to New Mexico for two weeks in the near future. The other is planning to host a house party.

Being here makes you feel like it can happen. We can shock the world.

Keep up the great work that you’re doing.