Hey all you progressives!
So this week has been less active than my first (it would almost have to be) but I did get some cool things accomplished and a good connection made. I’ll detail it all down below the fold, but first here are the diaries I wrote on DK in the last week.
Monday Feb 25th
Minnesota Taking the lead on Minimum Wage (fingers crossed)
A diary about the Minnesota legislature taking up a bill to increase minimum wage. Includes some history and details about how Minnesota's minimum wage laws work now.
Tuesday Feb 26th
Whither Liberal?
A diary asking about the term Liberal vs. Progressive and how people here felt about their use. (Surprise! people were heavily pro liberal)
Wednesday Feb 27th
Strike in Minnesota
A short diary asking people in the Twin Cities to support the SEIU local 26 on their strike for higher wages and improved working conditions.
Thursday Feb 28th
Dependents of the State
After I read a great article on the New York Times about "dependency" and American's opinions about such, I thought I'd share it with the group...
Anyway, more about my journey into politics below the fold.
As I mentioned above, this week was less eventful than my kickoff week. I did not hear back from the Protect Minnesota people about any particular help that I could offer, but I think I'll leave it on them to get in touch with me as I made a great connection this week with my local DFL.
First a little more Minnesota knowledge bombs to drop. Our state is divided up into 67 senate districts, each one providing 1 senator and 2 representatives. Therefore it makes sense for the party to organize at a district level. In the 2010 legislature, the republicans controlled both sides and decided they'd like to get in on the Republican Gerrymandering Train of Doom, but luckily our Democratic Governor disagreed. We, as a state were unable to come up with redistricting plan that everyone could agree on, so by state law the supreme court set up a judicial panel to determine what the districts should be.
Since they did this in a fair and rational way, the districts in Minnesota changed wildly.
All in all, 16 incumbents in the Senate paired off, and 30 incumbents in the House; this meant that there were a large number of completely new candidates and that organizational structures at a local level that had been built up were now forced to deal with new areas and new demographics.
I had gotten in contact via email with the 53rd Senate District (my district) DFL party chair, Alberder Gillespie and we played phone tag for most of the week. So we met at a Caribou Coffee to talk about what I could do and help in the area. We discussed a great number of things, like my skills in working with Database technology, help with organizing for the new area that the 53rd covers, setting up precinct level meetings - I'm really excited about getting involved.
So, what's coming up for me?
I'll be attending a town hall meeting in the City Hall of Woodbury this Saturday 3/9 held by the Republican State Rep from the District - but also attending will be our U.S. Representative Betty McCollum. So I'm really excited to see her and talk to her.
Also, I'll be going to the District 53 board of directors meeting on 3/21 to see what our plans are for the group. So I'll let you all know how that goes in future diaries.
I'm going to keep putting out this series of diaries every Sunday at noon, thanks for reading!