Athens

Hello everybody,

In case you might not have already gotten this, here's a fwd from the Obama campaign's Regional Field Director, Alex DeGolia adegolia@barackobama.com :

Hello Athens area Obama Activists!

The Obama campaign has arrived in Athens, and we are ready to work in order to turn Georgia blue this November. We are currently operational on the top floor of 220 Prince Avenue, directly above the Athens-Clarke County Democrats office. This campaign has always been about working from the ground up--engaging more people than ever before in the democratic process and making a difference community by community. And that's exactly how we plan to change our country. There are a number of ways that you can help the campaign right now in Athens:

1) Come to our organizational meeting this coming Tuesday, 7pm! It will be at The Transmetropolitan, 145 E. Clayton St., downtown Athens. Go upstairs and to the back. The organizational meeting is an opportunity for anyone interested in getting involved in organizing and implementing voter registration events during the week and on weekends to ensure that we register thousands of new voters in the Athens area before November. You will meet our staff, Obama Organizing Fellows, and other volunteers interested in working with the campaign. We'll discuss what we're doing in Athens now, and what we plan to do moving forward. Click the link below to sign up to attend the organizational meeting.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/voterregistrationdrive/4g8mj

2) Help register voters on July 4th! The campaign is setting July 4th as a huge day of voter registration all across the country. We need your help volunteering to register people here in Athens, both through events that we set up and at your own neighborhood BBQ. Please respond to this email if you are able to help out on July 4th. Also, check out my.barackobama.com in coming days for specific voter registration events on the 4th.

3) Come into our office! We're currently located directly above the Clarke County Democratic Party, 220 Prince Ave. Stop on in and learn more about how you can volunteer any day of the week! There is always voter registration and phone banking to be done, as well as numerous other activities that can help the campaign.

Thanks so much for your interest in the campaign, and we hope to see you soon! Feel free to contact me via email if you have any questions or are interested in volunteering outside of the events listed above.

Sincerely,

Alex DeGolia

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Alex DeGolia
Regional Field Director
Obama for America
Athens, GA
402-650-6416

On a personal level I would just like to say that for the first time in my life I really am excited about the presidential election and I am (also for the first time) trying to be involved when and where I can. So, hopefully I'll see you at the meeting on Tuesday night! :)

Patrick Moore
DL Athens
athens@drinkingliberally.org
http://livingliberally.org/drinking/chapters/GA/athens
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Disclaimer: Drinking Liberally does not take official stands on issues and does not endorse any political candidate(s). Any opinions expressed in this message are those of the sender/poster only and not of the Drinking Liberally organization.

Hello all,

Just a brief note in case you might be interested, note that the location is the same as the Democratic Party of Athens Headquarters (the Obama campaign is on the 2nd floor apparently):

"Obama's Party of Athens (Unite for Change)
On June 28, 2008 we will be meeting at the Athens Obama Head Quarters to discuss our support for Senator Obama. We want all ages and people of different walks of life to come out to the event. Different view points are encouraged. We will be meeting at 220 Prince Ave. ( beside St. Joseph's and across from The Grit) at 3:00p.m. on Sat. We appreciate your support and can't wait to see you on Saturday!!"

For more info see:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/uniteforchange/4g93d

Have a great weekend,
Patrick Moore
DL Athens
athens@drinkingliberally.org
http://livingliberally.org/drinking/chapters/GA/athens
--
Disclaimer: Drinking Liberally does not take official stands on issues and does not endorse any political candidate(s). Any opinions expressed in this message are those of the sender/poster only and not of the Drinking Liberally organization.

Hello all,

Well, we had a great time last night meeting and also had a couple new attendees! Welcome!

This will probably be a bit long again, so please bear with me. :)

We did talk about changing venues, etc., and have decided the following:

Starting Friday July 18 (the next DL Athens meeting), we will be meeting at Little Kings starting around 6:30 p.m. Little Kings' address is 223 W. Hancock St.

Thereafter it will be the first and third Friday of every month, at the time and location mentioned above. We decided not to meet on Friday July 4th to allow us to celebrate Independence Day with our families or other loved ones since a bunch of us already have plans to be out of town then.

We decided to move the start time back to 6:30 p.m. because in our discussion it was brought up that some people don't get off of work until later and can't get to the bar very early. I know 6:30 p.m. is still maybe a little early for some folks, but thus far we have ended up staying at the bar literally for hours. I am confident that this tendency will only be continued and extended even longer on Fridays. So, don't be shy if you work late and tell your friends that work late to come on down. No doubt we, or at least some of us, will still be there at least three hours later or so.

Please note that due to a glitch, or perhaps to my ignorance, while the website has been updated, it incorrectly displays the next meeting as this Friday, June 20. I have tried to correct that but have been unsuccessful thus far. I have sent an email to the webmaster asking for help in fixing this. So please make a note, just to be 100% clear, there is no meeting this Friday, and the next meeting is Friday July 18. Hopefully this detail on the website will be corrected very soon.

While I have gone to the trouble to put these changes on the website already, and while these changes were arrived at via a democratic discussion at last night's meeting, they are not necessarily written in stone, so to speak. What I mean is, if you were unable to attend last nights meeting, or even if you were, and if you would like to share your thoughts about the changes in venue and schedule, please do not hesitate to email us. We hope that the change will be good for everyone and if not we want to know.

Other news:

1. Considering that Tom and Holly and I will all be out of town on the 4th, it is quite possible that some future meeting date will find us in the same situation. Therefore, I think it would be wonderful if we had one or two more co-hosts, if there be anyone interested in volunteering for that. There are very minimal duties for that and pretty much anyone who has attended thus far would already be qualified to step on up as long as he or she be willing. If you think you want to be a co-host just let us know. The main thing is being there for meetings and familiar with the DL organization to help orient new folks, as well as willing to receive emails sent to the Athens, GA DL either via the email address or the contact form on the website, and to potentially respond to the same. (Yes, all three of us get emails sent to athens@drinkingliberally.org ). Also, considering that we so far consist of two gentlemen and one lady, any female volunteers for co-host would be *especially* appreciated, although any and all volunteers are welcome, much appreciated and will be accepted.

2. Even if you don't want to be a co-host, you can help out by telling your friends to come and encouraging other people to come in general. There are all kinds of ways to do this, I'm sure you all can think of creative ways to do that. If you want to volunteer to do something specific to raise our public profile please do not hesitate to let us know. The Drinking Liberally website, http://drinkingliberally.org , has plenty of resources to help with this.

3. As you all no doubt know, AthFest is this weekend. This would be a great chance to spread the word about DL Athens. (Thanks to Margaret, Brandon, and Emily for this great idea!) If you know you will be going to AthFest, and want to help brainstorm via email (or other means) between now and then about ways to help spread the word, then let us know. We could probably come up with a small handout to give people, but reply to this message if you want to work on this with us.

4. There is now a DL Athens group on Facebook. (Thank you Holly.) If you are a Facebookista, and you know you are, then check it out if you haven't already. http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=22037004313

5. If you haven't noticed yet, you may want to take a look at the new DL website. All chapters, including ours, now have our own page on the site. These messages are archived there in blog format. The site for the Athens DL is: http://livingliberally.org/drinking/chapters/GA/athens .

That's all I can think of now. I know that is really long and I know I tend to write a little more verbosely than I probably need to, so I am sorry for that and I thank you for reading through all of this. Have a great rest of the week and a great AthFest weekend!

-Patrick
Drinking Liberally Athens
http://livingliberally.org/drinking/chapters/GA/athens
athens@drinkingliberally.org

Hello all,

Just a reminder to please come to tomorrow's (Wednesday 18 June) Drinking Liberally Athens meeting, starting at 5:30 p.m. at The Max Canada. And bring a friend if you can!

Besides our usual agenda of sharing our time and adult beverages and friendly political discussion, we will also be discussing (and potentially taking an informal vote or two on) the possibility of changing venues for our DL Athens meeting as well as changing the day of week that we meet. So, keep that in mind if you happen to have a strong opinion one way or the other because we will be making time to listen to anyone and everyone who wants to have a say about it.

Hope you all are having a great week and hope to see you all tomorrow.

take care,
Patrick Moore
Drinking Liberally Athens

Hello everyone,

There is a lot going on right now so bear with me please. :)

1. First of all, Drinking Liberally has a new website, so by all means, do go check it out: http://www.drinkingliberally.org .

2. We are looking into either changing venues for our DL Athens meetings, or having a talk with the management at The Max Canada about maybe getting the Wednesday afternoon bartender to turn down the stereo for real. If we decide to meet elsewhere before the next meeting we will change our listing on the website as well as send a message to the listserv so that everyone will know. For now though, we will still be at The Max Canada until further notice.

3. As you may know or remember, DL recently celebrated its fifth anniversary. Also, DL recently achieved its goal of having a chapter in every state. Here are a variety of links that are related to those milestones:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjEeWm5cIuE (Howard Dean congratulates Living Liberally)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ix_Xyt8ub8 (Bob Herbert of the NY Times congratulates Living Liberally)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=nNS5Xq5duKo (Sam Seder of Air America congratulates Living Liberally)

http://www.happybirthdaylivingliberally.org/ (Blog dedicated to celebrating the 5 year anniversary and 50 state milestone)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/nyregion/01drinking.html (NY Times article on the 5 year anniversary)

3. "The Liberal Card" - Making fun of the old cliché (typically used in a disparaging manner) "card carrying liberal", the folks at Living Liberally have brought about "The Liberal Card" which can be used like other discount card programs. It is intended to be used nationally but I don't think there are any Georgia discounts available just yet, but this program just started and is interesting. (I for one think it is hilarious just for the name and concept. It will be handy if anyone ever accuses you of being a "card carrying liberal", so you can reply, "why yes I am!" and pull out the card.)
http://www.theliberalcard.org/

4. Opportunities and activities:

(Remember that Drinking Liberally does not take stands on issues or endorse candidates; these are just things that I personally am interested in and I thought you might be too...)

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Get a free Obama bumper sticker from MoveOn.org:
https://pol.moveon.org/obamastickers/?id=12818-6945574-eCPRlc&t=1

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Meeting to organize Worker Center in Athens, this Thursday, June 12:
ECONOMIC JUSTICE COALITION
FORMATION OF A WORKER CENTER
June 12, 2008, at Action Inc. 7:00pm
594 Oconee Street
The Interfaith Worker Justice Center in Chicago will present ways to develop a Worker Center in the Athens area. Involvement of supportive churches, workers, and churches whose members are at risk of mistreatment is requested.

What is a Worker Center?
A Worker Center:
1) Educates workers on their rights for safe, fair employment under state and federal law and responds to specific needs such as ESL, food bank, or clothing needs for the winter.
2) Assists workers in filing complaints to correct their problems with employers.
3) Connects workers with lawyers if necessary.
4) Pulls workers together to make decisions together.
5) Promotes union organizing when appropriate, and
6) takes action against employers on decision of the worker collective.

What workers are expected to be involved? Poultry plant workers, UGA food service workers, Construction and landscaping workers, Hotel and restaurant workers, Hospital workers, Big box store retail workers, Underpaid manufacturing workers and Domestic and child care workers.

COOK OUT 5:30
PRESENTATION 7:00.
JUNE 12 7:00pm

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Grand Opening of Athens-Clarke County Democratic Party Headquarters:
Join us to open our Democratic Headquarters on Friday, June 13th, 5:00-7:00 p.m. Located at 220 Prince Avenue in Athens, our location promises to provide area Democrats with a great place to gather on behalf of local, state and national efforts to elect Democrats. And so please stop by for some refreshments and a celebration as we cut the ribbon! (Headquarters is the large gray house across from The Grit and next to the St. Joseph Catholic Church parking lot)
http://www.clarkedemocrats.com/

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That is all for now. Thanks for taking the time to read through all of that.

Have a great rest of the week!
Patrick
Drinking Liberally Athens