Wondering how to get involved in the election? Want to ensure your energy and dollars are used strategically? Well this is the opportunity you have been waiting for!!!!!!

Vote Today Ohio is a grassroots campaign to utilize Ohio’s “Golden Week” (September 30-October 6) to help 10,000 new and unlikely progressive Ohio voters make their voices heard and have their votes count in the 2008 presidential election. DONATE HERE!

VOTE TODAY OHIO

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Who is Vote Today Ohio?
We are a group of new and veteran organizers using our time, money and social networks to help turn out the progressive vote in Ohio.

What are we doing?
Taking advantage of Ohio’s “Golden Week” — Sept 30 to Oct 6 — when new voters can register AND vote on the same day. We’ll bring progressive voters from campuses and urban areas to Early Voting Centers, so they can bank their votes early and ensure they don’t get shut out by long lines and broken machines on election day.

What’s our goal?
Turn out more than 10,000 new or unlikely voters, by recruiting a crack team of 100 volunteers from out-of-state and 100 volunteers from Ohio.

What’s the timeline?
9/10 - 9/21: Recruit our crack team of organizers, including Team Leaders, Drivers and Street Teams
9/22 - 9/28: Publicize the Golden Week on campuses and in Ohio’s urban centers
9/29: Organizer Training Day in Columbus
9/30 - 10/6: Golden Week - Register and Turn out 10,000 progressive voters
10/7 - 11/4: Phase 2: Continued ground work on early voting, persuasion and GOTV

What’s this “Golden Week?”
Ohio recently changed its voting laws in a way that creates an extraordinary opportunity for Democrats to win Ohio, and thus win the election. For a 7 day window, from Sept 30 - Oct 6, Ohio residents can register and vote early in all of Ohio’s 88 counties. That means we don’t need to spend double the time and energy registering folks, and then turning them out to vote a month later. During the Golden Week, it all happens in one fell swoop — so our energy and money works doubletime.

What will volunteers do in Ohio?
Volunteers will be assigned jobs based on their experience and interests such as:
Recruiting people to early vote on campuses and in walk-able neighborhood
Managing 5-person teams of volunteers in specific campuses or urban areas
Driving vans
Educating early voters about the process
Recruiting other volunteers
Databasing registrations of new voters
Creating posters, flyers and visibility

What can people do outside Ohio?
Recruit other people to go to Ohio
Get a group together to sponsor a van — $750 for the week (including gas)
Donate your car or van for the week
Call your long lost friends in Ohio and make sure they’re volunteering

Is housing available?
Yes. We are arranging housing for out-of-state volunteers around the state, in partnership with America Votes. We also have our own large headquarters house in Columbus which may have space to crash as a last resort. However, if you have friends in Ohio, we encourage you to stay with them if possible.

Is there an office?
Yes. America Votes, the major coalition of progressive voting groups and unions in Ohio, is generously letting us use their offices in Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Canton. We will be working out of their offices as well as home offices in satellite locations.

Where in Ohio are you focusing?
Target Urban Areas: Columbus (2 Teams), Cleveland (2 Teams), Cincinnati (2 Teams), Dayton (1 Team), Toledo (1 Team).
Target Campuses: Ohio State University (2 teams), Ohio University (2 Teams), University of Toledo (1 Team), University of Cincinnati (1 Team), Kent State (2 Teams), University of Dayton (1 Team), Cuyahoga Community College (1 Team), Cleveland State (1 Team), Miami University of Ohio, Bowling Green State (1 Team)

Who is behind this effort?
Vote Today Ohio is organized by a team of veteran political organizers, including:
Amy Little (fmr Congressional Campaign Manager and US Action)
Billy Wimsatt (fmr Director of the League of Young Voters)
Tate Hausman (Director of Slam Bush, and Secretary of State Project)
Cristina Moon (Director of 8-8-08 For Burma)
We are recruiting experienced organizers to lead local teams across the state.

Why Ohio?
Based on polling, electoral trends and voting history, winning Ohio is the single clearest path to victory. Other states are important too — especially Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, Michigan and New Hampshire. But by most measures Ohio is the single most pivotal state.

Why aren’t you just working with the Obama campaign?
For reasons both legal and strategic. Legally, we are not allowed to coordinate with a candidate campaign. Strategically, we have more flexibility by not being part of a campaign. So we have more freedom to be creative and use volunteers’ unique talents. We are able to raise money beyond the campaign.

How do I donate money or a vehicle?
If you’re serious about sponsoring a van ($750), paying for posters or lending us your car or van for the week, DONATE HERE. This is a no-overhead project, where your money will go directly to turning out new voters.

Is money available for volunteers?
We are relying on out-of-state volunteers to raise their own funds from friends and family to cover personal expenses. Money we raise will go directly to renting vehicles, gas, posters, housing and supplies.

To volunteer or get more information:

SIGN UP HERE.
Please email BillyWimsatt@gmail.com 646-346-0248 cell for further information.

Jay Smooth has nailed it again…

check out his commentary on the GOP convention… brilliant!

Oh my… this again… sisters… this is simply not good enough…

CBS anchor Katie Couric said the following in an interview with an Israeli publication:

“Unfortunately I have found out that many viewers are afraid of change. The glory days of TV news are over, and the media landscape has been dramatically changed. News is available now for everyone, everywhere, all the time, and everybody fights for the last pieces of the shrinking pie. The corporate pressure and the ratings terror are intensifying all the time, and the situation is not simple. I find myself in the last bastion of male dominance, and realizing what Hillary Clinton might have realized not long ago: that sexism in the American society is more common than racism, and certainly more acceptable or forgivable. In any case, I think my post and Hillary’s race are important steps in the right direction.”

Thanks to Tami at What Tami Said for her post. Here it is…

Deep sigh…Really? Are we still going there? I will not stop being offended by women who do not experience racism, but in their privilege feel comfortable deciding how common or forgivable it is. But that is not the only thing that bothers me about Couric’s statement. Emily Yoffe at Slate.com’s XX Factor women’s blog touched on the problem:

I find it unseemly for people like Couric and Clinton, who have been rewarded greatly for their talent, skill, and drive, to complain that sexism is the reason when they don’t succeed at absolutely everything. (Couric is paid $15 million a year, a higher salary than her male counterparts.) Read more…

To be sure, Hillary Clinton, a formidable and smart politican, faced sexism during her presidential run. But it did not doom her campaign. Staff infighting; failure to plan past Super Tuesday; the adoption of racist Southern strategy that alienated black voters; failure to utilize grassroots organizing and leverage new media; reliance on greasy, old school politicos like Mark Penn; failure to adopt a cogent message until the last months of the primary; Bill; and a tough opponent with a stronger, more strategically run campaign–that is what doomed the Clinton campaign.

Similarly, Katie Couric, who has undoubtably blazed trails for women in journalism and who has undoubtably faced much sexism along the way, has much to answer for in terms of journalistic integrity. Recent case in point? The recent interview with Barack Obama where she doggedly seemed to defend escalated military action in Iraq. At the same time, we have her news program’s attempts to hide John McCain’s recent gaffe about the “surge.”

I am not afraid of change, as Ms. Couric suggests, but interviews like these are not the sort of journalistic change we need. If Couric requires an explanation for the record low ratings of her newscast, I suggest she look to its substance and not sexism. After all, folks (including me) can’t wait to see fearless Rachel Maddow with her own show on NBC. Maddow…who smacks down Pat Buchanan on the regular…who makes me not miss Keith Olbermann…who always has brilliant insight…who speaks truth to power. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t love to see Maddow snatch dreary David Gregory’s spot.

And if it was hard for Katie Couric to get to where she is, I will bet that it has been even harder for Maddow, who is also a woman. But Maddow is a woman who has resisted the blond highlights and flirty skirts news directors love to slap on female journalists. (Can’t report the news, girls, unless you’re sexxxay!) She is also an out and proud lesbian. I am going to bet that Maddow has faced bias toward both her gender and sexuality. But I’m sure Couric would boldly say that homophobia in our country is not nearly as bad as the sexism she faces.

If sexism trumps all else, perhaps Couric can explain that to Gwen Ifill, a black woman who despite a long history of excellent news reporting is called a “cleaning lady” by Don Imus and didn’t get the call for a big three network anchor seat, while “America’s Sweetheart” from a soft morning talk show did.

I guess what I’m saying, Katie, it that maybe it’s not the sexism…maybe it’s you.

Click here for Tami’s original post in it’s entirety.

from my dear Adrienne Maree Brown

Reposted from RaceWire

Obama Gets the Nomination - Another Strike for Multiracial Babies!
by Adrienne Maree Brown

So I can’t write much on here but I have to just share this temporary moment of swelling heart boom boom because Obama, Barack Hussein Obama, a half-breed, Hafrican, mulatto, black and white cookie, creamed coffee, is-he-is-or-is-he-ain’t, mixed, multi-, biracial, more-than-a-drop, cafe au lait like me is going to be the Democratic nominee for President.

No one will want to remember it that way, it’s too advanced to get into, its big enough that he’s a black man, the black candidate who has been running against the woman candidate in our oversimplified media vomitorium of electoral coverage.

But as a woman who grew up with that special experience of visiting the far reaches of the American experience as represented by the racial spectrum in my veins, as a biracial woman who takes note of all the multicultural straddlers out there leading and supporting movements, I want to take a moment that we rarely get.

Mariah Carey, goddess that she is, isn’t out there forging the path of righteousness for those who are undefining the boundary. Halle Barry wants nothing to do with the gray space. We haven’t had many public figures giving speeches about their mixed heritage, out there publicly applying the unique ability to go beyond temporary bridge-building to the true and evolutionary, fusionistic type of movement building which is a survival mechanism honed at the dinner table for multiracial babies.

There’s a Pandora’s box available for analysis everywhere you look. Is it the light skin and white grandmother that made Obama eligible as a black player in this game? Does Hillary understand that it wasn’t her gender, or her race, but her spirit of contention that lost her this run? Doesn’t this just complicate the image of oppression with a black/mixed face at the tip of an iceberg of immoral and divisive policies and ideals?

Can black people, immigrants, Arab Americans/immigrants, queer folks, poor folks…can any disenfranchised community see a tangible hope in this moment?

Does America operate in tangibles when it comes to ideology, or merely when it comes to punishment and retribution?

All of those questions remain for another day - those are conversations that need to be had.

But today, I’m just relishing in that little forgotten possibility tucked into a time capsule and buried in my brain: you could be president of this great nation…someone like you could be president of this great nation.

So its not a great nation. So nations may not have the ability to both be nations and be great. So the role of president has become a point of betrayal, ridicule and something to distance ourselves from. So what! Today? Someone who is evidence of the kind of love that made me - love between individuals who refused to be defined and limited by race, which is a mode of categorizing defined as a tool of oppression - someone like that is playing big. Maybe in this moment we can remember that we do not exist to be divided, and fight against each other, and create suffering and walls and borders. We might be called to something larger, to be the living representation of a world steeped in culture and beyond inequality.

I know his mixed heritage won’t be a major talking point for Obama, and politically I understand the need at this moment for a black candidate, for it to be more simple. But let’s don’t give up too much on the way - it’s the bravery in some of us to create spaces for being who we truly are that allows us all to evolve!