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In Oregon, home of PDA Board member Thom Hartmann, of Air America Radio, and a strong progressive community, PDA Oregon demonstrated its commitment this weekend to mobilize PDA members throughout the state and to galvanize their energy for legislative advocacy, citizens lobbying and candidate bird-dogging and voter education on the roster of PDA priorities through Progressive Challenge 2008.
The meeting of the state's first chapter showed real growth since its inception in late 2007, bringing together this month 45 PDA members from the Portland area, including Martha Perez, an exciting young Latina activist who is running for City Council, and local students, excited about organizing. State Coordinator Liz Kimmerly explains, “The first step for PDA Oregon is for us to build chapters in congressional districts throughout the state. These chapters, working with PDA Congressional District point people, will begin to develop relationships with representatives' district offices to lobby for the PDA's Progressive Legislative Agenda, as well as to create a presence for progressives within the state Democratic party and to encourage new members from constituencies to join this effort to bring forth a progressive governing majority in U.S. Congress.”
Kimmerly comes to Oregon from Los Angeles, California, where she had been active in PDA's local chapter-a powerful force in mobilizing the L.A. progressive community. Upon moving to Oregon, Kimmerly, who had seen the impact of PDA's inside-outside strategy in California's Democratic Party politics and on the streets, set about organizing PDA members in her new home state. Over several months, she participated in PDA National conference calls for New State organizing and has been forming a team with well-known progressive activist Moses Ross and others, which will be looking for leaders among the PDA base to form chapters in a wide range of Congressional Districts in Oregon.
One of the Portland chapter's first initiatives was to come out to support PDA Advisory Board Member Jeff Cohen in his tour through American cities with former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter at Portland's Lincoln High School, discussing the effect of the media on the U.S. occupation of Iraq. At the event, Progressive Challenge 2008 cards with information about PDA and printed with the Progressive Agenda were distributed to the audience, who were encouraged to get involved with PDA Oregon activities.
At Saturday's Portland meeting, in addition to discussing Progressive Challenge 2008 and Oregon's upcoming presidential primary and encouraging chapter participants to join both PDA's Issue Organizing Teams and the training sessions on Congressional lobbying, chapter members reflected upon the opportunities for the PDA Portland chapter to weigh in on the 2008 campaigns, most notably the race for Oregon's Senate seat. Moses Ross apprised members of the process by which a local chapter's endorsement can be referred to the PDA National team for consideration, but the chapter membership was ambivalent about whether an endorsement vote was important. Each major candidate was represented at the meeting, but an endorsement was tabled until next month's meeting. At the February meeting, irrespective of whether the chapter chooses to vote to endorse any candidate, members will be able to engage in a full discussion with each contender about their positions on the PDA issues. That discussion will be facilitated by Moses Ross.
What was unequivocal and clear from the meeting was the energy and commitment of PDA members in Portland to work together to build and strengthen the progressive community in Oregon and to work with PDA National to obtain tools, talking points and strategies both to educate and engage Oregonians on the issues and to secure support for progressive change in Congress by incumbents as well as candidates.
All PDA members in Oregon are welcome and needed to make the PDA Oregon initiative a success. If you are interested in or have questions about the endorsement policy, please contact Moses Ross at moses@politicalrobocalls.com. If you are interested in starting a PDA chapter in your Oregon community or in applying to become a Congressional District Point Person, please contact Liz Kimmerly at lizkimmerly@gmail.com.
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