Virginia State News

Vol. 2, No. 3--April 13, 2005

We had a productive meeting of PDA-VA last Saturday, April 2. Detailed minutes will be distributed soon. Highlights:

We decided to become an official chapter of PDA, to be called Progressive Democrats of America - Virginia (PDA-VA.)

We will not try (at least not anytime soon) to become a grassroots organization throughout Virginia for "actions" because it would require a lot of organizing work and would result in duplicating and/or splitting our efforts. Instead, we will work closely with the better established DFV and VGC.

A key role of PDA-VA will be to create well-worded statements of Progressive principles, values and vision to counterbalance the rightward slide of the Democratic Party. We would like to work with PPV, VGC, and others to create a message with cogent, values-based language while not reinventing already carefully crafted messages such as those found in the national PDA's materials. Much of our activities will be Virginia-centric, such as efforts to aid the Kaine-Kilgore campaign. Though we have not formalized anything, Maura Keaney expressed the hope that we can come up with effective messages that DFV could find useful and acceptable with the aim of avoiding quibbling over details, which has bogged them down in the past. We did not discuss the specifics on how to proceed, but we have some excellent writers among our groups (PPV, PDA-VA, VGC) who we believe will come up with exceptional language and frames to support the Progressive platform.

We will not try to have a statewide meeting coordinated with the State Democratic Committee June 18, but we will have a staffed table there.

Sarah and I announced that we have done the best we can to help PDA-VA get started, but have pressing precinct and family needs that force us to hand over much of the organizational leadership and administration to others for a while. Stephen Spitz agreed to take over for us and I hope to continue being involved in the message development work.

Howard

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