Volunteers, students, and leaders from across the community met at the Stonewall Columbus Center on High this past Wednesday for Rock the Vote’s Ohio Kick-Off Meeting and Launch Party. Rock the Vote has been going local and hitting the ground in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and North Carolina, and this event served as a milestone for our game in the Buckeye State. We are building on our very successful work in 2008 when the Road Trip bus tour crisscrossed the state and we registered over 70,000 people in Ohio.
For the past several weeks, we at Rock the Vote have been making new friends in Columbus and finding strong interest and excitement for our plans in 2010. We’ve been talking to high school students in our Democracy Classes across the city, we’ve enjoyed great bands at the LC Pavilion and various street festivals, and we’ve met local activists at the Columbus Pride Festival. Wednesday, all of these people came together at the Center on High in the Short North to officially launch our efforts in Columbus.
We told our story in uniquely meeting young people at the intersection of pop culture and politics and involving them in the importance of their vote. We told the story of registering voters by phone and fax in the 1990s to registering over 2.5 million voters online in 2008.
Then, volunteers broke out and brainstormed on how our story will be told in 2010. They helped identify upcoming concerts and July 4th events they wanted to attend with Rock the Vote and made plans to register Columbus’s young people and turn them out at the polls in November to prove that we are informed and engaged.
Big “thank yous” go out to Stonewall Columbus for hosting us and to Union Bar and Grill for providing delicious the food. Thanks to all the community leaders and volunteers who came out to make this event a great time. If you missed out on our Columbus Kick Off Event, it’s not too late for you to get involved by going to our Ohio Events Page.
Tags: Columbus, events, Gay Pride, Pride, stonewall
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rob@rockthevote.com Bio: Email the author at: blog(at)rockthevote.com |
Oops! Looks like The One might have been joined at the hip to BP. Or, perhaps RTV finds him and his cohorts to be beyond reproach. How’s that hopey-changy think working out?
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/06/rahm-emanuel-bp-gul-oil-spill.html
In case you were tempted to buy the faux Washington outrage at BP and its gulf oil spill in recent days, here’s a story that reveals a little-known corporate political connection and the quiet way the inner political circles intersect, protect and care for one another in the nation’s capital. And Chicago.
We already knew that BP and its folks were significant contributors to the record $750-million war chest of Barack Obama’s 2007-08 campaign.
Now, we learn the details of a connection of Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago mayoral wannabe, current Obama chief of staff, ex-representative, ex-Clinton money man and ex-Windy City political machine go-fer.
Shortly after Obama’s happy inaugural, eyebrows rose slightly upon word that, as a House member, Emanuel had lived the last five years rent-free in a D.C. apartment of Democratic colleague Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and her husband, Stanley Greenberg.
For an ordinary American, that would likely raise some obvious tax liability questions. But like Emanuel, the guy overseeing the Internal Revenue Service now is another Obama insider, Tim Geithner, who had his own outstanding tax problems but skated through confirmation anyway by the Democratic-controlled Congress.
Remember this was all before the letters BP stood for Huge Mess. Even before the Obama administration gave BP a safety award.
Now follow these standard Washington links if you can:
Greenberg’s consulting firm was a prime architect of BP’s recent rebranding drive as a green petroleum company, down to green signs and the slogan “Beyond Petroleum.”
Greenberg’s company is also closely tied to a sister Democratic outfit — GCS, named for the last initials of Greenberg, James Carville, another Clinton advisor, and Bob Shrum, John Kerry’s 2004 campaign manager.
According to published reports, GCS received hundreds of thousands of dollars in political polling contracts in recent years from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Probably just a crazy coincidence. But you’ll never guess who was the chairman of that Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee dispensing those huge polling contracts to his kindly rent-free landlord.
– Andrew Malcolm
Hi Shoeless,
While I’m not sure what the BP oil spill has to do with the Ohio kick off event, I always appreciate your comments.
Rock the Vote has a close relationship with the sunlight foundation. Check them out, their mission is to show the link between money and politics. Sunlight pushes for a more transparent and open government. Check them out at http://www.sunlightfoundation.com