Posts Tagged
‘Gay Pride’

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.

•