Elana & Elena's Blog - Archived Entry

Huge shout out to Elena for helping to organize a very successful voter registration training along with Julie from Women for Kerry and Adam from Kerry Village. Three groups working to get Bush out of office and get John Kerry and John Edwards elected came together to teach others how they can work toward the same goal. The training consisted of a brief introduction by Adam about the groups, followed by a phenomenal lesson on how to talk to people about John Kerry. Julie suggested using the value-statement-to-policy-statement technique as a way to bring the discussion out of political jargon and into terms more people can identify with. An example of this would be to say something like,

“The premiums on health insurance are really a strain in my life. It is stressful to have to pay so much every month. Some of my friends even go without health insurance because it just costs too much.”

This could be followed by a policy statement about John Kerry like,

“John Kerry has a plan to cut premiums for Americans and decrease prescription drug costs.”

We could all use a little boost on talking about why we want John Kerry elected. I think we can also always revert to the fact that when John Kerry is president, less people will be dying for no reason. We’ve had a president whose lied to us, who has brought people into war for no reason, who has ruined the economy. Not only is John Kerry a bright light next Bush, he actually has some solid strategies.

The next part of the training was Elena and myself talking about Driving Votes and how all 60 of the people in the room could easily take a trip to a swing state and register voters. We did some role playing and a little acting. The participants asked some great questions. All in all, I think it went really well. (Elena, you should insert a quote from one of the evaluations).

We got a number of people excited about taking trips, doing phone banking, or just tabling in NYC. I think people walked out energized and excited about the fact that we do have real power in this upcoming election. Things can and will change in our favor as we keep working toward enfranchising and energizing more voters. Thanks Adam for preparing an incredibly informative Action Calendar of upcoming things to do in NY!

If you missed this training and are interested in another, never fear, there will be another one next week—Monday September 27, 2004, 7pm, location TBA.

-Elana