Monday, March 17, 2008

Take Back America Conference, Day 1

Things are moving fast around here at the Omni Hotel in Washington, D.C. The room where Bloggers Row is situated has a full media center with access to video editing, radio plug-ins and lots of brochure-wielding activists pushing for their various organizations and causes. My only gripe is the lack of power outlets for the bloggers. These three-prong cosas are not gonna cut it for the weekend. Seeing 'Man Eegee' printed on a huge placard was almost enough to incite some forgiveness :) :) :)

I attended a session earlier with AZ State Representative Kyrsten Sinema from LD15. She gave a fantastic presentation on the AZtogether.org campaign that has, so far, been the only successful defeat of a so-called marriage protection ballot initiative. It was launched in response to Prop 107 in 2006 and was done in a systematic way to be able to communicate clearly to voters the downside to repealing health care and other benefits for chunks of the populace. Her grasp of reframing and taking the time to see where voters are at in their heads as a tool to better crafting messages was very insightful and well-received by the audience.

Hopefully in the future we as AZ bloggers will be able to assist Rep. Sinema and other Democratic legislators as they keep the nativist-led GOP movement from totally perverting our state's legislative protections.

This evening I'm planning to attend a mixer that will put me in the room with many of the progressive leaders in the country. Look for more updates as the Take Back America conference continues through Wednesday.

Hasta tarde, Man Eegee

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