Boulder's Drinking Liberally chapter met again last night. In addition to some of our regulars, there were some new faces to meet. Thanks to johne (
Drinking Liberally-Denver) giving us an assist, among the new faces was Jim Derych, also known as
advisorjim and author of "Confessions of a Former Dittohead."
I had a busy night moving between DL's customary meeting spot, Playa Azul, the Boulder Bookstore (a stop on Jim's book tour) and back again. It was well worth the travel.
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johne let me know that Jim was interested in showing up to our little get together. I have wanted to read "Confessions" since I heard about it, so I figured what better opportunity to pick up the book and be able to meet the auther all at the same time. Joining the Boulder crew for a second time was
kath from Denver. She agreed to go to the bookstore with me, listen to Jim, pick up some copies of his book, and give him instructions to DL. We met at DL, talked with some folks for 15 minutes, then headed up to the bookstore.
We got upstairs just as Jim was being introduced by the staff. I'd say 25-30 people eventually showed up. Jim commented it was one of the better turnouts he has seen on his tour. Jim is witty, honest, and can hold an audience pretty darn well.
Jim gave us some history on how he became a dittohead and how he eventually got out of that world and transformed into a raging wild-eyed lefty. Okay, the wild-eyed part might be a little over the top. But just like every other liberal I meet, he's got realistic ideas about how our society should be run. And he, like us, realizes we've traveled too far from the path of opportunity and equity into a realm filled with secrecy, torture, and extremism. He cautioned us against getting angry when talking to conservatives. It feeds into their frame of the angry liberal and automatically prevents them from hearing what we have to say.
A lively question and answer section followed the new version of his book speech. He let the audience know Drinking Liberally was there and he was going to join us after the book signing. kath and I spoke with a number of folks about what DL is, when we meet, and where we meet. We also talked up SquareState as the Colorado blog to go to.
I got my second pleasant surprise of the night when em dash called me to make sure I was showing up. She was drinking with the folks who had stayed behind. Jim wasn't too far behing kath and I. Three other people from the bookstore also decided to show up and we certainly enjoyed the conversation that followed.
We talked about darn near everything. Local, national, international politics and policies. Ways of talking to dittoheads and undecideds. Books and websites. Strategies and tactics. It was very passionate and engaging.
I've read through the first Part of the book. The dittohead point of view is hard to get my head around. One thing that's clear: it's going to take considerable time and effort to break down the barriers between dittoheads and us. It certainly won't help when we have a tendency to raise our own barriers in response either. But, one small cut at a time and we'll get there.
Cross-posted at SquareState.