We’re breaking camp now, preparing for the long ride home to Illinois. We’ve been coming to D.C. every quarter since April of 2010 … but this trip I think we’ve well and truly arrived.
We. I mean all of us.
And here are a small collection of photos from our latest adventure ...
Now when we come we have the cutest little postage stamp of a city house to stay in, courtesy of a fellow Kossack. It’s a few blocks to the nearest Metro stop and then just a few minutes to Capitol Hill.
Another well heeled Kossack pays the $5,000 yearly fee for this place. We come so often the staff seat us before our lurker friend arrives and they know we need ‘our’ table, because we plug in netbooks and make stuff happen while we’re here. This is right next to the National Democratic Committee headquarters and just two blocks from the Capitol South stop.
We came to build a bridge between the netroots and Congress … and we got it done! Beth talked to a big group of staffers about how blogging is different than a traditional press release ...
And then we got to spend some time meeting with the early adopters from the Progressive Caucus. These are just the ones that I managed to photograph - I only attended about a quarter of the meetings Beth had because I had other things going myself.
Office of Congressman Grijalva @GrijalvaStaff
Leaving Congressman Ellison’s Office @keithellison
Office of Congressman Johnson @RepHankJohnson
Office of Congressman Hinchey
This isn’t about Beth or I achieving rock star status - we’ve long thought that the netroots needed to focus across the entire 76 member caucus and to a large portion of those who aren't members, rather than on just a few who figured out how to interact with the netroots.
And that job is too big for any single blogger, no matter how well connected they might be.
You can’t have a bridge without having two ends, and here are some of our fellow Progressive activists who haunt the D.C. area. We’ll play a game here - call out the ones you recognize in comments :-) And if you want to get involved in what's happening you can find @NealRauhauser or @Spedwybabs or @SandiBehrns or @caradox, and we'll fix you right up.
The NDC isn’t the only aspect of the halls of power that we’ve penetrated - we snuck into the National Press Club, too. Something is going to happen from the meeting here, something wonderful … and it can’t come quick enough.
I wrote earlier about the Massive Progressive Midterm Victory and I wasn’t kidding a bit. Our caucus is the only sizable, organized body on the Democratic side of the aisle in the House, and if we (that’s you and me) put our media reach behind this body of 76 Congressional offices we can make things happen, even if we’re stuck as the minority for the next two years.
This trip has filled me up ... with ...