Since the middle of June, I/we have been working hard on behalf of the Robertson County Democratic Party which has grown pretty inactive over the past 2 decades. Everyone has said that the Springfield (county seat) First Friday event is the most important event to be at. Tonight is our first, First Friday. We had a dry run of table/booth events on July 3. Both events went well and I saw how things worked (or didn’t) and we have devised ways to make things better.
Instead of plastic cups with duct tape label for our “bean” survey of important issues (which took up way too much table space), we now have tiered mason jars with easier to read labels. We ask people to put a bean in the jar of their top 5 issues. Previously we tried top 2 or 3 but it takes people too much time to prioritize so tonight we are trying top 5. Hopefully more people can get engaged. The supplies are all nicely organized in containers -one for the tent and one for the table so when it is time to tear down the booth, everything can go back into the correct containers for next time.
We have a Special Election for Mark Green’s vacated US House seat that will become the focus of our efforts until the General Election on Dec. 2nd. Tonight we are going to be collecting questions from the community about what questions they would like the candidates to answer and have a survey to collect what people’s top issues are. These would not be considered scientific in any way but it will be interesting to see what we learn.
It took me forever this week to create a flyer that we can hand out tonight. My skills are rusty and there is much I don’t know. I eventually got something Craig found acceptable. I couldn’t figure out how to include our RCDP logos for reasons that escape me. It communicates what we need it to communicate and sadly, most will likely end up thrown away anyway.
Through my efforts to learn how to build Community Engagement for the party in this community, I have had many 1/1 meetings with people who have been involved with RCDP much longer than I have. I am meeting wonderful people and have some budding friendships. This is one of the most rural counties in the state of TN with tobacco being its most important crop. While it pains me to say this, they grow some good looking corn here as well.
So today at 2 PM, I found that I was all done with my preparation and had time to reflect and blog. As I have never been involved in local politics, I look forward to the next several months -going through an expedited election cycle for the Special Election.
Stay tuned!!
Tamara Unleashed 