Concord and Liberty

I went to the Carson City (Nevada) Democratic Party convention today, signed up as an alternate to the State Convention in Las Vegas next month, and signed up as a member of the Carson City Democratic Central Committee.

I've been voting since 1968. The only other time I did anything beyond voting was in 1992, when I read about a "Democratic Work Night" in the local paper. I attended, and stuffed packets, but chickened out when they asked for volunteers to hand out the packets door-to-door the following weekend.

Halfway through today's proceedings I got to thinking, "Why didn't you ever do this before? Why did you assume somebody else was doing everything that needed to be done?" It's true that I was energized by Howard Dean's campaign. But why was I so passive before? I'll be thinking about this question in the coming months.

I'm even prepared for the thought of knocking on doors. Here's a quote on that subject from Dean's book, Winning Back America, from the section about his first campaign, for the Vermont house (page 44):

I was living in a little apartment in the North End of town. Every day I'd leave work and drive directly to the ward to knock on doors. I knew if I went home first I'd find all sorts of reasons not to go back and pound the pavement. You've got to screw up your courage to go and knock on strangers' doors. Every day I'd bang on a hundred doors. I knocked on every door in the ward twice over the summer and fall. One woman answered the door and said, "You must really want this." "Yes, I do," I replied.

This passage is inspiring because it shows that political ability is something you can learn. I hope I can learn a little, anyway.