Milwaukee's Marvelous March Meetup

A small group of us--well, about a dozen--met in my and my wife's living room the Sunday after Howard Dean officially ended his run for the presidency. We spent some time lamenting, but mostly we were focused on what we knew we had to do: Rather than take our country back (note: that's still on the agenda, just for a little later), we're taking our city back. we're taking our school board back. We're taking our neighborhood back. We are, in other words, going local.

So we planned the March Meetup around that. Partly, we knew it would be a test; we had now idea how many of us still felt the need to Meetup. We approached the local independent weekly, the Shepherd Express, and were able to get a few column inches the week before the Meetup. We called--and were called by!--local politicians interested in earning our support. We made sure everyone on our Yahoo! mailing list knew about the Meetup. And then we held our breaths.

We were Meetupping at the Bean Head Cafe, a locally owned coffeeshop started by some educators with a real desire to help bring life back into their central-city neighborhood, and which has been very good to us for the last year. In fact, when Dean was in Milwaukee a few weeks back, he packed the place for a rally (150 people on three hours' notice) and himself contributed the Bean Head's "Buy the Building" fund.

My wife and co-host, Sarah, worked the sign-in; I worked the crowd. By 6:55, we had a good twenty people in the room, which was about what I was expecting. One member of the press was there (columnist Mike Moore of the Racine Journal-Times--his column ran today), as were people from former US Rep. Tom Barrett's mayoral campaign, and Wisconsin state senator (and Dean supporter) Tim Carpenter. But, by seven, people were still filing in. I started the festivities at ten after, and there were more than thirty people in the room.

I did a quick run-down of the agenda, and then started the "testimony" part of the Meetup. I talked about the past year--March 2003 was my frist Meetup--as well as a little bit about why I was there, and handed it off to some others--veterans and newbies alike. I counted no fewer than eight people at a Meetup for the first time--an amazing number for this particular situation, I thought. The reasons people came to the Meetup were as varied as the crowd itself: Mike wanted to be sure we elected Dean delegates to Boston; Vic and Bridget were all about making sure we were involved with the Democratic Party. Joe and John were both at their first Meetups, but were long-time Dean supporters who felt they needed to come tonight to be a part of The Next Step. Sen. Carpenter finished, with an admonition to continue despite heartbreak, and not to surrender the grassroots that we were growing.

That provided a perfect segue into some presentations by the candidates and their surrogates who were there. Barrett had just arrived (perfect timing!), and when he walked into the room to see three-dozen people, his eyes just about fell out of his head--he was clearly as surprised as I was to see so many. (In fairness, we were also expecting Barrett's opponent, Mayor Marvin Pratt.) After Barrett's appeal, Fred Kessler spoke about his wife Joan's race for court of appeals. We ended this portion of the program with Jodi Goldberg, manager of David Riemer's county executive campaign to unseat Republican evil-doer executive Scott Walker. Jodi gave us the best line of the night: "There's a big W to get rid of--and there's a little w to get rid of!" All three echoed the same themes: Howard Dean's commitment to health care, civil rights, and standing up for what is right, not to mention us--the grassroots supporters he inspired.

We took a break to patronize the establishment and Meetup with the campaigns. The rest of the night was spent in informal conversation about The Next Step. I think we all agreed that acting locally was key. We also felt that working to increase our numbers is a key, as well as helping progressives (and Howard Dean, we hope) form an alternative to the Democratic Leadership Council.

I'll let Mike Moore's description (from the column linked above) sum up what we were feeling:

[F]or a wake, this gathering seemed pretty dang chipper. The noises emanating from the cafe's back room were whistles and cheers, not uncontrolled sobs.

All right, so maybe you've got some good memories. A few people spoke up and expressed their disappointment that the campaign fell short. They got a little dark humor out of the fact Dean won his only state, his home state of Vermont, after he'd dropped out. Still, this didn't have the feel of a wrapup event, especially since some came for the first time.

Everybody wanted to fight on, either through local elections or by continuing to push their guy's positions. The real answer, then, is you take away the candidate and you've still got a boatload of motivated people.

Once again, we closed the place. Once again, we left with a feeling of hope. And, dare I say it, once again we felt like, yes, we had the power. And we will be using it, my friends.