Dear Dem Friends,
Wow — we got a really unpleasant surprise on election day! But guess what — we also have been given an opportunity. Let’s pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and move onward and upward. And here are some ideas of what I think we can and should do:
* respect the office of the President, if not the man. Demeaning Trump doesn’t do anything to move our country and our Party forward. Let’s take the high road.
* let’s grow our Party. I really disliked the headline in the Leelanau Enterprise “GOP County Strength Grows”. What????? This year we have over 400 paid members — let’s go for 500 in 2017. We had over 100 members at our Election Night Party — they could only muster 20 (oh, and they got thrown out of the Leland Lodge for being too disruptive!).
* get active. We have so many opportunities. How about we create more teams to: do opposition research and work with our Communications team to write letters holding the R’s accountable; form a team that will seriously work on reviewing the electoral college process; engage in our community to an even greater degree — adopt more highways and beaches? more food drives? mentoring programs? Let’s get out there and demonstrate in ways big and small that we have democratic values. And we vote.
* County Commission: show up! Let’s really watch our County Commission. Meetings are the 2nd Tuesday at 9 am and the 3rd. Tuesday at 7 pm. We need a committed team to do this.
* village and township. Show up! Attend meetings, give input, and think about running! Hats off to our Dems who ran for these local offices (Dennis Bushey, Amanda Elliott, Mary Foster, Susan Och, Jim Schwantes). Democracy begins here. Make a commitment and show up for meetings.
Whatever each of you can do, do it! Join and bring in more members to the LCDP; serve on a committee, come to our meetings, demonstrate that Leelanau Dems are far from out!!! And perhaps we need to find ways to reach out to those in our county who feel so disenfranchised that they voted for Trump. Ideas?
Can we do it? YES WE CAN!!!!!
Betsy Johnson
Chair
