Netroots Nation Party

Tonight I attended the Netroots Nation Party, which is a gathering of progressive blogs. I didn't know what to expect. When planning my trip I wanted to make sure I booked a few events just to avoid being here and not having anything to do. In retrospect I don't know how that would have been possible since there seems to be no shortage of events (sadly I did miss my day of service to nurse a hangover today). I'm not well connected enough to get into any of the official balls or parties, so I instead searched through the dizzying number of other events being thrown by outside organizations. Out of all of them, this one looked the best. I owe a big thanks to Kevin who reads these blogs much more than I do, and who is the one who told me about it. My biggest fear was that it would be a bunch of nerdy, unsociable web geeks. This was not to be the case. The party turned out to be such an eclectic mix of people. The only common factor was everyone loved politics and had read or wrote a blog at some point. I spoke to a couple of different people there who told me that out of all the other parties they'd been to, this one had the best food and best music.

But what made this party really fun was that fact that most people came because, A: we could get in and B: they loved politics. I actually didn't meet one blogger. They were all fans of the blogs. I met an engineer, a PBS writer, an ethics teacher turned soon to be Illinois politician, someone who worked in government intelligence (she couldn’t tell me which department), a teacher, and the list goes on. Everyone was just there to celebrate with like minded people. One of the highlights of the evening was an appearance by Governor Dean. He was there of course to support his online organization Democracy for America, which is what his campaign(one of the first to truly use the internet) morphed into after his presidential bid. He gave a great speech, most of which I recorded and have posted below. Sorry I missed the first few minutes which started with him yelling out states names and screaming(I assume this has become his opening line for most speaking engagements). It was so great to hear him speak. I can’t thank him enough for leading the DNC back out of the wilderness.

At one point I found myself in a conversation with an 18 year old and her 54 year old mom who had drove all the way from Illinois, a 26 year old from Virginia, a 50 year old from South Carolina and me a 29 year old from LA. We were deep into a political conversation and it was great to have so many different people from so many places. I also spent the end of the night with a table full of people who all worked for the Carter Center in Atlanta. They were amazing to talk to. Such smart people doing such good work. They had all just come back from Ghana. One of the women who was only 23 helped craft agenda's for Carter's meetings with foreign leaders along with preparing other official documents. How cool is that! I also asked all of them what they thought of Carter as a person. Each one said separately that they had met him many times and they couldn’t rave enough about how caring, intelligent and down to business he was. I have to admit, I’m sold. He has my vote in 2016! All-in-all, the conversations were great and I left with a renewed sense of hope for America that really extends far beyond Obama.