Last Saturday was one of the most remarkable days of my life.  I helped to organize a Vote for Changevoter registration drive in Peekskill, NY, which is about 50 miles north of NYC.  We registered an estimated 215 voters in one afternoon.  Among those who participated in the drive was Congressman John Hall's campaign.

Now, when I say that Congressman Hall's campaign participated in the drive, I do not mean that a few staffers who happened to work on on the campaign signed up to volunteer and registered a few voters on the day of the drive.  No, I mean that Congressman Hall's campaign actively participated in every facet of this grassroots volunteer voter registration effort.

More Congressional-Grassroots collaboration below the fold

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For those of you who are interested in learning more and better ways to use technology to support your activism, there is an excellent conference taking place in Lowell, Massachusetts next weekend:

Grassroots Use of Technology

It is the 9th annual event sponsored by the Organizer's Collaborative.

The agenda has something for everybody, from geek to guru to the technologically challenged:

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My first MyDD diary yesterday (Why Moderates Resent Progressives, which I'm stunned to find atop the Most Recommend list tonight) sparked some inquiries about how ordinary citizens made real, progressive change in the small city and rural county where I live.

The following is in response to several readers' requests for more details of how we prevailed, and specifically to a very thought-provoking post at janinsanfran's blog which she linked to in the comments.

In fact, this new diary is actually the text of a very long email I sent to Jan this afternoon. While lengthy, it is just the tip of the iceberg of what we learned -- the hard way -- about winning at the grassroots level.

Jan found a terrific piece by early Apple Computer booster Guy Kawasaki in which he gives pithy advice to startup businesses -- which Jan then applied to her own work advising citizens on how to "Win from the Outside." The full text of the message to Jan follows after the jump. Kawasaki's original suggestions are in plain text, Jan's comments are in italics, and my responses are in bold.

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[NOTE: This diary was expanded and adapted from one I also posted on Daily Kos. I hope that's kosher. Also, I had some trouble with posting this initially; it should read cleanly now.]

For some time now, and recently in a number of posts and diaries at places like Kos, we have been treated to lectures from self-described centrists and moderates about how "you people" don't understand politics.

"You people" in this context are all us loony leftists and crackpot progressives who just don't understand elections or how the world works. We just don't know when to "keep our powder dry," you see.

News flash: Many of us liberals and progressives actually go out and make real change on a human scale, in our own communities. And we usually do it over the hand-wringing and timorous warnings of moderates and centrists (so afraid of making waves that they sit on their hands while others do the heavy lifting), who are certain we are going to embarrass the Party.

And when we win, our way, the moderates resent it -- because it makes them look bad for having sat fearfully on the sidelines...

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