As some of you may know, I did youth outreach for Philly Against Santorum in the last election, much of which was done at the concerts of Philly's premiere all-ages concert promoter: Sean Agnew's R5 Productions. Sean could not have been more supportive of the work that we did, and he not only let us in to shows to talk with kids and persuade them to vote, and vote liberal/progressive/Democratic, but he actively helped push kids our, and the polls, way by sending out e-mails on our behalf and by lending us a bit of his amazingly large cachet of cultural credibility.

And now, Sean and R5 need our help. Tomorrow is R5's HUGE annual Punk Rock Flea Market, where you can buy all sorts of goodies for the young, and young at heart, on your Christmas list. Don't let the name fool you, it's not all punk rock merch being sold- I bought my wife an amazing (and unbelievably cheap) handmade necklace and earring set, and there are items for people of every age and interest. Please consider coming out tomorrow to help R5 continue to throw amazing shows and enable groups like PAS to reach out to youth from all around Eastern PA!  Details are below the fold:

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Crossposted at Future Majority& Young Philly Politics

Once I knew that I would be doing outreach at concerts and on campus i started to pull together the materials that I would use to help with outreach and persuasion. When I first talked to Ray and Jen I had an idea of what types of materials would work in the environments that I'd find myself and towards the youth demographic that I was targeting. The main thing that I wanted was to make a series of youth oriented issue cards, similar to Music for America's issue cards (see below for some examples). These cards would have been co-branded between Philadelphians Against Santorum (PAS) and a few of organizations that we were either partnering with or that we felt exemplified the Left's stance on one or another issue. The idea would have been to have a series of cards that provided talking points for our volunteers, educated the people who read them, and gave a sense of the broad coalition that makes up the Left.

But once I got the job (in mid-September) and started to take a cold hard look at the calender, I realized that there was simply no time to create a series of my own materials, that I would have had to come up with the text and, given PAS' limited budget, either design them myself or find a designer that would do the work both quickly and cheaply/for free. And so, with only a month left to register people in PA, I decided to improvise, and I began to scrounge together whatever materials that I could from friends and allies around the state and nation to supplement the field materials that PAS had developed.  This post is a look at the materials that I ended up using at Concerts and on Campus during the 2006 Senate Race in PA.

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As I noted in my first post-mortem piece, my plan for getting "the kids" to the polls centered around work at concerts and on campus. In my second in a series of post-mortem pieces I'll look specifically at the concerts we worked, including an introduction to Sean Agnew and R5 Productions, who made this work possible, and helped ensure it was a success.

Sean Agnew & R5 Productions

As you know by now, much of my outreach centered around working at concerts thrown by Philly's #1 independent promotions company- Sean Agnew's R5 Productions. Now, for those who don't know, or at least know of, Sean, he is, to use the scientific term, "The Man".  Sean has single-handedly kept the Philadelphia independent music scene fresh and available to kids of all ages, while going up against the two horrendous monopolies that dominate American concerts and events: Clear Channel (whose concert division has recently been "spun off" into Live Nation) & Ticketmaster. If you want an idea about what Sean does, and who he has to go up against, check out this Harper's Magazine cover story that looks at Sean and his much larger competitors, or just head to the First Unitarian Church (22nd and Chestnut), the Starlight Ballroom (9th & Spring Garden), or Johnny Brenda's (Girard & Fairmount) and check out one of the extremely well attended and almost always entertaining shows that R5 throws! He also recently had a stalker blog dedicated to spotting him, which I'm just assuming means that he is hot shit, and he shares Ed Rendell's love for politics and the Eagles (though I don't think he share's Ed's love affair with fast/junk food or yelling at little league umpires- which is my earliest memory of the Gov). And while Sean is definitely not the type of guy who most people would think of as political, and definitely not someone who politicians might look to for help and or advice, he is very passionate about politics and is exactly the type of cultural community leader whom democrats should be looking to work with. Here's Sean's current myspace picture:

Sean & Ed Agree! The Eagles should be 8-1!!!

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A couple of months back I mentioned that I had proposed and accepted a job doing political outreach and organizing with Philly Against Santorum (PAS). Since then I have been completely overwhelmed with the work at hand and a big move back to Philly (I lived in Brooklyn for the past 8 years with my wife), so I wasn't able to write as much as I would have liked to (and lord knows I love to self-promote!). But now that things have come to an end (and what a sweet, sweet ending it was!) I wanted to tell you a bit about the program I ran through PAS, and give you some of my thoughts and experiences from this election cycle. Since I am still working to get my life back to a sense of normality, I still don't have a ton of time, so I am going to keep this post short, and expand on it over the next few days.

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I know that there is a lot of confidence about our chances in the PA Senate race around these parts, but I don't give a crap what the polls say, this is going to be one hell of a fight and we may not win. If you're in Philly, please get your ass in gear and help us pull off this victory.
Crossposted at Young Philly Politics

Join Philly Against Santorum for a Bar Crawl for Casey in Fairmount this Friday!

Who said that giving Rick the Kick had to be boring, or that you had to be sober while you help make our nation better? Each week the PAS crew is heading to bars to drink to Rick's demise and make sure that all of our neighbors come out on November 7th.

This week we'll be hitting bars in Fairmount, starting at the Bishop's Collar at 7pm and ending sometime around 9:15 at McCrossen's.

Here's our schedule:

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