Written by Marcia Hamilton | 02 January 2011

Although the post-election national map has a definite "red" tinge (Isn't it amazing what 60 years will do to the nuance of a word?) our own Washington State stayed blue! And we, the volunteer callers/canvassers/organizers/GOTVers, led in our neck of the woods by Greg Case and Tim Gowa and Jeremy Walker (with, as Greg says, yours truly holding down the left flank) helped to do it. Indeed, the red tide did not stop (all by itself) at Washington State. We stopped it! And the GOTV folks, Wash Dems, Patty Murray campaign and OFA noticed! Actually our Mason County team is often used as an example of a model "OFA snowflake." In fact in our debriefing with JM, he said that "keeping going" after an election (as we did by creating NNN) is now part of the national model. NNN lives! With that said, (as JW says)....

Given that basic needs go unmet for too many people in our county (food, clothing, shelter) a lot of new and old community groups have galvanized to deal with the increased need brought on by the downturn in the already dire economic situation in our area. To that end, a new "mobile food bank" has been started in our county to fill the gap and provide food to the working poor and to those who cannot get to the food banks during their sometimes too short office hours. Teri Jelinek and Carol Armstrong are the forces behind this new mobile food bank. They came to the Mason County Dems Christmas party on December 8 to describe the new (what we call ) Food Brigade—its purpose, logistics, and plan—and to find out where the Mason County Dems might fit in. Indeed we can bring our party platform to life by actually doing community service projects—plank projects, if you will.

OFA is alive and well and organizing! Rebecca Westby and I went to an all-day NOI (The New Organizing Institute) training program in Federal Way to which many OFA organizers from around the state came to share best practices and hear about ours. I (with Becky's assistance) gave a very brief presentation on NNN and Jeremy gave an excellent session on one-on-one exchanges in recruiting volunteers.

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