Texas Strong: Volunteers Plan at Battleground Texas Summit
What do we do after a tough election? Keep going. That was the resolve that drove nearly 200 volunteer leaders to Austin on February 21-22 for the second annual Battleground Texas Neighborhood Team Summit. Texas Democrats came from as far away as El Paso, Lubbock, and Laredo to debrief from 2014, get some serious skills training, and make plans for 2015. And, of course, to get inspired by Battleground Texas Jenn Brown and Jeremy Bird, and Congressman Joaquin Castro (TX-20).
That would have been an impressive crowd if we were in the middle of a heated election. But on a cold February weekend of an off-election year? Thats a lot of people determined to make a difference in Texans lives. Congressman Castros remarks captured why so many of us were there, ready to double down and try harder:
We can have a Texas that supports public education, that doesnt cut education by billions of dollars. We can have a governor who expands Medicaid, and doesnt insist on making millions of Texans suffer because of ideology and partisanship. We can have a Texas that respects womens rights to make their own decisions about their own lives.
When I got involved with Battleground Texas as a Summer Fellow in 2013, I was fed up with Republicans repeated votes to repeal Obamacare. I just thought, Thats your goal in life? To take affordable health care away from millions of people? I wanted to do something to help elect Democrats, but even though I was a precinct chair, I didnt know enough to be effective.
Our Battleground Texas field organizer in Houston, Adrienne Bell, jumped in and trained us fellows from the ground up. She taught us the basics how to organize an event, register voters, and talk to our neighbors about why voting matters. And then she went over the basics again, and again, and again as often as we needed until we finally felt confident enough to go out and do it on our own.
Read more:
http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/29792/texas-strong-volunteers-plan-battleground-texas-summit