Democracy for Virginia

News-Press Describes Progressive Determination in Falls Church

The Falls Church News-Press was on hand to witness the remarkable display of determination of Virginia progressives during the campaign leadership training weekend in Falls Church on July 9-10 offered by Democracy for America and co-hosted by DFV.  An article in yesterday's edition describes the scene:

There aren’t many things that could convince somebody to give up a sunny summer day to spend hours in a high school classroom. Just the idea of leaving the beach blanket to sit in an uncomfortable desk under fluorescent lighting is tantamount to punishment.

Yet earlier this month, as the hours ticked away on a glorious July weekend, over 100 people, from teenagers fresh out of high school to senior citizens now earning Social Security checks, showed up at George C. Marshall High School at 8 a.m. and staying all day for two days, sacrificing their free time in exchange for an education in grass roots politics.

During the day before the training, I was on the phone with a candidate for the House of Delegates, talking about the candidate forum planned for the next day.  He said to me, "You're telling me you're expecting more than a hundred people in July to give up two whole weekend days for training on campaign leadership?  Did you bribe them or something?  That's unheard of."

Nope, we didn't bribe them (although we did feed them).  In fact, most participants contributed to cover the cost of the training and to sponsor scholarships for other participants!

Many Democrats and others who fought to defeat Bush are taking this year "off" - regaining their hope, replenishing their bank accounts, re-connecting with parts of their lives that were neglected while volunteering on campaigns.  But here in Virginia, we've had to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get immediately back to work for our 2005 elections.  Seeing so many people gathered together to learn to be more effective volunteers and campaign leaders was a real inspiration.

In addition to the FCNP article, blogger Teddy Goodson (an inspirational and feisty ex-Republican) over at Raising Kaine has been describing her experiences at the training in a series of detailed posts.  Her first three installments are here, here, and here, with more to come.  And lovely Luna over at Liberal Rage has a great writeup, too.

Yep, someone really does read them

If you write letters to your elected representatives often, it's easy to forget that real people actually read them and sometimes even act on what we write.

It's nice to be reminded. 

Hat tip to the friendliest, smartest Watchdog ever.

Supreme Court Grants Stay of Execution in Lovitt Case

From the AP:

The U.S. Supreme Court granted a last-minute stay of execution Monday for a man convicted of fatally stabbing the manager of a pool hall with a pair of scissors.

Robin Lovitt, 41, had been scheduled for execution at 9 p.m. Monday.

The stay will remain in place until the court returns in October from a three-month break. Justices will announce then whether they will hear Lovitt's appeal or allow Virginia to execute him.

Is Virginia About to Execute an Innocent Man?

The following guest post was written by Albert Monroe, Convenor of the Northern Virginia chapter of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (VADP). 

This Monday, July 11^th, at 9 PM, the Commonwealth of Virginia is scheduled to execute Robin Lovitt.  We think that Robin Lovitt is innocent, but we will never know because the evidence from his trial has been destroyed, in violation of Virginia law.  Please help save Robin Lovitt’s life!

Robin Lovitt was convicted based on DNA evidence that has now been destroyed.  The only witness to clearly identify Lovitt as the attacker was a jailhouse snitch.  At his trial, prosecutors claimed that DNA test results showed that the victim’s blood was on the murder weapon and that Robin Lovitt’s sweat was left on the murder weapon.  In fact, the only identifying allele was one that is common to 35% of the male African-American population, including Robin Lovitt.  None of the blood found on Robin Lovitt’s jacket matched the victim, which would be expected if he were the actual murderer.

The use of current DNA techniques would likely exonerate Robin Lovitt, as in the case of Earl Washington, the only exoneree from Virginia’s death row.  But we’ll never know because the evidence has been destroyed.  The only person that can stop the execution of Robin is the Governor.  The Governor’s intervention would save an innocent man and maintain confidence that no innocent person is ever put to death in the Commonwealth.

We can stop the execution of Robin Lovitt, but we must pressure the Governor to do the right thing and commute his death sentence.  Contact Governor Warner to ask him for a commutation of Robin Lovitt’s death sentence.  His contact information is:

Gov. Mark R. Warner   
State Capitol, 3rd Floor   
Richmond, Virginia 23219   
Phone: (804) 786-2211  Fax: (804) 371-6351   
TTY/TDD (For the Hearing Impaired): (804) 371-8015
To send an electronic email  message to the governor click below:

http://www.governor.virginia.gov/Contact/email_form.html 

Also, if you want to write a letter to the editor to the Washington Post, you can write them at letters@washpost.com<. If you wish to contact the Metro editor, Bob Barnes, write him at barnesbob@washpost.com.  Don't send an attachment, but instead write a heartfelt letter and include info about the case at the bottom of the letter.  You can also contact Michael Shearof the Washington Post's Richmond Bureau (shearm@washpost.com<); he's covered death penalty issues in the past.  Also, contact other daily papers around the state. The entire Commonwealth of Virginia needs to know that the Commonwealth is about to execute an innocent man.  More information about the case can be found at http://www.vadp.org/action.htm. To join our e-mail list and get more information about how to fight this and future executions, write the group at VADP-NOVA@yahoogroups.com or me personally at albertmonroe75@yahoo.com.

The Northern Virginia chapter of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (VADP-NOVA) will hold an execution vigil for Robin Lovitt at 8:30 PM at Courthouse Metro station in Arlington.  If by some chance Robin Lovitt is not executed, we will still meet at the Metro stop and go somewhere to meet and celebrate the commutation.

If you are outside of Northern Virginia, there will be an execution vigil at the same time (8:30 PM, Monday July 11^th) at the execution site at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, VA. 

Please help.

Verified Voting Hearings in Richmond

Virginia Verified Voting has sent out an alert about an upcoming meeting of the "Joint Subcommittee Studying the Voting Equipment Certification Process" on Tuesday, July 19.  VaVV lists the subcommittee members here.  Their alert reads:

Virginia is holding hearings to consider requiring voter-verified paper audit trails for voting equipment. Many Virginia jurisdictions have purchased paperless electronic voting machines, and others are considering doing so.

Digital voting machines that lack a voter-verified paper trail are subject to programming errors and possible fraud, with no ability for meaningful audits or recounts.

Attend the hearings and show support for voter-verified audit trails by wearing orange shirts or ribbons.  A large audience will show that Virginians care about the ntegrity of our elections, and that we demand transparent and reliable elections.

Joint Subcommittee Studying Voting Equipment, General Assembly Building, Richmond

• Tuesday, July 19, 2005, at 12:30 p.m. in Senate Room B
• Monday, August 22, 2005, at 12:30 p.m. in House Room C
• Monday, November 21, 2005, at 1:00 p.m. in House Room C

More information can be found at http://www.vavv.org and http://www.verifiedvoting.org.

Hat tip to Alice from GOTV.

DNC Chairman...and this weekend's training

The cover story of this weekend's Washington Post Magazine was a profile of DNC Chairman Howard Dean.  It's a fascinating piece, and the latter section contains great personal details about Dean that most media profiles have completely ignored.

I think this exchange, which occurred with a group of students at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, is most emblematic of what Dean hopes to achieve as DNC chair as well as what inspires many of us working with Democracy for Virginia:

Also, Democrats must contest races in all states, at all levels, in all years, not just presidential ones. "It is disrespectful not to come to Tennessee and Mississippi and Alabama as well as California and Michigan and Ohio . . . We need to come to Tennessee because what you could think of Democrats by watching [Republican] ads is all you're going to think of us unless we show up and make our case in person."

A young man stood up and asked what he could do to help the party, other than give money, which he didn't have. Dean bobbed on his feet, delighted with the question, because it allowed him to show off his best side -- the side that grew a presidential candidacy from a small Vermont operation with seven employees into a national campaign with 600,000 supporters.

"The number one thing you can do is run for office."

[Class giggles]

"I'm absolutely serious. I am not kidding."

The class grew quiet. Here was Dean as a Johnny Appleseed, sowing civics in the young. While Democrats have conceded parts of the country considered hostile, Republicans have left no office untested, he pointed out. The result is that Dems have no farm system, no ability to find young political talent in red states and groom it.

Run, he urged the students. Run for county road commissioner. Run for city council. "If you don't have people running for offices like county commissioner, who do you think is going to run for Congress a generation from now?

Dean has said that if you can't run for office yourself, the next best thing is to be a leader on someone else's campaign.  Or be an occasional volunteer.  Or give money.  But just voting is the bare minimum of what is required in a democracy.

Democracy for Virginia is working to help train and support a new "farm team" of candidates and campaign leaders in Virginia.  Over 100 grassroots activists were trained in May in Charlottesville.  We've teamed up with Latinos for America, DC for Democracy, and Democracy for America to host another DFA Campaign Training, this time in Falls Church.  Over 150 people have already signed up for this weekend's training.  We hope you'll join us!

Washington Post story on Virginia political blogging

The Washington Post today ran a story on political blogging in Virginia subtitled "Va. Candidates Find Help, Lies on Web" on the front page of the Metro section.

Unfortunately, the story focuses mainly on the example of Not Larry Sabato's blog running a rumor that Shayna Englin was planning to run for Congress.  Of course, this example highlights the more negative aspects of some types of political blogging -- unconfirmed rumors, anonymous sources, anonymous bloggers, anonymous commenters, innocent subjects.  I consider it a major low point for NLS's blog, which otherwise provided very interesting coverage of House races and has succeeded in attracting and maintaining a bipartisan audience - something that I don't think is true for any other Virginia political blog. 

By focusing on the worst post of this one blog, the WaPo article misses the bigger story on Virginia political blogging.  The opening paragraph mentions it:

David and Shayna Englin are all too familiar with the power of bloggers. Courting these off-the-cuff Internet columnists helped David Englin, a relative unknown, win a Democratic primary for a Northern Virginia House seat last month.

But then the rest of the story ignores this positive aspect of blogging and focuses on ethical concerns about the anonymous NLS blog, which is an outlier in the Virginia political blogosphere in that it is completely anonymous and runs anonymous rumors without confirmation.  (Not to bash NLS's blog - it still has more coverage of Virginia House races than any other source, blog or otherwise.)

What would have been far more instructive and unique would have been to ask the Englins how blogging - their own, and that of prominent political bloggers they befriended - impacted their race.

Was it through giving them buzz they wouldn't otherwise have had?  Did bloggers help attract volunteers to the race?  Did blogging help to feed stories to the mainstream media about their campaign?  Did blog-based coverage of their race inspire donors and supporters?  What are the constructive and useful aspects of blogging?

DFV was mentioned in the "Blog Spots" list which accompanied the article, along with two of my favorite Virginia political blogs, Commonwealth Commonsense and 750 Volts.  Two right-wing blogs, Bacon's Rebellion and Sic Semper Tyrannis were also mentioned.  Welcome to Washington Post readers who've found us today!

Nader's Virginia chief sentenced to 30 days for VA election fraud

Remember all the controversy about Nader's efforts to get on the ballot in Virginia last year?  Nader's petitions were originally disqualified because they did not follow the Virginia Board of Elections requirements for submission (specifically, they weren't sorted by Congressional District).

Then Attorney General Jerry Kilgore stepped in to help the Bush/Cheney campaign (for which he just happened to serve as state chairman) and declared those Virginia Board of Elections rules, which had been in place since 1999 and which every other candidate had followed assiduously, invalid. 

In the end, only about half of Nader's submitted 14,000 petitions were certified, well short of the 10,000 signatures needed.

It's not easy to collect valid signatures in Virginia given the rules.  Separate petitions must be kept for all congressional districts and all municipalities within a congressional district.  I remember trying to collect signatures in NoVA in 2003 to get Dean on the ballot, and finding that only about 1 in 3 people knew what congressional district they were in (or who was their member of Congress).  Others couldn't even say definitively whether they lived in Falls Church City or the Falls Church part of Fairfax County, or Alexandria City or the Alexandria part of Fairfax County.  If they sign the wrong petition, their signature is invalid even if they may be a valid registered voter.

For the grassroots Dean campaign in Virginia, our volunteer statewide petition coordinator, Sherry Stanley of Staunton, put in hundreds of hours of work to make sure we followed VBE rules to the letter.  Hundreds of volunteers around the state worked on this effort.  We followed all of the rules and submitted nearly twice the 10,000 required signatures to get on the ballot.

When we found out that Jerry Kilgore was intervening on behalf of the Nader campaign to throw out the rules that the Nader campaign didn't follow, many of our dedicated volunteers were furious at what appeared to be a blatant abuse of power to assist the Bush/Cheney efforts.  The Nader campaign sent out a press release saying the following about the Democratic party, which simply felt that the Nader campaign should have to follow the same rules as everyone else:

The Nader team in Virginia has done nothing wrong and we are getting tired of the Democrats trying to spin the truth and make us look as if we are, in any way, at fault for their disgraceful attempt to subvert democracy.

In that context, I can't help but feel somewhat vindicated at the news that Nader's Virginia Campaign Director has pleaded guilty to election fraud based on illegally certifying Nader's petitions in Virginia:

James P. Polk, 47, was sentenced to 30 days in jail, which he will serve under house detention, and fined $2,500.

Polk was indicted on 10 counts of election fraud in October, but prosecutors withdrew nine of those counts.

Polk was accused of illegally certifying petitions to get Nader, an independent candidate, on the ballot. Nader's name was not placed on the ballot in Virginia.

The original story on Polk's indictment on 10 counts, from last October, is here.

Fake It 'Till Ya Make It: Photo from VA Dean Rally Used by NJ Republican

When Howard Dean kicked off his famous Sleepless Summer Tour in summer of 2003, he chose to start in Virginia, a state many national Democrats had written off, at a time when most people weren't paying any attention to the Presidential race.  Around 4500 enthusiastic people attended this amazing event, a testament to the enthusiasm of Virginia Democrats and the popularity of Howard Dean.  For many of us, it was (and still is) the most inspiring political event we'd ever seen.

One particular photo from the event, taken by the campaign's official photographer, was incredibly popular in the blogosphere and was used widely, as it beautifully captured the joy and enthusiasm of attendees - a number of whom in the picture later became regular volunteers at our Virginia campaign headquaters:

[Original photo credit John Pettit/Cloudview.com]

Enthusiasm like that can't be bought.  But, hey, if you're a conservative GOP candidate for Governor from New Jersey, you can always Photoshop it:

And while Dean said, "You have the power!", Bret Schundler is saying, "You have the power to purchase campaign t-shirts!"

(Hat tip to Vic at CforD. Full story at NorthJersey.com, and Dave Weigel started a related discussion at DailyKos.  Since the story has broken, Bret Shundler has pulled the image from his site.)

DFV Leader Publishes Op Ed in Roanoke Times

Kathy Welch, a Democracy for Virginia leader from Blacksburg (and host of the Blacksburg DFA Meetup) published a great op ed piece in today's Roanoke Times on the "so-called liberal media", here in Virginia and nationally.  An excerpt:

Until May 13, the news pages of The Roanoke Times failed to report what's circulated the globe for weeks: notes from a July 2002 meeting among high-ranking British officials, revealing that the Bush administration knowingly cooked the intelligence on WMDs and more.

But lying about sex, now that's worth front-page coverage, years of media time and more than $50 million.

Even conservative William Kristol has admitted there's no such thing as a "liberal media" (according to Joe Conason in his book, "Big Lies").

But bullies shout that well-worn myth to manipulate, stifle and discount balanced reporting. They try to silence Tommy Denton and staff, whose op-ed section is the only place in The Times where moderate and progressive views appear. These same bullies also try to intimidate letter writers.

So, you've got to hand it to Denton and staff, small-town heroes, trying to create some degree of balance and open discussion in a hostile environment.

Some question whether those of us who care about media issues are wasting our time. What choice do we have? It's our duty to care what happens to our country and our communities. And an honest, open and reflective press is everyone's concern.

Kathy has been leading grassroots "rapid response" efforts for Democrats in Montgomery County and beyond, encouraging more ordinary Virginians to become active questioners and responders to media reporting, not just passive consumers.  Kudos to Kathy for getting published today!

And on a side note, my good friend Teri Mills, a leader with Democracy for Oregon, yesterday captured the "holy grail" for op ed writers - a spot on the New York Times Op Ed page - with a great piece proposing her idea for a National Nurse.  I fondly remember reading Teri's thoughts on the National Nurse idea in the comments section of Blog for America during the early, heady days of the Dean campaign in 2003.  With other BFA regulars, I vicariously shared in her delight when she first got very positive feedback from Gov. Dean about the concept.  Since then, she's branched out from her career as a nurse educator to become a weekly contributor to BFA on health care policy.  It's amazing to see her graduate to the "big time" at the NYT!

Kathy and Teri remind us all that we don't have to be entirely passive consumers of the news and that ordinary citizens can make an impact.  Thanks for the inspiration!