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Cast Away

by Open-Publishing - Friday 12 November 2004

Elections-Elected USA

by Anya Kamenetz
On the Move
Young progressives are dusting themselves off. Anyone for Congress in 2006?
November 9th, 2004 12:25 PM

Jason Rosenbury heard the news of Kerry’s concession on the radio, on his first day back at work after a long weekend of canvassing for America Coming Together in Cleveland. "I just started crying and I’ve never cried like that in my life," he says. "I cried for half an hour straight. I was at my office with the door closed, slamming my hand into the table and swearing and crying. My eyes burned that day and they were sore for two or three days. My nose was chapped. I thought about things I could do that night to forget about what had happened, but there was no escape."

Like millions of other young people across the country, Rosenbury, a 33-year-old New Yorker, took on the effort to beat George Bush as the political fight of his life. He contributed almost $2,000 to the Democrats from his meager salary as a social worker. He called, wrote letters, and volunteered. And it all came to naught. "This was the one opportunity we had to change things," he says. "It was the one huge thing that could somehow turn the tide. And we got almost nothing."

Forget John Kerry and his everlasting straddles, the $87 billion that he did and did not vote for, the "marriage is between a man and a woman." The new folks coming up have no fear of conviction, of true faith. We are anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-war, pro-living wage, pro-reproductive rights, pro-gay rights, pro-environment, anti-Rockefeller drug laws, anti-arms proliferation, anti-imperialist, anti-censorship, pro-sex education, pro-Constitution, pro-affordable housing, pro-HIV awareness. Or as spelled out in the book titles of Billy Wimsatt, activist, author, and co-founder of the League of Pissed Off Voters: Bomb the Suburbs, No More Prisons, How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office.

Brown says they’ll now take to community organizing and fielding their own candidates for local office. "In the long term we’re talking about shock lobbying and holding officials accountable. We’ll be training our people in accountability models. And we’re running people next year. People feel emboldened to go out and run for office across the board. . . . We will see a progressive governing majority in our lifetimes, and this is just the first step," she says, defiance in her voice.

Young liberals running for office might turn out to be the sleeper backlash to this heartbreaking election. The consolatory message sent out November 3 by Eli Pariser, the 24-year-old executive director of MoveOn, included an e-mail from a young supporter who’s decided to run for Congress in 2006.

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