Ditch Mitch KY

Wash. Post: Bluegrass-Roots Effort Wins a Visit From Edwards

Matt Gunterman October 5th, 2007

Coverage from the Washington Post of yesterday’s John Edwards rally in Columbus, Kentucky.

Bluegrass-Roots Effort Wins a Visit From Edwards

By Jose Antonio Vargas

COLUMBUS, Ky., Oct. 4 — No one in this tiny, remote town — population 229 — can remember the last time a presidential candidate stopped by during a campaign.

But there was John Edwards on Thursday afternoon, holding court at a historic park on the banks of the Mississippi River. At least 1,500 people showed up for the appearance in this town so small it does not have a traffic light, with hundreds from neighboring towns taking part. Local schools, including nearby Hickman County High, took part of the day off and delivered busloads of students to the park.

As unlikely as it seems, this event in the heart of rural America was the result of online grass-roots organizing — on the part of Edwards and his supporters — on Eventful ( http://www.eventful.com), where users can demand that musicians, comedians and, in recent months, presidential candidates visit their home towns.

Early in the summer, Edwards, who has lagged Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) in polls testing the race for the Democratic nomination, announced that he would come to whichever city demanded him most on Eventful. Shawn Dixon, born and raised in Columbus, took up the challenge, signing up for the site and launching a virtual lobbying campaign, sending e-mails, writing on blogs and contacting his friends on Facebook and MySpace. In the end Columbus bested cities such as Los Angeles, Dallas and Seattle, with votes from 1,870 Eventful users.

On Eventful, Dixon, 24, described his town by writing: “Columbus, Kentucky is a small town in Western Kentucky that boasts a population of 229 people and is about a 50-minute drive from the closest McDonald’s. Like many rural communities across the south, job loss in the face of rising healthcare costs and education costs have crippled the economy.”

Dixon introduced Edwards to the crowd on Thursday, saying: “This event is really more about the idea of Columbus than about Columbus. Columbus represents the tens of millions of people in rural America who are consistently ignored and left out in the national political dialogue.”

Added Edwards in an interview Thursday: “This is the beauty of the Net. It’s bringing new people in, allowing folks who feel like they don’t have a voice to speak up in whatever way they want.”

The Internet has played an increasingly vital role in the primary season, and new Web-based efforts are launched almost daily. On Thursday, MySpace and PayPal teamed up to make it easier for candidates to collect money through their MySpace pages, and Obama created profiles on BlackPlanet.com, MiGente.com and AsianAve.com, popular social networking sites in the black, Latino and Asian communities.

So far this campaign season, Obama, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio), Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) have used Eventful to plan appearances. Edwards, in fact, is not even the most demanded candidate on Eventful; Paul and Obama share that distinction.

But Edwards’s hour-and-a-half stop at Columbus-Belmont State Park underscored yet another impact of the Web: In a primary being fought as much online as offline, supporters outside the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina are demanding a say in the process.

[...]

SHAWN DIXON INTRODUCING JOHN EDWARDS, IN COLUMBUS, KENTUCKY POPULATION 229. YOUTUBE VIDEO.

Jim Pence October 5th, 2007

John Edwards came to Columbus, Kentucky yesterday all because one young man believed it was possible. When John Edwards said he would come to the town that received the most votes on Eventful, Shawn Dixon decided that John Edwards would be coming to Columbus, Kentucky population 229. This young man went to work and spearheaded the effort to get John Edwards to come to Columbus. When all was said and done Columbus, Kentucky had more votes, on Evenful , than any city or town in the United States of America.
Thank you Shawn Dixon and thank you Columbus, Kentucky for showing the rest of us nothing is is impossible.
Note: Special thanks to Mike Watt for showing me a short cut back to Etown.

Shawn Dixon , Video , Youtube
Comments(3)

WPSD: Columbus Native Key To Bringing Edwards To Town

Matt Gunterman October 4th, 2007

From WPSD.com, News Channel 6:

Columbus Native Key To Bringing Edwards To Town
Reported by: Julie Smallheer

How does a small town like Columbus, Kentucky pull a political heavy hitter like John Edwards in the middle of a big campaign? You can thank one young man who is very tech savvy.

24-year-old Shawn Dixon was the driving force.

The Columbus native and NYU law student used a social networking site to bring Edwards to town.

John Edwards may be the star today in Columbus but it’s local boy Shawn Dixon who is shining brightest.

“I think this is significant, this is a historic day for Columbus and for rural America,” said Dixon.

In May, Shawn discovered the internet contest offering a prize of a visit from a presidential candidate.

Shawn blasted emails to his friends in New York and at the University of Kentucky asking them to vote for his home town.

He followed up with posts on MySpace and Facebook and then things just took off.

“It feels great, it’s really moving to see such a robust crowd here today,” said Dixon.

The event even landed national news coverage.

“I think that this signifies that rural American’s are ready to step forward and say we believe in our community and we’re going to work for it and we’re going to fight for it,” says Dixon.

So what’s Shawn doing now?

He’s going to continue his studies at New York University School of Law.

He’s also the editor and contributor of a new website: http://www.ditchmitchky.com/.

This website is part of the “Ditch Mitch McConnell” movement in Kentucky and across the nation. You can probably expect to see Shawn as part of Kentucky politics for years to come.

UPDATE: As always, western Kentucky activist Kilowat was on hand at the Edwards event to capture the moment in still image. He has a photo album up already.

UPDATE II: Shawn brought to my attention the broad coverage that Air America’s Richard Greene gave the Edwards event on his program Clout. You can find all the interviews (including John Edwards, Elizabeth Edwards, and Shawn himself) on the Air America website.

PS: I’m off to a conference in Baltimore tomorrow for the weekend, and thus won’t myself be blogging much until Monday.

The town of Dixon is in Webster County, but Shawn Dixon is all about Hickman County

Matt Gunterman September 26th, 2007

If you haven’t yet seen the fantastic article in Wired magazine on John Edwards’ upcoming visit to Hickman County, Kentucky and the efforts of DitchMitchKY’s very own Shawn Dixon to make it possible, you should read it.

Shawn released this statement yesterday on the event:

Friends,

I am thrilled to let you know that this afternoon the John Edwards campaign announced plans for a visit to Columbus, Kentucky on Thursday, October 4, at Columbus Belmont State Park. The Senator will come and hold a town hall style meeting with the citizens of Hickman County and the larger Western Kentucky area.

A few months ago, we made national headlines when we worked together to send a strong message to politicians everywhere that the needs of rural America are real, pressing and must be addressed. This is our historic opportunity to have our voices heard in a way like never before: before a national audience.

The festivities will begin at 11:30 AM with a free BBQ sponsored by Eventful.com, which is the website that hosted the competition. The Senator is scheduled to start speaking and taking questions at 12:30 PM.

I hope that you will join me in Columbus next week to help the rest of the country understand why we love rural America and to take part in this unique event!

I would ask that if for some reason you can’t make it, please send this e-vite to 10 of your friends. The national media will be present and we want to make a very strong impression in terms of our turnout!

If you plan on attending, let the good folks at Eventful.com know by clicking here:

http://eventful.com/events/columbus/politics_activism…/
(They need to know how much BBQ to buy!)

Thanks again for all that you’ve done so far. You made this happen – now it’s time to enjoy the benefits.

All my best,
Shawn

PS: John Edwards allowed me to announce the visit on his website! Leave a comment for the Senator and welcome him to our community if you feel so inclined!

http://blog.johnedwards.com/story/2007/9/25/165154/828#6

Moser: Kentucky at War

Matt Gunterman September 13th, 2007

The Nation Cover “Kentucky at War”

Bob Moser’s excellent analysis of the development of the movement to support the troops, end the war, and ditch Senator Mitch McConnell (R) has hit the stands.

The piece is too long to block quote here, but I’ll include excerpts particularly relevant to the Kentucky progressive blogosphere. You can read the entire article here.

Kentucky at War
Bob Moser

[...]

As summer–and McConnell’s recess vacation–approached, two new sets of nontraditional allies materialized to help LPAC bird-dog the senator, who makes his home in Louisville with his wife, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. Matt Gunterman, a 30-year-old rural Kentucky native and Yale University graduate student, launched the DitchMitch blog earlier in the year, bringing together a varied band of bloggers from around the state on a composite site with a common goal. And in June, two young native Kentuckians and a Navy veteran opened an Iraq Summer headquarters in Louisville, part of a national campaign by Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI) to target key members of Congress with a homegrown antiwar message before they returned to Washington to resume the war debate.

By mid-August McConnell was sending out fundraising letters complaining about being harassed by “the ’60s antiwar movement on steroids.” But as the Republican kingmaker well knew, the reality was something altogether different from that old stereotype–and considerably more formidable.

Jim Pence is a 68-year-old, Salem-smoking, pickup-driving, self-proclaimed hillbilly from economically devastated Hardin County, retired after thirty-five years in the factory at the American Synthetic Rubber Corporation. Politically inactive until 2004, when Bush’s re-election and the war in Iraq spurred him to “vow to fight with every ounce of my strength from then on,” Pence now makes some of the freshest, funniest antiwar and political videos anywhere–and as a result, he’s become the unlikely heart and soul of Kentucky’s DitchMitch campaign.

Linking from his own Hillbilly Report website to DitchMitch and YouTube, Pence puts up snappy vignettes on subjects ranging from Kentucky’s annual bipartisan political hoedown at Fancy Farm–where McConnell made a hasty exit this year after being jeered by protesters carrying signs showing him as Bush’s hand puppet–to a fanciful take on Bush and Condoleezza Rice’s relationship, set to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s “The Way You Look Tonight,” to a hard-hitting series of exposés of liquor-industry fundraising by Ron Lewis, the holy-rolling Congressman from Pence’s district. “I don’t know, I just disappear into them,” Pence says on a dog-day August morning, navigating Louisville traffic en route to the Iraq Summer office. “I stay up some nights till 4 and 5, editing these things.”

DitchMitch creator Gunterman, whose postgraduate goal is to fire up an Internet-based “Ruralution,” connecting grassroots progressives from rural America to spur political action, sees Pence as a prime example of the passion and wit that generally go untapped by Democrats and urban progressives. “There’s no one like Jim in the entire United States,” says Gunterman. “Not with his age and his ornery attitude. He is very much a hillbilly, and he’s reinvigorated the term.”

In his three years of crisscrossing Kentucky to publicize its antiwar and progressive insurgencies, Pence has also stirred up the state’s traditionally timid left-wingers. “When I first went out with my camcorder, I’d go up to people at peace rallies and ask them, ‘Would you like to say something to Mitch?’ and they’d just go, ‘Uhhh…’ Or even if they would say anything, they’d say, ‘But I don’t want my picture taken.’ I just kept saying, ‘The newspaper’s not even going to cover this, and if TV does, it’ll be for ten seconds. Whereas this video’s going up on YouTube tomorrow.’” As Pence kept filming and posting his increasingly popular videos, the activists opened up and embraced this new mechanism for showing that, yes, the military stronghold of Kentucky has a vigorous antiwar effort. “People are stepping out more than they would a few years ago,” Pence says. “Now I can’t get them to stop talking when they see that camera. People know me now, and for the most part they trust me–whether or not they should!”

While Pence and DitchMitch have inspirited Kentucky activists, they’ve also pushed the state’s more established media to take notice of the progressive groundswell. “DitchMitch gives us the power to hold the media accountable in Kentucky for the first time,” says 24-year-old Shawn Dixon, a native of rural western Kentucky who’s just started his first year at NYU law school. In 2004, when Dixon was working as deputy policy and communications director for Democrat Daniel Mongiardo’s uphill Senate challenge to Republican Jim Bunning, he spent much of the campaign in a state of frustration over Kentucky newspapers’ assumption that the incumbent would cruise to victory. “There was no recognition that this would be a competitive election and that this guy was beatable until about a month before the election, when it became impossible to ignore.” Bunning wobbled back to Washington with a slender 23,000-vote victory, but this time around, with LPAC continually raising eyebrows and DitchMitch helping to popularize the anti-McConnell movement, “the media don’t have a choice,” Dixon says. On the same day in late July that Louisville’s Courier-Journal ran a column about McConnell’s dip in popularity (below 50 percent approval), the Herald-Leader in Lexington ran a story, sixteen months before the election, titled “McConnell Vulnerable.”

That’s music to Pence’s ears. “It’s not just what he’s done to perpetuate this war,” says the high-tech hillbilly. “It’s what he hasn’t done for Kentuckians, with all his power, on healthcare and so many other issues that really matter to folks at their kitchen tables. We’re trying to cut through the kind of moral-values crap that McConnell’s been using for twenty-five years to get himself elected. We’re doing what we can to show the emperors without their clothes. And show that the folks who don’t like Mitch, and can’t stand this war, are just regular people like me who finally woke up and spoke up.”

[...]

Kentucky’s progressive community about to rock America

Matt Gunterman September 12th, 2007

Coming to a newsstand near you: The Nation with Bob Moser’s cover story entitled “Kentucky at War,” which examines Kentucky’s progressive grassroots community and how it’s reshaping the political and ideological landscapes of that state — and doing so outside the rigid, tepid, and unresponsive party structures.

It’s gonna be a hell of a read!

The Nation Cover “Kentucky at War”