Yesterday
when Tim posted about the DNC's new personal fundraising tools, we asked for ideas for more mini-campaigns (now, in addition to creating your own personal fundraising homepage, you can create mini-campaigns that will add to your total). A couple of people brought up the old favorite: a bat.
Well, here it is -- you can now create your own bat on Democrats.org and ask all of your contacts to step up to the plate.
For those of you who weren't around then, the bat is a symbol that will forever be associated with Governor Howard Dean and the hundreds of thousands of Americans who during his presidential run first came to understand the power ordinary people contributing $20 or $50 could have when they act together.
As some of you know I've been working for Howard Dean in one capacity or another for nearly three years. And before I went to work for him full-time on the presidential campaign, I was blogging about him and organizing online with folks like Matt and Aziz (anybody remember the Dean Defense Forces?).
As we were setting up this bat mini-campaign, Tim asked me about the symbol of the bat and its meaning for me. I didn't have a really clear answer for him, and I don't really have one to write here, because it's a deeply personal thing for me.
The bat is a powerful symbol for me and a lot of people -- a symbol of empowerment, a symbol of hope. In the nearly two years since the campaign ended, it has become a symbol of what might have been.
But over the course of the last year, as part of Governor Dean's team reorienting and rebuilding the Democratic Party, it has become a symbol of what is, and what will be. Ordinary Americans are empowered in politics today as never before, and the Democratic National Committee under Governor Dean's leadership is not only breaking fundraising records but breaking new ground by putting grassroots organizers on the ground across the country and developing a new kind of relationship with people.
It's tough writing about all of this. This idea -- that the government should work for the people, and that the people can take control of our political process if we just decide to -- is something I take personally, and has shaped my life since my eyes opened to it more than three years ago. So I'll stop here, give you the link to my bat, and encourage you one last time to create your own:
www.democrats.org/bat