My NY Times interview

Thank you for all the great advice you all gave to me yesterday for my NY Times interview last night. The update...Erin Norris and I met with a reporter named Judy. Sorry, that is all I know, I flew in there after running a very big(for us) and successful phone bank. We sat on the floor, this is grass roots and we have NO money for extras like chairs, in a little room and chatted. I guess I expected it to be more formal. My only real fear is that this article will be less about discrimination and more about anti Fred Phelps. We attempted to defuse that but in actuality he started it with a petition on the Westboro Baptist Church stationary so I guess much of it is about Fred. I hope it comes out well. Erin had the sound bite of the night I think saying that it made her very nervous that the majority, about 95%, were voting on the rights of the minority in a town this charged about the topic. I tried to get the point across that outsiders see us here as giving tacit approval to his message of hate by ignoring him when the outsiders react with a gasp. We have done everything as a city and as individuals to stop this but it has proven costly in both money and personal consequence and impossible. Lets hope that the city lives up to the message that we sent out that they are not hateful homophobes.

Thanks to you all. Being on this site has given me the courage and knowledge to be this active. I will post the link when it gets in. I hope the article and the vote on Tuesday turns out well. http://www.votenomarch1st.org /

Back to it!

even if it is stupid. I have big fears that is will seem stupid and small town but it is really the fight that is important. We MUST win this one.

I wasn't aware you lived in Topeka, Muserider. I appreciate your efforts, especially with the likes of Phelps to contend with. :hi:

:hi: Thank you. I am not too concerned about Fred myself, there is not much he can do to me that would affect me in any way but he certainly has hurt others. This has been fun but very tiring, I really have never been this involved in a campaign and had no idea how it worked when you were on the inside. The 10-midnight staff meetings are killing me! LOL Actually, I am enjoying every minute of what I can remember of it. Topeka born and raised. Trying to keep this red state from slipping farther into the past.

and winces when fellow progressives talk of it as if the state were a moral black hole, I applaud your efforts.

It is a wonderful, beautiful state and I love it. We will get it turned around, it just may take us a while. Where did you grow up?

She's a Topekan and the fiercest Democrat I've ever seen!

if I know her? We have some cool women working this gig, really awesome and feisty. Perhaps I do know her. I just got home from there. I see you are formerly of Winfield? I used to know a ton of people from there. It must be an interesting place to grow up.

Edit because I am too tired and forgot to spell check and since I can't spell when I am actually functioning it is really bad when my brain is fried.

I can name about 100 Democrats in Kansas and I'm related to them all.

They have "red state" values, but they are damn fine Democrats!

I loved my days in Winfield.

And I hope they focus it more on discrimination and less on Fred himself. He gets too much attention as it is ... he's like a bad auto accident that you just can't look away from!

We all tend to get caught up in what is important to us now and often even forget that many other people don't know everything we know about it, or even know what "it" is or who "we" are.

When posting a news update, it would really help to tell us what you're talking about, for people who either missed the earlier story(ies) or don't know who you are or have misplaced the memory of previous stories among the thousands of other daily stories on DU. From the original post of this thread, I learn that someone (you) and someone else had an interview with someone from the NY Times about something that is happening in some city somewhere. I can tell that Fred Phelps is somehow involved but I don't know how; I know that he's some wacko preacher but I don't remember which one. I can tell that the something may have something to do with homophobia, but I can't tell if that's the central issue or something tangentially related.

By following the link I can see that it's apparently about some election in Topeka, apparently a ballot initiative. It looks like if I followed further links from that link, I might be able to find out what the ballot initiative is. However, there are forty other threads listed just on page 1 of GD: Politics that have been updated within the last two hours. I just don't have the time to follow to third-level links just to find out what a post is about.

with my apologies. I am really running on empty these days and I was not thinking. I had only a few minutes to post my appreciation for the support yesterday and then I ran out to do my little thing here. Here is a link to the post from yesterday.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=1618388&mesg_id=1618388

:toast:

This has actually been a real life saver for me, personal story I won't bore you with, but I am getting much more out of this than I am putting into it and I am putting my whole life into it at the moment. Only 5 days and it will be done, my first time being on the front lines.