At the Fundraiser

Darcy Burner fundraiser attended by Thomas Goldstein and Lauren Berkowitz
at the home of Maureen Judge on Mercer Island, Washington, July 9, 2008.
photo Jesse Wendel / Group News Blog.

All Politics is Local

A local fundraiser for Darcy Burner went well Wednesday evening.

People dropped in and out all evening, walking, driving, even biking.

The couple you see above -- Thomas is the Executive Director of Washington Bus, an awesomely cool program which goes all over Washington State registering young people to vote. Yes, it has a bus. Lauren is simply cool. -- showed up at Darcy's fundraiser on road bikes. ROAD BIKES.

Thomas was riding Shimano Dura-Ace group (around since 1973) on his road bike, which is nowhere near as cool as my Campagnolo Record group (Campy's been around since 1933). Campy -- When you care enough to send the very best.

Not doing another Coming of Age ride with my kids this year due to the demands of the political season. Still am managing to get out and tool around here and there on my Titanium-Carbon LeMond. I'd say probably 10-15 of the people who showed up for Darcy's fundraiser came on bicycles.

Perhaps 75 people came over the three and a half hours. State and local, as well as a few national bloggers. There were some elected folks and people who both had run for office and (I think) were running for office. I had a nice chat with about social networks, generational changes, poverty and class, with futurist and blogger Rob Salkowitz, the author of Generation Blend: Managing Across the Technology Age Gap.

A good time was had by all.

Darcy and family are doing well. She wasn't there, by the way. Wasn't intended to be. This was to raise funds for her, and it did that well. So far, with General Clark's request from earlier this week, we're at roughly $129K on a goal of $150K, $150,000 being Burner's entire fundraising goal for July.

I heard tonight one other mega-appeal should hit someone's network in the next day or so, and hopefully that will take her over the top. Then anything else raised will be a head-start on August.

Darcy IS planning to attend at least a day or so of Netroots. Last I heard that's still on. All this is complicated by the insane federal campaign laws which don't let people even buy her a meal or a drink, all the normal stuff one would do for someone whose home burned down. So we do what we can which is donate money to Darcy's campaign as an act of humanity -- to buy Darcy time off to put her life in order.