SWOPblogger

Last year Tim Russert, that veteran Tele-Journalist, debate moderator and anchor of NBC's influential Sunday morning news show Meet the Press, predicted that the southwest and the rockies would decide this year's presidential Election. (As a side note: that would give the Richardson recent endorsement some weight, ah? See Richardson on MTP today.)

RUSSERT: Here is how the electoral college breaks down, in 2000 I said Florida, Florida, Florida.

CARLSON: Right.

RUSSERT: In 2004 I said Ohio, Ohio, Ohio.

In 2008 I am saying New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada. If the Republicans—if the Democrats can win three of those four, they can be elected president.

He hasn't backed down from his assessment.

Last week, SWOPblogger brought you some news from pushbacknetwork.org, chronicling a convening of groups from the South, Southwest and Northeast United States to talk about civic engagement and electoral organizing strategies.

This week, we're pointing you to some other analysis and important info, considering NM's influential position in this year's election.

For more New Mexico analysis and important work in the state from Pushback, go here.

New Mexico’s population of 2 million residents is composed of a majority of people of color; the state is also home to the third highest poverty rate and a twenty-five percent child poverty rate. NM spends 5.7 times more per prisoner than per student and has the highest rate of uninsured children in the country.

For more on SWOP's civic engagement and electoral strategies go to Progressive Technology Project's VoterTechKit. (Click on the picture's below for video.)

See the video: "We went through a process with staff and members and also with ally organizations, namely SAGE Council and Soltari, which is a for-profit campaign consulting firm, to figure out a couple things. One, who we would be contacting and where we would be doing the voter contact work. […] In the discussions that our membership has had over the last few years, we know that – and also because of our mission – we know that the people we want to contact are largely people of color, they’re folks who have historically been disenfranchised and disempowered, they are as a result they’re unlikely voters, so they don’t normally vote in elections, they’re young people, and they’re largely low-income and working class folks. So that’s the who, the who that we’re targeting."

See the video: "We want to build base or engage voters in areas where elections might be competitive. So we feel that we might get more traction working in a race where there’s actually competition – so people are more in-tuned to be paying attention, there’s more signs, there’s more activity and so we feel we might get more traction out of being there. The other reason is that, regardless of who wins, we can go to the candidate who did win, and if it was competitive they probably would have won by a smaller margin, and we can go and talk to them and we can say, “We talked to voters...and this is what they said and this is why they came out and voted and they’re going to be holding you accountable.”

If you've read all the way here (and clicked on those links and videos!), you're probably ready to donate to SWOP, right? So what's stopping you? Those $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 will do as good at SWOP as anywhere.

Together, we have the opportunity to make the real change we are all after. We can live up to our responsibilities to the democratic process (you know, not let those corporations decide everything), and confront and bridge the democracy divides of race, gender, class, region and religion that are a barrier to realizing our vision of community values (you know, as opposed to corporate values), and racial and gender equality and social and economic justice. Donate today.
Bill Richardson
Meet the Press
2008 Election
New Mexico

Labels: 2008 Presidential Election, Civic Engagement, Democracy, door to door organizing, voting