Useful things I learned at Netroots Nation today

by: Jeff Gardner

Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 09:30:00 AM EDT

State legislative candidates in New Jersey can now use ActBlue to raise money. It used to be that ActBlue found our ELEC rules too byzantine to bother with, and NJ was one of the few places unable to take advantage of ActBlue. That's no longer true. If you're a NJ state-level candidate, and want to avail yourself of ActBlue to do your fundraising, you need only contact them, fill out a little bit of extra paperwork upfront, and you're off to the races (minus a tiny extra % charge, again thanks to ELEC).

A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.

Darcy Burner is totally awesome, and someone our NJ delegation will want to get to know.

Dennis Shulman, also awesome, is drawing more notice from across the country than people realize. (Maybe it helps to be so accessible to his supporters).

The average age of Netroots Nation attendees is much older than you think. You are never too old to join the progressive movement, and take part in taking our country back.

Rutgers Law School - Newark may still deserve its old nickname as the "People's Electric Law School" for its progressive activism: my friend and classmate there, Vince Warren, is the Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (the people who argued the plaintiffs' case in the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold Habeas Corpus rights for the detainees at Guantanamo Bay), and a presenter here.

Lots of progressive groups are hiring, at various levels. Some local ones: ACORN is looking for Political Organizers throughout the country (email RESUME to: Sara Mathers at: polrecruit@acorn.org, and NJ Environmental Federation is hiring at its 3 New Jersey offices in Belmar, Montclair and Trenton.

If you go on Sirius Satellite Radio, and say it's a bad idea to drill for oil off New Jersey's shoreline because you don't want our beaches to end up like the Texas Gulf Coast, and you're in Texas when you say that, you might get some angry callers.