Drake Dems website

You might have noticed we're overhauling our website right now and so we haven't had much time to post on the blog.

We encourage you to check out the new look for the website, at www.drakedems.com. For some reason, Google isn't picking it up correctly, so this blog is the first thing that comes up and people have been thinking this is all we've got.

Dems Fest '06 Tomorrow!

The Drake Democrats are holding a Dems Fest '06 tomorrow night at 9pm at Pomerantz Stage. It should be a pretty good time - we're having four major candidates for office coming:
- Mike Blouin, candidate for Governor
- Michael Mauro, candidate for Secretary of State
- Dusky Terry, candidate for Secretary of Agriculture
- Ako Abdul-Samad, candidate for Iowa statehouse

They'll all be talking about their vision for Iowa and taking questions from anyone who attends. We're welcoming the general public and the media to come as well, so if you've got time late tomorrow night, feel free to stop by Drake and meet some of the leaders of the Democratic Party!

Drake Democrats on the News Again

Our protest at Jim Nussle's headquarters was on KCCI tonight, putting us on the evening news twice in the last three days. They gave a perfect description of it, noting that Jim Nussle had made it much harder for us to attend college because of his cuts to higher education. The protest itself was well-attended and lots of fun. When we delivered petitions signed by about 500 students from Drake and Morningside College in Sioux City, their staffers seemed kinda dumbfounded. Little do they know the growing effect we're having. Especially on Drake's campus now, we hear everyday someone talking about our latest protest against Nussle. The College Republicans' effort to get signatures for Nussle to be put on the ballot was made a lot harder by all our work - even people who didn't know Nussle were very hesitant and refused to sign their petitions considering all the bad press they've heard about him from us.

A Successful Day!

It was a busy and successful day for the Drake Democrats on the student loan cuts issue. We started off the day with a nice front-page picture in the Times-Delphic of us protesting Jim Nussle last Thursday. But the big event of the day was our press conference with Congressman Boswell.

We invited Congressman Boswell, who has been very helpful in providing more Pell Grants for college students, to come to Drake and hear students give their personal stories on the kinds of hardships that they have faced in affording college. We had several news outlets show up, and I know that we were shown on KCCI this evening - I can't remember who the other news groups were - if anybody knows, leave a comment on that so we can search for it. Also, school board member Ako Abdul-Samad came and talked about some of the hardships he's been hearing from young people and their families in Des Moines as they prepare to pay for college.

Both Boswell and Ako seemed to really enjoy the event and we were very happy to have them. We've been wanting to get Boswell by for quite some time and this was a really great event for him to come to. We'll get some more info up on the main website, under the press release section, and perhaps start a new page if we can find online copies of the stories that the news ran on us. Thanks so much for everyone who helped out today!

Spreading the "Nussle-Hates-College-Students" Message

Drake Democrats members took to the intersection of Ingersol and MLK Blvd today with numerous signs protesting Jim Nussle's attacks on our education. It turned out to be quite the glorious victory, with surprisingly no accidents as drivers slowed down to read our signs, with our hands nearly freezing, and with us finding that Ingersol and MLK is perhaps the most dangerous street to cross in Des Moines. Among the highlights were: the van of high schoolers on their way to the state wrestling tournament that screamed several anti-Nussle slogans we can't quite put on signs; the crazy homeless guy that agreed that all politicians are evil; and the guy in the Lexus SUV that yelled at us to get jobs.

The actual responses from people were positive by about a 4-1 margin. Though I think most people were unsure of who Jim Nussle is - which just helps out even more, because their first association of his name will be with making college less affordable.

All in all, a successful and just really fun event.

A Fun Time With The UNO Democrats

Over the weekend I was able to meet a lot of great folks from the UNO Democrats out in Omaha. They were holding a training session for college democrats groups and brought in a good amount of people to learn about several campaign strategies.

But probably the most productive part was hanging out with them afterwards and exchanging ideas of good programs and events to put on. The UNO Dems have been quite successful with events and fundraising, and are thinking of holding their own Liberal Date Auction, which we'll happily give them assistance on ideas for. We're also hoping they can come out to Drake at some point in time. Perhaps Relays might actually be a good time to hold several events that we can invite other college dems groups to.

Anyway, the "Students Can't Afford Jim Nussle" campaign is continuing, as we have a few good events planned for this week and are working on a big press conference for next week.

-Patrick Rynard

Nussle Campaign Updates

We had a really great story about us in the Times-Delphic today - we'll try to get it up on the website soon. We didn't end up getting much news media out to our first press conference, but we're quite optimistic about our next one. We did have to cancel a protest today, as we figured the several inches of snow and below 10 degrees weather just wasn't quite worth it.

But we're looking ahead to next week and organizing another press conference in which we get several stories from students that are facing much higher costs for college thanks to Nussle's cuts to student loans. We're also hoping to get other colleges in on the effort and make this a state-wide campaign to increase awareness. We already have a few other colleges expressing interest, and hopefully we'll be able to organize a state-wide response here very soon.

We're doing very well with our signatures on our petitions - we collected well over 300 from students on Monday and Tuesday from just standing out several places on campus and asking people as they passed by to class. I'm quite surprised we got so many considering most people are pretty hesitant to sign anything, much less slow down when late to class. But many students that aren't usually all that interested in politics have been very upset about the loan cuts and are very enthusiastic and supportive when we approach them. Thanks to our nine members who stood out in the cold to ask students to sign the petitions. We're still working on collecting many more from people that just didn't happen to pass by while we were out there, and I figure we'll get a few hundred more. And we're also hoping to get other college democrats organizations to start up petitions at their schools too.

That's all for now, check back soon.