New Projects for 2010

Written by: Keshini Ladduwahetty on Nov 23, 2009 12:38 PM EST

Last week, ten DC for Democracy members sat down at Bread & Brew over pizza and beer to talk about new projects for 2010.  We focused our conversation on projects that did not fall within the usual boundaries of political campaigns and our established committees (housing/homelessness, marriage equality, statehood/voting rights, sustainability, and election reform).

Some of the ideas that came up:

A community blog for DC politics: DC has just a few city-wide blogs: DCist, City Paper, Greater greater Washington.  None of these are community blogs, where anybody can post.  Challenges include: 1) how do we keep the blog from being overwhelmed by national issues, which are already getting plenty of attention in the blogosphere, and 2) how do we draw sufficient traffic to the site.

Green Bank: a great new progressive idea that directs private and public capital towards financing key investments in clean-energy.  These infrastructure investments will in turn develop the foundations of a new clean-energy economy that will create new well-paying jobs right here at home.  Congressman Chris Van Hollen has already introduced the Green Energy Bank Act, so this idea has support on the Hill.  Read more about it at the Center for American Progress.

Health care: look ahead at how national health care reform will affect DC and potentially free up money that is now used to subsidize health insurance.

Voter participation: some ideas for increasing voter participation included 1) registering young people through the DC Summer jobs program, and 2) increasing voter turnout by advocating for issues that resonate with young people and using their interest in the issue to drive them to vote.

Any other ideas?

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