Lesson #1: Show a little class during your "memorial services."
Posted on 10/27/2003 3:28:03 PM PST by hattend
Camp Seeks to Impart Wellstone's Lessons Mon Oct 27, 4:05 AM ET Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!
By PATRICK HOWE, Associated Press Writer
ST. PAUL, Minn. - You could build a small village with the number of buildings named to honor the memories of Sen. Paul Wellstone and his wife Sheila, who were killed in a plane crash a year ago.
AP Photo
But wouldn't it be more fitting, those closest to them ask, to honor the pair by training motivated idealists to follow in their footsteps in a grassroots quest for change?
That spirit drives Wellstone Action, a nonpartisan, nonprofit political training organization founded by Wellstone's sons this summer and run by some of his former aides.
"Paul was a man of action," says Jeff Blodgett, executive director of the group and the campaign manager for Wellstone's three Senate races. "He felt that making a difference in public life was an honorable thing and a patriotic thing. It just seemed to us the best way to honor him was something in that action-oriented mold."
The organization's signature product is staging Camp Wellstone workshops around the country. Paying just $35 for meals, already about 450 people have gone through three-day camps to learn the nuts and bolts of political rabble-rousing. Blodgett says the group hopes to train 3,500 people in two dozen more camps by the end of 2004.
Lin Myszkowski, an education activist from Brooklyn Center, Minn., was among 110 participants at the first camp, in White Bear Lake.
"There were a lot of tears," she said. "They were paralyzed. They wanted to do something. They didn't know how to move on."
Myszkowski is moving on by running for school board in Osseo — a decision she says she made, exhausted, in one of the camp's final moments in response to a trainer's challenge: How are you going to change the landscape?
"For whatever reason when he said it," she said, "I just knew it was time."
Participants can choose to train as activists, future political candidates or as organizers for a given cause.
"I think there's definitely a part of Paul that was unique, that was magical, a set of qualities in one person that you may or may not see come down the lane again," Blodgett said.
"There is also a method of organizing that is a model that I think can be used by others."
That means teaching people how to raise money, how to hone a message and even how to knock on doors (the lesson: know which doors are worth trying).
But, Blodgett added, the single most important lesson to learn about Paul Wellstone's legacy is that candidates should tell voters what they believe in, something he thinks his own Democratic Party has moved away from for fear of offending people.
"You pick and choose what you emphasize and de-emphasize — you're smart about it, absolutely — but you show you're not afraid to show people what you really believe and in the end voters will reward you for that," Blodgett said.
Tammy Pust, an attorney and Camp Wellstone graduate, was rewarded by advancing through a crowded primary in her quest to become mayor of Roseville this November.
Pust, 45, has been around campaigns before, but has never run one of her own. She left Camp Wellstone with a three-ring binder full of tips on setting a campaign budget, connecting with voters and building a base of support.
"It wasn't a prescription on how to win elections," she said. "It was how to lead citizens to make a difference in their community."
There are other political training camps around the country, but observers say Camp Wellstones stand out because of the low price and the Wellstone label.
Wellstone was an "icon of grassroots organizing," said Blois Olson, editor of the political newsletter MNPolitics.com and a former campaign worker.
"There's always been a need to recruit and train political operatives. It's always been a challenge to get people with skill," he said. "Ambition is never a problem."
The man who tried to keep Wellstone's seat in the Democratic column said it won't be an easy job to keep Wellstone's legacy relevant.
"That's a question, just like the Humphrey Institute without Humphrey," said former Vice President Walter Mondale, a supporter of the group. "It is a big challenge to carry on the spirit and energy and the excitement of a figure once he's gone."
Marcia Avner, who serves on Wellstone Action's advisory committee with such celebrities as actors Warren Beatty and Robert Redford and comedian Al Franken, said the camps are phase one of Wellstone Action. Soon, a Sheila Wellstone Institute will convene, focused on domestic violence prevention policies.
___
Associated Press Writer Brian Bakst contributed to this report.
Lesson #1: Show a little class during your "memorial services."
I think he once admitted it.
Wellstone Action's advisory committee with such celebrities as actors Warren Beatty and Robert Redford and comedian Al Franken,
Just how stupid do they think we are? Camp Conaschmuck.
"I think there's definitely a part of Paul that was unique, that was magical...
Magical Paul should have floated his plane gently to the ground, or at least turned himself into a bird at the last second.
I wouldn't count on it, Wellstone hated Clinton, Wellstone was a left wing nutcase who thought clinton was a sell out, not to mention, a political money hungry no principal hack. He wasn't to fond of Hitlery either.
And this can be their official banner
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