A little Planning help?

[Kixel]

Recently, I became Associate Chair of our Senate District (equivalent to County Units elsewhere). Our current representation is red and our SD hasn’t been all that well organized in the past. The (also new) Chair and I have split things between long term goals and prior to the election goals. A big goal we have is volunteer recruitment. One plan (which has become my baby) is a “Time-Raiser.” Basically, it would be a party where people pledge to work x amount of hours. I’ll have contact information forms for folks to fill out and they will sign up on a calendar which days they can work.

It’s also going to be a thank you for past, present, and future volunteers. I am thinking the invite will read something like this:

"When the Republicans raise money, they charge $1500 a plate for a meal. While Democrats don't have those kind of resources, we do have something more valuable-time and talents that are yet to be tapped. Please join us for an (evening/afternoon) of Democratic fun. If you would like to donate your time and energy, we'll be more than happy to make you a part of our team. Of course, if you'd like to make a donation, we'll accept those, too!"

We are thinking of doing a desert potluck-having everyone from our Central Committee bring a desert of some sort (cost effective, we don’t want to spend too much on this) and provide coffee and juice.

My questions for the wise folks of the DU:

My questions for you are this:
1. What time/day make for the most successful events?
2. Would it be too cheesy to do a little "game show" between our local candidates? I have a cousin who is very creative and great at making a fool out of himself in this kind of position-a natural comedian who can work a crowd. He's a Democrat, so I am thinking I could twist him into a little performance.
3. We are talking about having different levels of donors-x amount of hours is such and such. Any ideas on names for the different level donors? We want this to be light hearted.
4. The kiddos-any ideas for things to keep them busy? I was thinking of coloring pictures (black and white donkey clip art), but that won’t keep ‘em busy for long.

I am sorry this is so long, but this event is important-it’ll be our first as Chair and Associate, and our Senate District is a little fractured right now (as you can probably guess with August elections for its leadership). Thanks for any help or suggestions you can give! I hope it's okay to post here-I don't post much but I need help!

[calimary]

1. Could you do a karaoke thing where maybe you make up new lyrics

to some popular songs - but your lyrics would be full of silly mockery of the republi-CONS?

Pin the Nose on the Elephant? Using bush's face, of course, and maybe several long Pinocchio noses for the players.

How about a clean drinking game or bingo game or other silly activity based on bush himself. Get a VCR set up so you can play any one of bush's many illustrious, earth-shaking, world-class scholarly speeches. Designate how many points you get for every time he says "terr" or "I unnderstann that" or our new fave-raves, "Nazism," "fascism," or our old favorite, "freedom." Extra points for every mispronunciation. If you make up erzatz bingo cards, you'd have those words in there instead of numbers. A clean drinking game would involve soda or iced tea.

You could have your friend the comedian emcee a bush sound-alike contest, and give a prize to whoever gets bush down best.

How about a cookie-decorating contest - prizes given for the funniest george or laura or dick or contradicta. Plain sugar cookies mainly, I'd think. And lots of crazy stuff like candy and nuts and stuff to place on top. OR - maybe you write out the names of a bunch of people in this horrific misadministration and put them in a hat. Everybody chooses one. Then they have to decorate their cookie to look like that person, and everybody else has to guess who it is.

Do a lynne cheney Mad-lib. Find a page of one of her soft-porn books (or anybody's for that matter, the cheaper the better), and then blot out lots of selected words, verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, exclamations. Then your emcee or somebody calls out which word is needed and picks the funniest. Then, you get to read the results!


A craft corner is always good for the kids. Depends on their ages. You might try some sort of recycling craft. Get some colored pipe cleaners - the more the better, and some chopsticks. The cheap wooden kind that you get in Chinese takeout dinners. You can also buy packs of 'em at a large, well-stocked grocery store for pennies, really. Maybe a large bag of inexpensive plastic beads, too - these need large holes in 'em. Ask for "pony beads." They're usually plastic, come in MANY colors, and are the kind of beads you've seen in people's hair, and on leather thongs. None of this is very expensive.

What I did with a group of teenage girls, AND a teenage boy, AND a number of other kids who were all younger, was give 'em all this fun stuff to work with, and tell 'em to make hair ornaments. You pull the chopsticks apart and work with a single one, wrapping the pipe cleaner around it - starting about one inch from the top. The rest of the pipe cleaner can stick out from the top after you've wrapped it around a few times. You can spiral the end. You can thread a bead or two - or nine - on the end of it. You can take some pull-tabs from soda or beer cans and twist the end of the pipe cleaner through two or three of them and let them be funny little dangles. You can lace pipe cleaners through them and make bracelets. Add more beads or not. Wrap more pipe cleaners around the top of the chopstick or not. We did this with the California Conservation Corps and you wouldn't believe how engrossing it was! The kids stayed occupied for a couple of hours, and made lots of things. Some of them were wildly creative. It's safe and fun and everybody goes home with something cool. And if you do have a teenager or two, he/she can supervise and play chief boss and sheep-herder.

Just some ideas... hope your fest is a big success!

[calimary]

2. Kicking this.

Oh yeah - I forgot about the donors.

Well, maybe you could name the levels after various Democratic luminaries. Top-level would be the Teresa Heinz Kerry level. They might go, in descending order, Clinton, Gore, Dean, Lamont, Kerry, Edwards, Feingold, Clark, etc. Or you could name each level after some Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

You could have little plastic "macaca" maracas and Hershey's kisses (to poke fun at Holy Joe) as party favors.

And oh, God! You've GOT to serve falafel in honor of bill "the big giant head" o'reilly. Plus Heinz pickles and other condiments, and cheese in honor of Russ Feingold.

[Kixel]

3. Thank you so much!!!

These ideas are exactly what I was looking for. Mark Kennedy is our Republican Senate Candidate-and I am in John Klein's House district. There are a lot of Republicans to pin stuff on. Where to start?

I'm from the school of thought that more people's ideas are better than my own-you have pr oven me right!


THANK YOU!!!

[zdux0013]

4. yeah

yeah

[calimary]

5. I am anxious to hear the outcome, and what you picked out for

activities.

I hope you'll let us all know. BTW - don't be afraid to serve French stuff. FRENCH fries. FRENCH bread. FRENCH cheese. FRENCH wine for those who'd like some. GERMAN chocolates and/or chocolate cake in honor of "Old Europe." And have broccoli in your fresh veggie dish. It was georgie's dad's least favorite vegetable.

I had a whole list of pointed-commentary food I was going to serve in 2004 at an after-election celebration, which of course fell through. It was a lot of Heinz stuff, French stuff, and falafel for "The Big Giant Head." Maybe some of those mini Jim Beam bottles in honor of miz laura's threat: "Either Jim Beam or me." And don't forget the pickles!

Also, for the kids - how 'bout a pinata outside, if the weather permits and there's somebody older to help supervise? If you get a figure as a pinata, you could put a sign on it calling it "Hanging Chad," or "bush's Dangling Participles."

Oh God - along with your "macaca" maracas, don't forget the loofah sponges - also in honor of "Falafel Guy."

Hell, you could get REALLY rowdy and have a blow-up doll or other larger-size doll in a flight suit (or look-alike). Call it "Stuff the Codpiece!" or maybe, simply "Mission Accomplished!" Stuff the crotch with lots of stuff. At one point in the party, when it's time for this game, you undress the doll and spread everything out on a tray on the table. It's one of those memory games - everybody gets one minute, timed, to look over everything and remember what it all is. Then, you take the tray away and they all have to write down as many items as they can remember. A prize is given to the person who remembered the most objects.

Prizes can be as simple as maybe a 10-dollar gift card to Starbucks or something. OR if you have a novelty shop in your area, like we do here in So Cal with "Aahs," or even an alternative book store, you might choose such prizes as one of those decks of cards with bush's face on all these odd bodies or the deck put out in response to that smarmy deck with the al Qaeda people on it - I think it was the war crimes deck or something. Or you could even play a card game using a deck of those cards - like gin or poker (call it VERMONT Hold-'em or some other blue or Democratic-friendly state, or call it "Texas Hold-UP" or Texas SCREW-'em"). My son bought this calendar at one of the Aahs stores that was a countdown calendar to the end of the bush term. Or, a set (like maybe half-a-dozen) of really choice anti-bush/anti-GOP/anti-war bumper stickers tied up with a ribbon. A BLUE ribbon. Another good prize might be a T-shirt or mug-and-bumper stickers (or an "accessory set" of all these) from one of the campaigns in your area, or one from the person's campaign who's sponsoring the party.

[calimary]

6. Oh, I just thought up another really crazy one, but it might be

ridiculously fun!

How about a "twist" on the ol' "Twister" game?

In the circles, you write, with a Sharpie or a decal made of contact paper, all the various excuses and smarmy slogans that have been invented by the republi-CONS to justify the war. And then the emcee calls THOSE out at random for where the players are supposed to put their hands and feet. I may try this one at MY next party.

[sandnsea]

7. For the kiddos

You could turn the coloring pictures into a coloring contest. They'll be more inclined to participate and also spend more time on them. You could have one larger art project, something that could be displayed at your events. They could draw pictures with a theme, some sort of perfect world, every day heroes, kind of thing. Definitely have one person take charge of the kids, maybe somebody has some teen-agers or something and parents could donate some money instead of charging a fee.

I have ideas on the volunteering thing, but I'll defer to others with more experience. Not everybody is a "joiner", but maybe there's reasons people organize every blessed thing into a group activity.

[calimary]

8. Kickez-vous! Let's get the party started!

:party: