I can’t believe the speed our group is growing,
and I can’t believe the speed our website is growing either.
These are the posters on campus today:
(click for full size)
There is no doubt in my mind that UNO College Democrats is the fastest growing and most energetic part of the Nebraska Young Democrats, much less the Nebraska Democratic Party. But the same can be said about our website and blog:
And here is a different fun Jan. versus 1st six days of Feb. breakdown
We started out with the core UNO Democrats readership. We doubled that in 3 weeks. Doubled that 3 weeks later. Doubled that again in 3 more weeks. Doubled that again in about 2 weeks. And now we’re on track to double again easily by Valentines day.
Knock on wood… but we’re about to have more visitors in the first week of February than we did in all of January combined. That means hundreds and hundreds of readers a month, tens of thousands of site visits. Combine that with national recognition, newspaper stories and showing up weekly on the 6 O’clock News… we have ourselves a progressive campus movement in the works.
So a special “THANK YOU!” to our readers, our members, our posters, and everyone else too.
And more shameless back patting and millions more individual thank yous in the comments section.
UPDATE : It’s true. We had more visitors in the first week of Feb. than in all of January combined. And more visitors so far in Feb. than all other months combined. Keep it up and, to all the new people, keep on coming back!
Great posters guys and gals.
So in the last few weeks UNO Democrats and UNO Democrats events were mentioned 3 times on the Local CBS Station. Mentioned on NBC Nightly News with Stone Philips. The Today Show, 3 times in the Omaha World-Herald (More than 300 hold very ‘visible’ protests, Protests are planned around President Bush’s visit), Thrice more on Channel 6 1…. 2 …. Plus that Inaguration Story, twice in The Baltimore Sun 1…., 2…., at least once in the Lincoln Journal Star, (Little love for Bush outside Qwest), the Washington Post (In Heartland, a Social Security Battlefield, requires free subscription), KKAR (they did a morning story about our buttons that Robin was on), and of course, the Gateway.
We also had posts, using our photos and taken from our website, on the national websites: The Swing State Project, The National College Democrats Blog and www.democrats.com,
we are also now linked to on the CDA National Blog Kicking Ass, Get More Ass, the respected Brown Democrats Blog, the Nebraska Democratic Party’s Blog,
and confirmed readers of our blog include Bill Press and Anne Boyle, with more celebrity names soon to come.
Our weekly meeting-size goal of 30 members has been passed easily, with 37 and 39 members, respectively, at our last two meetings. We hold both social and campaign events almost every night of the week, and we’re just one damn good looking energetic group of people.
So pardon my optimism, but I think good things await.
And thank yous:
I promised some thank yous, because God knows I didn’t do these wonderful things, I’m just reporting on them.
This is a totally incomplete list, but here goes anyway
First things first: reporters from the Gateway, the Omaha Central Register, the Omaha World-Herald, the LJS, the Baltimore Sun, Channels 3 and 6, KKAR, and all other news stations who noticed us. Also the nice people at CDA, Swing State Project, and Democrats.com for spreading the news about our protests.
Clause, Topcat, Mike, and Hannah for their letting the group judiciously use their houses lately.
Erin for organizing intramural Volleyball.
All our readers.
Even more so, everyone who posts.
Even more so more so, everyone who posts, waits for replies, and posts replies to those.
The good people at Get Some Ass, Kicking Ass, and the Swing State Project for linking us.
Amanda for helping to sort our bills at Clancy’s.
Anne Boyle, Marc Kraft, Jim Suttle, Sarah A., K. Fahey, and soon Mike Fahey preemptively Ben Nelson?), and all our other speakers for coming to visit us at our meetings.
Georgie and Dickie for having such hateable faces, and for forcing young people to sit up and say: “f@#$, he’s screwing our future!”
Matthew L. for stopping by so much, contributing so often, and being the first one to write about our Buttons.
Our new members who are so active…it’s amazing that there are so many of you I can’t make a complete list without maybe leaving someone off!
Everyone who showed up to protest in the cold
and even more so, everyone who got up at Midnight for the State of the Union preprotest party and to get coffee at IHOP. That’s called dedication.
And oh so many more people:
do you have someone in CD to thank? This would be a great place to do it… as long as we’re being all mushy.
John, you forgot….
Gary, our lovable advisor, in which we would be lost without his wisdom.
Chadwick, who is here in spirit, and gives moral support from thousands of miles away
The other protestors who were inventive enough to bring a megaphone and lead our chants.
Playboy, our not so great waitor at IHOP, but still gave us a good laugh.
Ok now I’m just reaching here…..
I’d also like to give a shout out to all those Republicans out there. Without them controlling the White House, Congress, Supreme Court and most of the media, this ‘blue movement’ would not be possible. And keggers for Kerry would have never taken place. It’s going to make our congressional vicotires in ‘06 that much sweeter, and in ‘08 they’ll be wondering how the heck we pulled splitting the electoral votes in a state that’s so red its almost on fire. So keep up the good work everybody. This thing is only gonna get bigger.
I would like to thank Ryan for stepping into the president position without missing a beat. I would also would like to thank him for his time and his lovely button machines.
Daniel
I’m revoking my thank you to Matthew L. until he stops using phrase “Democrat Party.”
For those of you not familiar with the phrase…Karl Rove issued a study in ‘03 to figure out a way to hurt the democratic “brand.” See, polls were showing that, while Bush might have the support to win, in general, most Americans prefer the democratic party of the GOP. So reffering to opponents as members of the democratic party was potentially harmful to GW. The polling they did found that “democrat party” sounded trivial, slightly negative, and a bit elitist. Respondents were slightly less likely to say they prefered “the democrat party over the republican party” than they were to say they prefered “democrats over republicans.”
So if you hear a democrat use the term…stop them. If you hear a republican use the term, ask them why they are buying into negative politics at the worst level.
and back to thank yous:
I am thankful to calendars.com which is hosting the upcoming unodemocrats webcalendar.
see the beta version at
http://my.calendars.net/unodems/
I think Playboy the waiter gave me food poisoning.
And also a big thank you to the UNO Library which is so damn cool. So many books, so many renewals, and they just waived my fines for me. God I love libraries.
And that’s why I’m a democrat too.