DURHAM: What a crazy two weeks!! Brian and I have been keeping busy in Durham with speaking engagements, a very successful Lobby Day at the State Legislature, a fun summer baseball game, and Wellstone Training all weekend.
On Tuesday night we held a public forum at the Chapel Hill Town Hall to explain the Voter-Owned Elections program that will be used in Chapel Hill this year. Brian and I were in charge of giving a basic but detailed overview of the program… it’s challenging to keep people interested and not falling asleep when you have to explain boring details! But we had people laughing at several points, so that’s a good sign. It think what made us most nervous was that Bob Hall was actually sitting in the audience… but he liked our presentation! We were even on TV. You know you’ve made it far when your event is broadcasted on Chapel Hill Government TV! We’re pretty much celebrities now; the paparazzi wait for us every night outside the office… it’s pretty crazy.
But seriously, the forum was really cool, because we got to share the VOE program with Chapel Hill residents. As ‘Chapel Hillians’ (is that a word?), we should be proud to be the first city in the state and only one of three in the nation to have publically financed campaigns for all municipal races! Mr. Mark Kleinschmidt, a current Council Member who is running for mayor this year, was there, and he is a big fan of VOE. Thank you for being there! We hope all other candidates use the public fund for their campaigns!
Tomorrow we will attend the Durham NAACP Conference, so we’re really excited about meeting more people who are really active in the community and see how we can unite our efforts towards social change.
I hope everyone is having a wonderful week! It was fun to reunite with all the interns and with Ashley and Jonathan over the weekend! Apparently people at Wellstone liked us… at least that’s what Katy said when we got back 🙂
More to come next week!
-Cristina
and by “like us” you mean….