CDNY

more info on the CDNY blog

This past weekend featured the 2009 College Democrats of New York Convention and as expected, it was by far our best convention ever! We had over 125 students in attendance, from 25 different chapters across the state. Students traveled as much as 8 hours from Buffalo and Fredonia into NYC where our Convention was held, hosted by by St. Johns College Democrats.

Friday night was our comedy show, featuring Laughing Liberally. I want to thank Justin Krebs, who worked with our organization to put the show together. The show was pretty funny and entertaining.

Saturday was a very long day and packed with activities. We had our state senate panel which everyone enjoyed, as our state legislators talking in depth about gay marriage which is currently on the floor of the Assembly and the increase in SUNY tuition. The biggest message that they had to deliver was that college students need to lobby our state's legislators by going to their offices, and making sure their voice is heard. I couldn't agree more. Lobbyist groups have become skilled experts at lobbying politicians to get what they want, and college students need to really improve in this area, now that we have shown everyone that we can mobilize thousand of volunteers during elections.

Our morning speakers included Matt Silverstein, President of the New York State Young Democrats, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who recently formed an exploratory committee for running for Senate in New York against Senator Gillibrand.

In the afternoon, we had our breakout sessions in New Media, Communications and Field Organizing. Surprisingly, this was one of our members' favorite events during the weekend. The in-depth discussion and trainings provided students with new skills that can add to their repertoire.

Our keynote speaker, Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, did not disappoint. He was incredible, bringing energy and passion with him to the stage, speaking for half an hour, and taking audience questions for another half an hour. Not only was Suozzi elected the youngest mayor ever of his hometown in Glen Cove, NY, but he also is constantly on twitter and plugged his new website a few times. He also uses facebook frequently- in fact his facebook page status said today that he had a great time at the Convention.

On Sunday we had a session on our organization by-laws and elections to elect the new executive board. I want to congratulate my friend Ian Rivera who will be taking over as president of the organization, as I move on to a position with the College Democrats of America. In all, it was a terrific convention. Check out our website in the coming days for all our pictures.

Bumped.

Check out the latest news and info on the College Democrats of New York blog

If you are a college or graduate student in NY and still haven't registered for the College Democrats of New York Convention, what are you waiting for? Register Here

The Convention is being hosted by the St. Johns University chapter, on their Manhattan campus at 101 Murray Street. The Convention kicks off Friday night at 9pm with a comedy show by Laughing Liberally at the Rush Bar on 579 6th Avenue.

Saturday morning starts with a breakfast at 9am, followed by introductions and a welcoming by the leadership of the NY Young Democrats.

At 11:30am, we will have our breakout sessions in
Communications, Finance, Field Organizing, and New Media. Communications is being hosted by Carly Lindauer, the former Communications Director of the state party. Finance is being led by Stephanie Hausner, the Finance Director for the McElroy State Senate campaign; Field Organizing is being led by Mike Boland from the Working Families Party, and New Media by Phillip Anderson from The Albany Project blog.

After lunch and another round of those same breakout sessions, we will have our state senate panel at 2:40 p.m. featuring State Senators Brian Foley, Liz Krueger, Bill Perkins, and Toby Ann Stavisky. They will be discussing the direction of our state senate and the policies they hope to implement in a new Democratic majority.

At 4:15 p.m. the Truman Project military group will be giving a seminar on how to debate military and defense issues from a Democratic perspective.

After some internal organization proceedings that we need to take care of such as by-laws updates, etc., Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi will be speaking at 6pm.

Later that evening at 9pm, at NYU's Kimmel building, at 60 Washington Square South, we will be hosting our Social Networking event with a slew of elected officials. The list of politicians expected in attendance includes: Assemblyman William Scarborough, Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV, Assemblyman Mike Spano, Councilman Tony Avella, Councilman Jim Gennaro, Councilman David Yassky, Councilman Eric Gioia, City Council candidate Steve Behar, City Council candidate Jaques Leandre, City Council candidate Francisco Moya and Borough President candidate Dave Kerpen.

On Sunday, we will have elections for our executive board.

We may have one or two additional politicians attending; Schumer's office said he might stop by if he has a chance for a few minutes

Update: For those of you who live in NY, State Senator Eric Adams will be joining us for the State Senate Panel. Manhattan Borough President Cory Stringer will be attending the welcoming introductions Saturday morning, and Norman Siegel who is running for NYC Public Advocate will be attending the Social Networking event Saturday night

cross posted on the College Democrats of New York blog

I wanted to bring to everyone's attention a great blog entry, posted on The Albany Project, by Phillip Anderson, in which he informs everyone that student ballots cast in the NY-20 Special election, are being challenged by Republican candidate James Tedisco, alleging that the students did not have residency in the district. Students attending Skidmore College who voted for Democrat Scott Murphy are facing the brunt of these attacks.

Click here for the latest on the situation

These are the same old tricks we've seen by the Republican Party in the past, trying to disenfranchise young voters with intimidation tactics, and challenges to our votes. Demonstrating how desperate the Republicans are getting in the district, they just challenged the validity of the ballot cast by Senator Gillibrand, the former Congresswoman of the NY-20 Congressional District. Thankfully, the Democratic Party has been stepping up to the plate, to defend the rights of students to vote.

cross posted on the CDNY blog: http://www.collegedemsny.com/blog

The College Democrats of NY have finalized the dates of the 2009 CDNY which will be held at St. Johns University in NYC. The convention will go from Friday March 27- Sunday March 29

The St. Johns college dems are currently working on arranging for housing at the Quality Inn Hotel in Manhattan. Meanwhile, we are brainstorming names of politicians who students would like to see speak at the convention.

More details soon to come

cross posted on College Dems of NY blog: http://www.collegedemsny.com/blog

After 2 exhausting hours of debate and discussion, the College Democrats of NY (CDNY) executive board voted by a majority vote for the St. Johns College Democrats to host the 2009 CDNY annual convention.

4 Schools had submitted application bids to host the convention included: Binghamton, Albany, and Stony brook, in addition to St. Johns.

With a state federation of 45 chapters, these 4 application bids were from 4 of the strongest chapters in the state, making debate longer and harder as the pros and cons of each school were discussed.

In the end St. Johns won the majority of votes to host the 2009 convention. The decision was largely based on the desire to host the convention downstate in NYC this upcoming year since last year it was held upstate at Cornell University. St. Johns has also consistently been one of the strongest chapters in the College Democrats of NY state federation and this past election season worked extremely hard at mobilizing students to help on state senate campaigns and travel to battleground states for Obama.

The convention is customarily held starting Friday evening through Sunday afternoon. The convention will be held sometime in March or April.

This coming year, an estimated 150-200 students are expected in attendance in the largest convention gathering for CDNY ever. Featured speakers, panels, and discussions will be taking place on the St. Johns campus in Manhattan.

This year we are aiming to have featured speakers like Governor Patterson and Senator Schumer as well as several state senators and Congressmen. Last year Congressman Dan Maffei and Eric Massa spoke at the convention as well as state senate candidate Don Barber.

More details about events and speakers will be coming soon.

cross posted on the CDNY blog: http://collegedemsny.com/...

As a Political Science major in college, I have taken several campaigns and elections courses as well as voting behavior seminars. Yet few have helped me with leadership skills as the President of the College Democrats of NY as Taking on the System by Kos. I realize that many of you have read his book I'm sure, but call me a late bloomer if you will, I didnt buy his book until 2 weeks ago, although I was so mesmerized by the reading that i finished it in 2 days. About 2 months ago, I finished reading Netroots Rising, another great read by Lowell Feld which contained many passages from Kos.

I have based much of my leadership off of the ideas I learned from Kos and it has truly helped make a difference here in NY. The blogging community has inspired us to post blog entries every day on liberal blogs such Kos, The Albany Project (NY), Future Majority, and our our website blog. We now average almost 100 hits a day on our blog which is quite an achievement for our once small movement.

From Kos, I learned to go after your enemy and hit em' hard and not to take anything for granted. It was after all, the Drudge report that cracked the Lewinsky scandal and it has been the netroots which has broke many other scandals or released information damaging to Republican candidates. Several of our hardest hitting blog posts bashing the National College Republicans got our enemies' attention, forcing them to respond to our attacks while their very own membership posted comments on their blog agreeing with us.

Kos preaches that there is nothing wrong with being liberal and to refuse to let Republicans frame the debate and not to give in to anything.

Some of our organization's best ideas have come from the netroots like texting the vote and we have been able to give a voice to college students who have historically been apathetic.

The final idea that I love is the notion that we need to get the right Democrats elected into office- ones that will stand up to the hardliners in the conservative base and that will bring the progressive values we need to our country. For too long, American politics have been to the right of center and we need to move that back to the left.

The netroots will lead the way moving into Obama's presidency.

The College Democrats of NY have ramped up their efforts for Barack Obama and the Democratic ticket with less than a week left to go before the election.

Over 600 college students will be on the ground in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Virginia and New Hampshire for this Get Out The Vote weekend and through Election Day. A total of 140 students will be going to Virginia for five straight days, while 420 will be going to Pennsylvania and another group of students is heading to New Hampshire to campaign for Jean Shaheen for Senate and Obama for America. Even more students will be calling into swing states across the country reminding students to vote for Senator Obama.

The ambitious GOTV efforts for the upcoming week mark the culmination of student activism across the state and country among young people in the College Democrats organization. In 2004, 70 students from NY were mobilized to swing states to aid John Kerry. In 2006, 75 college democrat members helped get Michael Arcuri and Kirsten Gillibrand elected to Congress. Three weeks ago, 150 students traveled to central Pennsylvania to canvass for Obama. With 600 students participating, this also makes the College Democrats of NY one of the most active state federations in the country.

An additional hundred students will be staying in NY to retake the State Senate for the first time in 40 years and swing four key Congressional seats from red to blue in the NY-29, NY-26, NY-25, and NY-13.

This week CDNY is launching their "Text the Vote" campaign in which college democrats from across the state will be reminding their friends to vote on November 4. The idea is for each college democrat member in NY to text message 5 of their friends, reminding them to vote for Barack Obama and the Democratic ticket. The potential and reach of the project could be enormous in GOTV efforts for young people.

(Cross posted on the CDNY Blog)

Election Day is almost here. We've knocked on doors, made phone calls, registered thousands of new voters, and participated in the election process of the most important election this country has had since 1932. We're at the home stretch, but our job is not done yet.

It's "Get Out the Vote" time, or "GOTV". For those of you that never heard these terms before, it refers to a category of political activity aimed at increasing the number of votes cast in an election. While we've registered voters, educated the public, and campaigned for Barack Obama and our local candidates, we now have to make sure that the people we talked to actually cast a ballot.

So, how do we do that? Well, there are two simple (yet effective) ways for every college democrat (and every democrat in general) to help Get Out the Vote on November 4th, and they'll only take you a few seconds to do: Sending a text message, and displaying a button.

Text messaging has become an essential tool in the everyday lives of students and is a great medium to communicate. According to results released by the Student PIRGs New Voters Project and CREDO Mobile, in cooperation with the University of Notre Dame, text message reminders sent to young voters on Super Tuesday increased turnout by 4.6 percentage points. And while in New York, Obama is leading McCain by as much as 33%, getting 4.6% more students out to the polls can be make or break for more local candidates.

Reminding a friend to vote at Hofstra University, for example, could be make or break for the great Democratic candidate Kristen McElroy.

So, we need you to Text the Vote on Election Day. We need everyone to find 5 friends, and send them a short message reminding them how important it is to vote, and that every vote counts. This won't take up very much time, but it will have a major impact on who shows up to vote.

The other way to GOTV is as easy as changing your Facebook picture and status: it's changing your Facebook and MySpace and other social networking pictures and status. On our website, we have several buttons and picturesfor everyone to put up on their profile picture, to remind friends to also vote (You can also find these buttons and pictures on the bottom of this post) It's very simple, but when friends see that you've voted, they'll be reminded to do the same.

So, feel free to download these images, share with friends, and put up wherever you can!

~ John Farrelly is the New Media Director for the College Democrats of New York, and is working hard to Get Out the Vote.

cross posted on the CDNY blog: http://collegedemsny.com/blog/

This is unreal. Every hour i check my inbox i literally hear and read about another college democrats chapter in NY going to a battleground state for Obama or working to retake the NY State Senate.

Here's the breakdown for this weekend:

- 60 students from NYC chapters going to Penn State
- 70-80 students from Hofstra for Obama going to Penn State
- 60 from Cornell going to Stroudsburg
- 20-30 from Bard going to Hazelton
- 10 from Binghamton? going to?

*132 people from Columbia U./ nyc area going to VA

When I informed our College Dems of America VP, his words were priceless,

"I'll let you know when my jaw lifts off the floor."

My name is Dan Levin and I'm dam proud to be President of the College Democrats of NY

cross posted on the CDNY blog: http://collegedemsny.com/blog/

I'm on so many list serves that its hard to keep track. But this press release caught my attention:

This Wednesday @3pm there will be a Huge GOTV Rally in Rochester, NY featuring Senator Hillary Clinton and Democratic challengers Eric Massa (NY-29), Dan Maffei (NY-25), Alice Kryzan (NY-26). Address is below:

Monroe Community College

Stabins Physical Education Complex (Building 10)

1000 East Henrietta Road

Rochester, NY 14424

Parking will be available in Lots G, M, and M1

For those of you who live in the upstate New York area, this is a great rally to attend featuring our own Senator Clinton and 3 great Democratic challengers who can swing their district from red to blue in this Election.

Dan Levin is the President of the College Democrats of NY