''My Weekend at Camp Wellstone''

"It's been a long time since I've been to summer camp, but this past weekend I spent three days at a special one -- Camp Wellstone, one of the legacies of the great Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone. It's run by Wellstone Action, a 2-year old organization with over 100,000 members -- and growing fast.

Camp Wellstone (located this weekend at Seattle Pacific University) offers three tracks: citizen activism & organizing, running a campaign, and being a candidate. Not unexpectedly, many "Dean" folks were among the campers, including (but not limited to): Nancie Kosnoff, Neal Traven, Jackie Minchew, Mary Van Bronkhorst, Charlene Rawson, Mark McDonald, Sara Needleman-Carleton, and Nigel Herberg. We were dispersed among the three tracks.

The Wellstone folks were fabulous in term of their energy, knowledge, delivery, and respect for their students. The 3 days ran like clockwork. Even the food was tasty, despite the lack of coffee which the organizers repeatedly warned us about.

The activist/organizing workshop -- the one I attended -- nicely blended my "old" knowledge with new information, although I was thirsting for more depth on several topics. Topics covered included relationship building, leadership, lobbying, voter registration, media, and power (presented as a very necessary and good thing). We also learned about the overall Wellstone philosophy and the Wellstone triangle with its three equally critical legs: progressive public policy, grassroots electoral policy, and issue-based organizing. The triangle message was powerful -- no leg can stand on its own, all three are required if we want to take back our country.

Even more energizing than the material, however, was the passion, creativity, intelligence, and just plain likeability of the participants. The focus of the entire weekend was on what we can do, not what we can't do. I walked away thinking (at least momentarily...and still several hours later) that with so many good folks doing so many good things, we will succeed, period! The session closed with this MLK quote: "...let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil..."-from Bev Marcus. Thanks, Bev, for writing this up for us.