Okay - What do you Dean Supporters Make of This:

Not starting a flame war - but I'd like to know what you think. Personally way too much is at stake for us Dems to make a mistake. I have stayed away from the Anti-Clark and Anti-Dean threads because frankly I want whoever wins the Dem nomination to win (if there is an election) - but this struck me as a little too Bush-esq - and I don't understand.

Ejected from a Dean rally for selling Dean T-shirts: That's
> People-Powered.
> 8/26/03
>
> By Dan Johnson-Weinberger, www.djw.info
>
> Can you get kicked out, escorted by an armed police officer,
> from the grass-roots, bottom-up, "People-Powered" Howard Dean rally
> for selling a homemade T-shirt that promotes Howard Dean's candidacy?
> Yes, you can.
>
> That's what happened to me an hour or so ago in Chicago.
>
> I'm one of those people who have helped propel Howard Dean's
> candidacy to
> front-runner status. I signed up on his listserv. I sent him
> ten bucks
> (doubled to twenty with federal matching funds). I forward a
> few emails from the campaign.
>
> When I heard he was having a People-Powered rally in
> Chicago, I decided to take the next step.
>
> I ordered 25 T-shirts that read "Dean for President, Obama
> for Senate. The democratic wing of the Illinois Democratic
> Party." Barack
> Obama (www.obamaforillinois.com) is running in the Democratic
> primary for the U.S. Senate seat in Illinois, and Obama is
> the most progressive candidate in the race. Most young
> progressives are backing Obama's campaign, and I figured
> that Dean and Obama were trying to build the same
> constituency.
>
> It cost me a little more than $300, but what the heck.
> T-shirt wearing season is only for a few more weeks, and
> I'm sure at least a couple dozen people at the Dean rally
> would like the shirt.
>
> That's democracy, right?
>
> I put a disclaimer on the back (Not authorized by either
> campaign, not necessarily a mutual endorsement) and
> contact info for getting more (www.djw.info).
>
> When I get to the rally site, up on the rooftop on the far
> end of Navy Pier with a beautiful view of Chicago, I just
> propped open my suitcase filled with the shirts and held
> one of them up for the people milling about to see.
>
> This made some of the staff nervous. The people wearing dark
> suits, somber expressions and big laminated passes on a
> hot summer morning avoid making eye contact. Lots of people
> smiled appreciatively. A few seek me out because they
> support Obama as well. Some are supporting Hynes or
> Blair Hull. I start to sell some shirts, trade contact
> information with people.
>
> This would be a good thing from the people-powered Dean
> campaign's perspective right?
>
> Apparently not.
>
> At the direction of one of the Dean staffers, a woman police
> officer strides
> through the crowd and tells me to stop selling the shirts
> and zip up the
> suitcase. You need a permit to sell anything in Chicago, she
> says, and the Dean campaign can sell their own T-shirts
> because they rented the space.
> Seems like a bad ordinance to me, and it seems ridiculous
> that the campaign would stop Dean for President T-shirts
> from getting distributed. I shut the suitcase.
>
> But a guy who was talking to me before the officer came by
> wants a shirt.
>
> And now I have a dilemma.
>
> I think it's ridiculous that at a Dean rally you can't sell
> a Dean T-shirt.
>
> There's someone who wants one.
>
> There are no officers around.
>
> So who would care?
>
> After a few minutes, I tell my new friend to take the shirt
> out of the suitcase himself and to give me the fifteen
> bucks. There are no officers looking. We're in the clear.
> Everybody's happy.
>
> Except for the Dean campaign.
>
> One of their staffers ran to snitch and tell an officer.
>
> He came over and told me that I'd been told to leave.
>
> For a moment, with a sympathetic crowd of people, I thought
> about resisting.
>
> This is a grass-roots campaign. The democratic wing of the
> Democratic Party. A people-powered rally. You can't ask
> for anything better than someone on their own initiative
> trying to distribute T-shirts to promote the campaign.
>
> But I wanted to hear Dean speak and I didn't feel like
> getting arrested or causing a scene.
>
> Off we went, escorted by this armed policeman, through all
> the people milling about, waiting for the rally to start.
>
> Someone said they liked my shirt as I left.
>
> It was an odd feeling. It felt as if I had done something
> wrong, and it also felt like about half the crowd would
> be happy to wear a shirt.
>
> I could understand some discomfort on the campaign's part if
> I was trying to distract from the campaign's message or
> was trying to get on the television cameras and somehow
> set back the rally's purpose.
>
> But the shirts were advancing the campaign's purpose. They
> just weren't controlled by the campaign.
>
> The police officers were very nice (all working part-time)
> and explained that once the campaign people asked me to
> leave, they had to kick me out.
> The Dean campaign was paying for the event, after all.
>
> So off I went, passing by people with campaign T-shirts and
> campaign stickers.
>
> At the entrance to Navy Pier, I picked up a USA TODAY with a
> cover story on Dean's campaign, talking about his new
> chartered plane called the "Grassroots Express" and the
> money and energy to become a player for the nomination.
> The irony seemed a little thick.
>
> I couldn't really imagine this happening at a progressive
> event with a democratic culture. And I definitely blame
> the Dean campaign for kicking me out - I'm sure if they
> had told security that they didn't mind if I sold Dean
> T-shirts, then the officers wouldn't have said a word
> to me.
>
> I wondered whether I'd been fed a line about Dean being from
> the democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Maybe some
> of the hard-core lefties are right - Dean is using
> progressives to vault himself into front-runner status, and
> now that's he's there, the same old East Coast snobbishness
> that alienates voters will infect the campaign, showing he
> and his people to be much less democratic and progressive
> than I'd like to believe.
>
> If that is true, I'm still proud of my tiny little part in
> putting the early 2003 Dean into contention. I'm not sure
> I like the late 2003 Dean campaign as much.
>
> And perhaps the ultimate moral of this story is that
> electing candidates is far too important to leave at the
> direction of the campaign.
> The more that we act on our own - walking our precinct,
> convincing our neighbors about the merits of particular
> candidates - the better off we are.
> That builds up a democratic culture and avoids the self-
> defeating spectator culture of 'following' politics the
> way we follow a celebrity's career or a sports team.
> (Thanks to the Onion for that last insight).
>
> So if you'd like a DEAN/OBAMA T-shirt, I've still got 20 of
> them and I'd be happy to mail you one. Just paypal me $15
> plus a couple more dollars for postage to
> midwestdemocracy@yahoo.com or send me a check to
> P.O. Box 14314,
> Chicago, IL 60614.
>
> But I won't sell you a shirt at any People-Powered Dean
> rally, because I'm not allowed to.
>
> Dan Johnson-Weinberger




>

Who gives a shit.

He broke a CITY ordinance.

Nothing to do with Dean.

n/t

Vendors have to have city issued permits. The Dean event took place literally on city property. Though the guy who wrote this was well intentioned, there was no way he could do this without getting caught and the Dean people couldn't let him do it because he was breaking the law by selling t-shirts with the candidate's name on them.

OUTSIDE the rally, on the public sidewalk. (Note: I have no idea if Milwaukee requires a permit for selling things or if any of these people had said permits. But it wasn't on the rally site proper, so the Dean people didn't have any juristiction.)

Sorry, dude...law's the law, and if they let you break it, they'd have to let the guy selling the Bush Rules! neckties stay, too, or else be (rightfully) branded as hypocrites and law-breakers themselves...

I saw people openly selling various Dean and non-Dean items with no interference. Maybe the Dean people were pre-warned about that city ordinance, and didn't want problems.

To someone doing that at another candidates rally.

If the campaign lets just any unauthorized person sell merchandise like this at one of their events, then someone could sit at a Dean event and sell shirts saying "Dean worse than Bush in '04." And if the campaign allowed someone to sell unauthorized pro-Dean stuff, then they would HAVE to allow the anti-Dean seller too.

The campaign must keep control of its events. To do anything else is political suicide.

but this sort of criticism is about as low as it gets.

But if there's an ordinance requiring you to get a permit, you should have gotten a permit.

What could have happened here was the decision to enforce the ordinance as a means of guaranteeing that anti-Dean or pro-Bush people wouldn't try to interfere by selling their own propaganda. The Dean people would look bad if they turned a blind eye towards violations of local law by Dean supporters, but had Kucinich or Bush people escorted from the premises. And they couldn't have a free for all, with everyone selling whatever they wanted in support of whatever candidate they supported. It was their rally, after all.

Without knowing all the facts, including what was going on in the Dean people's heads, it's just impossible to judge the propriety or fairness of what happened.

How so?

The guy admittedly vioated the law. I have no problem with this and I don't understand why he's blaming his mistakes on Dean.

Sounds like a disgruntled sidewalk vendor to me.

All campaigns need to control their message. What if the shirt said Dean '04 and Lieberman can go to hell! Well, we might agree with that, but the campaign doesn't want people to see that and think that Dean put that shirt out there.

This is a non-issue.

1) No license/permit to sell you weren't allowed to sell. Get a permit and sell to your heart's content.

2) Sales of Dean's merchandise goes directly to fund Dean's campaign not into your pocket as the proceeds from your sales would invariably have done. Hence their desire to have people buy THEIR shirts and not yours.

3) Could it have been handled better? Sure...

TB

But I doubt if too many campaigns would appreciate you making a fast buck off of their candidate's name.

I really like all the off-the-cuff and well thought out comments - my first instinct really was - well he was breaking a city ordinance - but then I guess I'm in a very negative mood today - I appreciate all the logical responses. On another day maybe this wouldn't have gotten to me.

By the way - this wasn't me - just an e-mail that was sent to me.

I'm not nit-picking - but...
I don't mean you any disrespect - but...

You see where I'm coming from?

Let me clarify what this long-winded screed says. Somebody thought he'd try to make a quick buck selling Dean T-shirts at the Sleepless Summer Rally in Chicago. I seriously doubt the Dean people would have any problems with his GIVING them to people, or anything of the sort. I didn't read anything about his doing this to raise money for Dean's campaign or anyone else apart from his own bank account. It is the same as if somebody printed up a bunch of Iron Maiden shirts and tried to sell them in front of the arena where Iron Maiden was playing. This is a bogus complaint, and the vendor got what he deserved.

Karl Rove flunky at rally...flunky sees that smoeone is hawking shirts with no permit. Flunky alerts police, police arrest person selling merchandise without a permit. Headline across the USA put out by RNC propaganda arm?

Dean Supporters Flout City Laws

The Dean campaign staffer did exactly the right thing. First the person gets a warning, then when that warning is ignored the authorities are alerted by the campaign staffer to head off exactly this kind of scenario.

I don't doubt your take on this one bit. Something just seemed "odd" about it - and maybe it was just the guy who sent the thing, but maybe something more. Your theory sounds reasonable - these days.