Hi,
I'm writing you because I'm very concerned that while Dr. Dean may well be invited to give a speech at the Democratic National Convention, his many supporters (except the delegates,of course) are not going to welcome inside the convention site. Indeed, uninvited guests may well be shunted to some sort of holding area at some distance where they won't even be able to view the area where the proceedings are going on. The DNC is, of course, making plans for "security."
So, what do I propose? Well, it seems to me that the Deanfest in Vermont is a good beginning but it would be even better if there were another venue near to but not in Boston where Dean supporters could gather, hear their leader in person and construct a platform, in both senses of that word--i.e. a physical platform from which speakers could address us and a document that would incorporate our democratic goals and on which candidates for other offices who want the grassroots support can run on.
There are several cities within 45 miles of Boston with good ground transportation, near airports and convention facilities that are not yet booked for July. There's the Tsongas Arena in Lowell (the cradle of industrialization); there's the Verizon Center in Manchester, NH (a burgeoning high tech area that used to be very depressed) and Worchester, MA about which I know little except Lucent is not doing so well there and it does have what it calls the Centrum Center in the middle of the city (probably the result of urban renewal). Philladelphia, the cradle of democracy, would be a nice place to have a Deanocrat Convention but I think it's probably too far away to piggy back on the media attention to the DNC Convention.
As an aside, one of the things that has surprised me about this technological age when everything is supposed to move so fast, is how long it still takes to get information out and form a consensus around an idea. Word of mouth is still probably quicker, perhaps because the word comes in a known package of past experience which helps determine whether or not the information can be trusted--a mantle of credibility, if you will, which the corporate media have obviously lost, and which they try to compensate for with repetition.
Anyway, I'd appreciate some feed-back, especially if you think it's a useful idea to fix on an alternative site where there is less chance of confrontation with imported "security forces" from Miami and elsewhere.
I am going to post this letter on the blog and people can respond through my personal blog http://hannah.smith-family.com/blog/