Democracy For the Heart of America

I have created a Google Groups dicscussion list for DFHA. To signup for it, see the link at the bottom left of the page, right below the DFA Link Sign up. You can simply enter your address, and click subscribe. Easy deal.

My expectation is that the DFHA will become whatever it becomes. My hope is that it becomes more than just a place of announcements, but rather a place where people discuss and have civil debate about issues of the day. I'm hoping for more original content, member's thoughts, than simply forwarding the latest news article. I want to hear YOUR voice, and not some professional journalist. I get enough of that already. :-)

This is the entire speech that I gave at the GKCDFA meeting on July 5, 2006 at Californo's in Westport announcing the formation of this new organization, DFHA.

I have a prepared announcement to share with you. I'll be happy to answer any questions at the end.

Open communication, Cooperation, and Community. These are three fundamental progressive values that bring us all together. Open communication, Cooperation, and Community. These are values that unite us.

Today, the Kansas City progressive community seems to be a community divided. We allow ourselves to be divided by the state line, county lines, rivers, and issues. We allow ourselves to be divided in many ways that, when you step back from it, are artificial and insignificant divisions. Although policy details divide us, our values unite us. We are united in our world views. We are united by the things that really matter. We are joined at our hearts. We call this area the Heart of America, and for good reason. It's more than just a geographic area in the heart of the country. It's also a place where people care about each other, and they feel a mutual responsibility for each other.

Happy Independence Day!

I made a bunch of updates to the web site today.

I cleaned up some of the menus. I got rid of stuff we don't really need right now. I moved the things that we think are important towards the top. I think the public menu only contains the things that pertain to the public. Login to get more menu items.

I worked on the taxonomy some. We need volunteers to create a list of all the progressive groups in the KC metro area. We will add them to the book page on progressive Groups, and we need to add them to the taxonomy at the same time. If some one can do the leg work on the groups, and up date the progressive groups page, I'll do the taxonomy.

I have enabled the "Tiny MCE" editor.  It is supposed to give a simple and easy way to create rich text content.  In other words, when editing a story or event, you can just highlight some text and add bold or underline.  So it's a what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) editor for simple text things.  It's fun.  Try it out on your own blog today
I think it's only turned on for certain users. 

Open Communication, Cooperation, and Community. These are three fundamental progressive values that bring us all together. Open communication, Cooperation, and Community. These are values that unite us.

Today, Kansas City seems to be a community divided. We allow ourselves to be divided by the state line, county lines, rivers, and issues. We allow ourselves to be divided in many ways that, when you step back from it, are artificial and insignificant divisions. Although policy details divide us, our values unite us. We are united in our world views. We are united by the things that really matter. We are joined at our hearts. We call this area the Heart of America, and for good reason. It's more than just a geographic area in the heart of the country. It's also a place where people care about each other, and they feel a mutual responsibility for each other.