Southwest Virginia

DPVA Roundtables in SWVA

Posted by brian on Sunday, July 01

Yesterday, Levar Stoney, our party's Political Director, and I traveled through Southwestern Virginia to two meetings with local party chairs, 9th Congressional District Central Committee members, representatives of the Southwest Virginia Young Democrats and several local candidates.

In both of the events, which were held in Dublin and Abingdon, nearly 60 Democrats, representing nearly every city and county within the 9th District participated in an interactive discussion. The majority of the roundtable featured a free flowing discussion from the members of the party in several key topic areas such as candidate recruitment, grassroots campaigning, using the party website, volunteer recruitment and methods to expand our party here in Southwest Virginia. Another major function of the roundtable provided attendees with the opportunity to learn about our Southwest Virginia slate of House and Senate candidates and ended with a grassroots campaign training session.

Everyone I spoke with enjoyed the opportunity to come together, albeit in two locations, and discuss issues that affect our party on a regional level. From the local and district committee level, the event provided a one on one opportunity to discuss any local issues with Levar and a chance for each committee to share best practices with other committees.

From my own personal perspective, the event was good for several reasons. First, having traveled to nearly every committee throughout the 9th Congressional District in my position, it was awesome to have so many of the key democratic stakeholders in the same room together. Second, it was great to hear the sharing of information from committee to committee and provided me with the realization I should facilitate this type of regional communication between committees more frequently. Finally, listening to the discussion of our democratic leaders helped identify areas in which I can work to improve upon in my daily activities, strengthening the overall effort of my position and the 50 State Strategy as it applies to Southwest Virginia - learning through the positive, successful action of others then continuing to share these lessons until everyone in our party benefits from that knowledge.

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