Chairs Message – May 2009

Chair’s Annual Report

We enjoyed a very successful year in 2008. Electing President Obama and a Democratic Congress was the absolute highlight of the year. We nearly quadrupled our membership. Through dedication, competence and hard work, the Board and other DAS volunteers made this a very successful year.

Here are the highlights since the current Board was elected in September 2007:

Membership growth: From 283 members in September 2007, we have grown to 1100 members today. That’s nearly quadrupling our membership.

This growth went beyond Stockholm. Our Outreach Chair Sally Kennedy did a phenomenal job setting up chapters in Skåne, Gothenburg, Uppsala, Halland, and Kalmar/Öland.

There was a fantastic publicity campaign before the election headed by the publicity committee co-chairs Brian Owens and Christina Andersson. Our publicity committee made the news in all the major Swedish media—TV 1, 2 and 4, on radio stations 1 and 4, Aftonbladet, Svenska Dagbladet, Dagens Nyheter and newspapers throughout the country. When the Swedish media wanted to know about the election, they phoned Brian, Christina, Paul and other members of our publicity committee.

We enjoyed a great array of diverse events—some 20 events since January 2008—
Let me mention the most important ones:

Global Primary: We successfully held the first ever American election in downtown Stockholm. Who would have ever thought that would happen? We pulled Democrats from the woodwork to vote in the Democratic Primary. 274 Americans voted. Results: 69.7% for Barack Obama and 29.9% for Hillary Clinton

We watched presidential debates.

We heard an illuminating panel discussion about the election led by Christina Zampas.

We held our very popular July 4 picnic where all Americans gather-not just members of Democrats Abroad.

We celebrated victory night in November-a spectacular all night celebration at the Scandic Anglais Hotel. This fantastic evening culminated when Barak Obama won the election along with Congressional Democrats. There were great panels discussing the election, dinner & dancing, and good media coverage. This was truly a once in a lifetime event organized in grand style by our Events Chair Roland Williams.

The presidential inaugural was yet another terrific spectacular celebration: We watched the inaugural and then celebrated with dinner and dancing.

We’ve had many voter’s registration events on Saturdays at Tulleys lead by Sandy Mansson. There was a two day telethon in September calling members to register to vote. We held a very successful last minute emergency balloting in October where our votes were sent by special courier to the United States.

There were also art auctions (one highly political) and a cabaret.

We held several events highlighting distinguished visitors such as Karin Robinson from the Obama campaign who taught us how to campaign in Sweden; Kevinn Lampe, former Obama campaign advisor, who offered his political insights; Erik Åsard, the head of the North American Institute in Uppsala, who spoke about Hillary Clinton; and Niklas Nordström of Prime PR who presented a report on the use of the Social Media in the Obama campaign.

We renewed and improved our website, so that we could all be connected. Thank you Carl McElwee, our webmaster, Tom Howland, head of the website committee and Carol Adamson.

We also connected with Democrats all around the globe through conventions in Brussels and Istanbul. And we will be represented in Washington DC to lobby for Americans abroad later this month.

We connected with the Democratic National Committee through meetings with David Plouffe, Obama’s Campaign Advisor.

All this did not happen by itself. It took the dedication of many talented people

First of all, I want to thank our outgoing treasurer, Robbin Battison

Robbin has served us well for four years. Our money has been handled well. There’s never been a problem with handling our accounts. But Robbin has done much more than being treasurer. He is now head of the committee to do the tough work to revise our bylaws and he has agreed stay on until that work is finished.

Robbin has offered us sensible, wise advice for four years. His latest good advice was setting up voting for the AGM. We could not have done it without him. Robbin is not just a stick in the mud examining balance sheets. I remember how well he entertained us at the Inaugural Dinner.

Of course, I want to thank our entire board for their outstanding work and dedication.

But you don’t have to be a Board member to make contributions:

Bruce Morris practically by himself sold our Obama gear. These sales were crucial to bringing money to our treasury. We are entirely dependent on donations since we have no membership fees. There are still Obama inaugural buttons for sale.

Christina Zampas, after her dedicated work as Vice Chair, was instrumental in setting up our chapter in Uppsala.

So you can contribute even if you are NOT a member of the Board. Do volunteer!

We can be proud of what we accomplished.

It’s been a great ride. I am happily handing the torch to our new talented Chair, Peter Dahlen.

The best is yet to come.

Bill

Bill Borden
Outgoing Chair, Democrats Abroad Sweden
chair@democratsabroad.se

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