Being in isolation gives one an abundance of time to think. The question that keeps coming to me is what am I really doing to help this fight. Although up to this point I feel I have done as much as I was able given my means and time. However, it was not enough, we lost the political battle but we are still fighting the ideological war.

In this time of uncertainty, we either can wait to see what kind of future is created for us by a corrupt political establishment or we can start creating our new future. Many local businesses are still open and they need our support. Be the change you want to see in the world.

- Start buying meals and supplies from local restaurants and farmers. If you have the means and knowledge help them to expand their business to reach people who need their services most though online ordering.

- Research green sustainable alternatives to things like clothing and household goods.

- Refuse to support Walmart, McDonalds, Publix and Amazon (and yes that means giving up Amazon Prime)

-Support progressive candidates that follow Bernie's lead such as Shahid Buttar who will be trying to unseat Nancy Pelosi

These are just a few to help get started, please add more, tell us what ways you are being the change that you want to see in the world.

While doing a google news seach I found an event that mentions
"Sanders supporters are hosting a march across
the Ringling Bridge today at 5pm and a celebration
of the candidate's birthday at Z's Restaurant
afterward to educate voters about the candidacy."
I didn't find the event mentioned here.

I recently had the chance to hear from Pam Keith at the Florida Democratic Party Convention, and I was beyond impressed.

She has the energy and ideas to really excite younger voters and she seems to be the most Bernie-like candidate in the Senate race. The other 2 candidates are massively outspending her, and will continue to do so.

I strongly suggest looking into her platform and donating to her campaign. Here is the link to do so

Today's Orlando event was interesting but unfortunately that wasn't for the right reasons. I was very excited to attend today's event and had driven over an hour to attend. Unfortunately, I was so frustrated by the lack of organization and competency by the event host, a representative of People's America PAC, that I left before the meeting was over. At least 7 others out of the 30-40 people in attendance left as well.

The trouble began with the Event location itself. When I arrived, mind you I was around 45 minutes early, No one was there and the building was locked. The few individuals I did find after knocking on a few doors were at the location working (marketing firm) and had no knowledge of the event. 30 minutes before the event a couple showed up to unlock the building and has hastily threw together a few signs so people knew which door to enter. The Event host did not show up until 15 minutes before 4pm. When the host arrived he seemed under prepared. There was no meeting agenda or goals. As he said himself "i'm honestly just winging it". Now being the representative of the PAC the host kept repeating every couple of minutes that the event and PAC weren't part of Bernie's campaign and that they are separate entities. I don't know that anyone had issue with that but it brought up the PAC itself which many in the crowd, myself included, are not big fans of. This lead to a heated conversation about the PAC and why one exists. Unfortunately, the PAC representative was unable to explain how the PAC works and why it is necessary. He kept talking about doing fundraisers and paying for billboards and literature but when the crowd asked questions he was unable to answer. His responses typically consisted of "that's not how it works" or "you're wrong" or "you don't have to donate". There were other ways in which he responded, but nothing explained in simple terms about why the PAC needs to exist and why it's a good thing. Fortunately, I figured this out myself after thinking about the snippets of information I did gather on the way home.

As I understand it now, the PAC exist because it is illegal to pool funds for political purposes, even in small sums, without a record of who the money came from and what it was spent on. With a PAC each individual donor can contribute a maximum of $1000 to the PAC. This money can be used for anything by the PAC but a maximum of $5000 can be contributed from the PAC to the Bernie Sanders campaign directly.

What the PAC representative did was talk about pooling money and using it for billboards and literature amongst other things but he mentioned that any excess money could be used to support other candidates or other non Bernie Sanders political activities. I don't think anyone was happy with this as most people believe making a donation directly to the campaign makes more sense than trusting the PAC to do the right thing with it.

Solution: We use the PAC strictly as a passthrough to do our local campaigning as groups legally. Example: Tom, Billy and Sue of Kissimmee for Bernie want to fund a printing of flyers. Each donates $50 to the PAC and that money is immediately earmarked for their flyers. The PAC writes a check and the order is made the same day. The PAC now has a record of the donations, what it was spent on and Tom, Billy and Sue have their flyers which they can give to anyone to disperse because they were technically payed for by the PAC. If the PAC would like to run a matching donation drive up to the $5000 donation limit entitled to the PAC, the PAC can collect the funds for that specific purpose. At the end of the day this will leave the PAC bank account empty (or very close to it) when there are no "donations" being made for any group projects. This is in my opinion the only right way to do it. If the PAC simply collects donations and then makes a decision of what to do with the money later that leaves room for dishonest behavior and money wasted on candidates or projects the donors may not support.

Between the PAC talk we also talked about actions we could take, people and groups to contact (unions), and growing supporters with local meetups. Some of these ideas were dismissed but eventually another attendee started passing around signup sheets for: What I can do, who I can help contact, among other things. Many in the group were astonished that none of the ideas mentioned had been looked at and nothing actionable could be done in the short term. Also during this time other national groups and PAC's who are already active in Florida were brought up. The term "splinter group" was used to describe the People's America PAC mostly because it covers an area "Florida" that is already covered and it seems from an outside perspective that creating a new PAC was an unnecessary step when existing PAC's could serve the same purpose. On this account the PAC representative was correct in that having a locally organized PAC is better as local communication is easier than working with a group that might have an office 3 states away. Additionally progressive Democrats of America was mentioned as a group that makes sense to join and work with.

In conclusion, the meeting may have been productive but it may have also left people wondering why they went. The meeting seriously lacked organization and professionalism and the PAC representative was very obviously inexperienced with running meetings or organizing a campaign. As someone who has volunteered over 1000 hours to a congressional campaign as well run for public office I can say with certainty that the representative from People's America PAC has no business holding the position he does and the person chosen to replace him should have considerable experience in organizing political activities in years past.

If you disagree with my review, I respect your opinion, but Downvotes are not helpful. Please add to the conversation instead. I wrote this in hopes of fixing the problems I saw now. I want to see Bernie win PERIOD and having better experienced event organizers who can excite supporters instead of demoralize them is what we need to make it happen.

IN exit polls, NC voters cited "income inequality" as their most important issue. That could be good for Bernie!

Hello Berners! As many here, I have been looking for ways to help despite the relative lack of activity in our state and it occurs to me that outside of coding skills (and phone-banking of course), there don't seem to be any ways to crowd-source other things that would be beneficial to the campaign.

For example, I'm not much of coder, but have a lot of marketing and social media credentials, how can I find others with the same expertise to develop and work with on a project? How about educators getting together, or healthcare professionals? I feel that there should be some ways to pool talent like this and make it local enough to allow face to face meeting, anyone agree or know of such a tool? Should be build one? Thanks for any input!

Ok Everyone, The next meeting will be on June 11th at 6:30 pm at the at the Lakeland Police Department Community room at 7 pm. The room is on the second floor at 219 N Massachusetts Ave in Lakeland. You have 8 days to clear your schedule and find a friend to bring. The fun is just getting started, don't get left behind. If you have never been to a meeting, now's the time to meet new people, talk politics and help get Great candidates elected to represent us. Remember Democracy is NOT a spectator sport.

hi, my name is Juan. I'm 24 years old. I have cerebral palsy. I would be willing to help out if anybody can give me a ride. I live in Hillsborough county which has some colleges. I think we need to pass out flyers and voter registration forms if Bernie is going to win the state

Just saw this from the Live Polling megathread. Posting it hereto try and spread the word. http://i.imgur.com/1qBzPgH.jpg

This was just posted in the Florida - Vote for Bernie Facebook page. I'm not sure if it's true, but most comments say they were able to. If you're independent who has been registered since 2/16/16, go to your precinct and challenge to vote Democrat!!!

Edit: So based on the initial information, my wife went ahead and 'challenged' to vote (in Broward county). She was given a provisional ballot. In the provisional ballot, there is a sentence with a blank space, where you are asked to mention what party she was registered to. She was asked to fill in that space with 'NPA'. After that, she was given the ballot where she went ahead and voted for Bernie.

I think what will happen is that when the provisional ballot will be opened, and when they see 'NPA', they will throw the ballot away, essentially rendering her vote ineligible for counting. She was given a phone number and asked to call in 48 hours to find out if her vote was counted or not. I will update this post with that result as well.

Anyone know where the location of the Florida Caucus is gonna be on March 15th?

I propose we organize a march / caravan to lligator Alcatraz to protest ICE.

Id love to vote this Tuesday but im not affiliated with any party atm. Is it too late to change?

In a recent thread someone had mentioned that numerous attempts at starting events have been sidetracked by people not attending. I can understand life getting in the way, and people being wary of going to a meeting of people they've never met. So, I want to remove that obstacle.

Would anyone like to get together for a Central Florida affinity meeting through Skype or Hangouts? We can schedule it for an hour, during a weeknight, to reduce the possibility of conflicts. You don't have to speak, you don't have to be on camera, you can listen along and participate in chat.

We can discuss:

• Forming a city-specific network (Clearwater, Lakeland, Orlando, St Pete, Tampa, UCF, USF, UT)

• Forming project specific groups (Planning, Events, Outreach / Action, Media, Social Media Presence, Art)

• Discuss event ideas

• Discuss timetables or goals (By December have X-events, X-outreach actions, X-fundraising events, demographic outreach)

• Discuss Coordination among groups, etc

This will allow people to be more invested in what they're going to instead of planning a large event and hoping people will show up. If this is successful, perhaps other areas (Southeast, Southwest, Northeast, Panhandle) will follow suit. Maybe we can have a strong grassroots infrastructure ready to put Florida in play before March.

Anyone interested?