Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

My friends in social media are AWESOME! (imagine me singing that word)

Amidst a field of 98 super qualified exciting people competing for scholarships to the Netroots Nation Conference, I am in 5th place. That’s staggering, as my high school geometry teacher would often say. The top five “vote getters” earn scholarships that cover registration fee and hotel for the conference.

I’ve already earned a partial scholarshp to cover airfare and registration for a preconference so this could really happen. The scholarship committee also awards other scholarships to folks based on “merit” so that’s Plan B. But merit? These people are awesome. They’ve made movies and organized entire advocacy campaigns and changed lives and changed laws and changed the way we experience our world. They are all people I’d like to have coffee with one day. And I don’t begin to imagine my merit will triumph. I can just hope that I stand out in such a crowd of great folks.

Molly founded a marriage equality project in her state. Brynne is a trans activist in the military who lives in Ohio. Joe works on environmental issues in Texas (and has a great idea about bluebonnet seeds.) Jacob started an online progressive news program. And these stories are just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve already made two new FB friends with two of those in the running & we plan (fingers crossed) to  meet at NN for coffee or some such. 

Voting ends on May 7, 2013. You can only vote once. Please consider my application – I’m so close to staying in the Top Five, but the order changes almost daily as people surge and recede. Your vote will matter to help bring progressive goodness back to Pittsburgh and to this blog.

How else can you help? I’m planning to wear Pittsburgh gear during the conference – to get those awesome conversations going where someone shares their Pittsburgh connection. If you have tee shirts, hats, scrunchies, etc – anything Pgh themed, I promise to wear it at the conference AND we’ll take photos and Instagram the meetings/chats.

I want the folks at Netroots Nation to know that Pittsburgh is a labor town, a region concerned with enviromental issues, a community fighting for our public education resources, neighbors working to help neighbors find affordable housing, sustainable food sources & good healthcare. And you sent a lesbian to spread the good news!

Thank you for your support.

PS – “Awesome” just makes me laugh and think of this video clip …