Young Dems pitches in at Alki

Kayla Webley
2004-05-10
The Daily

A group of UW Young Democrats (YD) sacrificed slumber Saturday morning to do some hard work for a good cause and expand the community-outreach efforts beyond campus.

The 14 participants donned gardening pitchforks and gloves to spend three-and-a-half hours weeding the Cormorant Cove Park on Alki Beach so the city can replant the area.

The event, suggested to the group by the City Service Bureau, is the first of many community-service events to come, according to Sai Guha, the group's event coordinator. It hopes to do about two or three community-service events per quarter.

"One thing that Democrats strive on is giving back to the community," said Guha. "We will probably be doing this all summer."

This event gave YD members the opportunity to get involved.

"We have a lot of people who are really excited to do things throughout the community," said Secretary Ashley Housten. "Everyone who is in the club has said things like, 'I really want to get involved and help out; I just don't know how to do it.' This is a good way to get them out there."

The group hopes that taking part in smaller events will eventually lead to work on larger projects.

"The City Service Bureau doesn't let you have any projects that interact with people until you have done these boring weeding projects," said Guha. "What we are trying to do is actually interact with the community, instead of doing something like this where people will walk by and be like, 'oh, that's pretty,' but they don't really get to know us."

According to Guha, the group hopes to work in homeless shelters, free clinics and participate in food drives and tutoring projects.

Courtney Bell, the YD progressive caucus coordinator, said she sees the long-term benefits of the project.

"If you think about how much time people just spend ... doing things that are more self-serving, you realize that so much time could be committed to doing things for your community," she said. "In the long run you are going to benefit a lot more than ... sleeping in on a Saturday morning."

YD member Erick Barron appreciated the opportunity to broaden the spectrum of group activities.

"It is really important to show the work the YD can do for the community," said Barron. "There are a lot of things we can do as a party besides just promoting electoral, governmental and political awareness ... it gives us a wider range of things to do and ways to help the community as much as possible."

Political Director Andrew Lincoln agreed.

"We feel that rather than just pushing our own agenda we should help other people as well," he said. "Most of our events are political, they have a clear purpose to push a certain goal or agenda; this is really just in the spirit of the community, getting out and doing good."

Housten hopes this and future events will help attract members to the club.

"People who are very interested in doing stuff like this might also start coming to our meetings and seeing what we're about," she said.

Mike Nederwood, the YD fundraising chair, thought the event would help benefit the reputation of the YD.

"It is invaluable for our image to be able to have it identified with our name that we are out in the community volunteering," he said.

According to Guha, the event was structured to affirm Democratic principles of giving back to the community.

"The Democrats' main argument is that 'we give back to the poor and the Republicans don't,' but people who say that never actually give back to the community, so that is what we are trying to get at right now," he said.