Hi everyone!
Thank you to all our Clairemont Democratic Club members who made it onto Zoom last night for our meeting. I want to thank you again for allowing me the opportunity to step in and lead this organization for the next couple months, and congratulations to our new IT Coordinator Indroneal Banerjee on his election as well.
I want to give a heartfelt thanks to our outgoing President Steph Groce.
We all know how difficult the last couple of months have been. This election cycle has been the wildest, nuttiest, most bizarre carnivals of entropy I’ve seen in my (relatively young) 34 years. Steph has been there for us during some exciting times and not-so-exciting times, and we owe him a great deal of gratitude for his service to our club and our democratic efforts. I can’t put into words how much admiration I have for him — admiration that goes back years to our days leading our local Clairemont Town Council.
Steph’s leadership over the last three years culminated in two critical election victories for both Nathan Fletcher and our own Dr. Jen Campbell, and my optimistic hope is that sometime down the road, when things are less crazy and less busy, that he’s able to return even more successful and triumphant to help us continue our collective fight for our democratic values.
Again, thank you so much Steph — and please let us know if you need anything!
Moving forward, as I mentioned, these are strange times that we live in.
The one possible bright spot in all this is that that we are largely able to operate and conduct our club meetings on Zoom from the comfort of our homes. The physical setup of these Democratic meetings are made all the more the easy — but at some point, I would (hopefully) expect that within the next six months we’ll be back to some relative normalcy. Perhaps, we’ll all be able to meet once again at Elijah’s when it’s safe and approved to do so, and who knows what that looks like with any expected physical distancing requirements that would be recommended.
That being said, it is my expectation to help lead this club in the interim. As some of you know, I am also the Club President of San Diego Democrats for Equality which commands a lot of my attention, but I definitely want to ensure that our Clairemont Democratic Club is strong as we work on electing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in November, defeat Trump, and close out this nutso year.
Last weekend, our executive board had some great discussions about what we need to do to get through this Presidential Election, some planning on future meetings and topics, looking at maybe some clean-up language in our bylaws, and doing some promotion and outreach on increasing our club’s membership. All positive things, which I’m sure we will ask everyone for your help on.
Of course, I would like to make sure that we continue to be active in our greater Clairemont community as well. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that there are openings on the Clairemont Town Council board, and those elections are coming up soon. If you would like more information on that, please reach out to Town Council President Eden Yaege at president@clairemontonline.com.
I am excited for all the amazing possibilities that we can achieve together in these next couple of months. Let’s win these elections for the sake of our democracy!
Ryan Trabuco
Club President
Clairemont Democratic Club
