Four years ago, while watching the Democratic Convention in my living room in England, I joined DailyKos so I could talk about the speeches and our candidate with other Americans interested in politics. I had friends who were Americans and others where were interested in politics, but I had to go online for the combination of the two.
This year I will watch the convention from a very different seat, as a member of the Pennsylvania delegation. How did I become a delegate? The short answer is that I applied last December and the campaign picked me. The longer answer is that I helped start Philadelphia for Obama back in August, and have been building a movement here in Philly for about a year now. I have participated in every phase of the campaign, and stayed here in PA even when it was very tempting to abandon my turf and head to an earlier state. I have been the point person for the visibility outside two Democratic Presidential debates, one in October the other in April, and helped make sure that Obama had a full slate of delegates on the ballot for the first time in at least a generation.