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Presidential delegate camp

Learning the process
New York Teacher
Presidential delegate camp
Jonathan Fickies

Dana Koenigsberg, a District 20 pre-K teacher, talks to AFT President Randi Weingarten (left) and former Queens Borough Representative Rona Freiser during the session.

UFT members, both in-service and retired, were among the 150 civic-minded New Yorkers who turned out on Sept. 8 for a presidential delegate camp at Columbia University in Manhattan to learn how to participate as delegates in the Democratic Party presidential primary. The event organizers, including the UFT and the American Federation of Teachers, hoped to inspire more women to go to Milwaukee as delegates to the Democratic National Convention in 2020 by giving them a primer on the fundamental steps to become a district-level delegate. “Running for district delegate is a very similar process to running for office, and so our hope was that those who attended got an introduction to the electoral process and could picture themselves out there running first for delegate and then next for City Council or Assembly or Senate,” said Eleanor’s Legacy Executive Director Brette McSweeney. The event “was eye-opening to me,” said Servete Kolar, a teacher at the Richard H. Hungerford School on Staten Island. “I gained an appreciation for how the whole process works.”

Related Topics: Political Action