Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Updates and Disembodied Heads

On October 5th, a day after we'd had over 150 people out walking precincts and ID'ing voters, was the 6th annual Excelsior Festival. The year before, the nascent Avalos for Supervisor campaign organized close to 80 of John's supporters in the neighborhood to turn up, put on a now-classic Avalos 08 t-shirt and spread some D11 love.

This year, we decided to do something a little different. Not only did over 200 people show up to support John's campaign, we gave each of them a hand-made Dia de Los Muertos-themed shirt, our field organizer, Nate Miller who doubles as a youth science educator, brought a mini-petting zoo with snakes, geckos and turtles. There was also a sea of Avalos masks, signs, and balloons.

The Excelsior Festival is a relatively new event, spearheaded by the Excelsior Action Group and various hard-working and dedicated neighborhood leaders. This year there were loads of fun activities for the whole family, music, food, arts and crafts, informational booths from all sorts of neighborhood groups and service providers, a children's play area and even Sumo wrestling! Its a source of pride for our community and every year it gets bigger and better. In my opinion, this was the best yet!

I'll let these amazing photos, courtesy of the brilliant Luke Thomas, speak for themselves. Thanks to everyone who came out.
By the way, even though John didn't fare so well in the Sumo ring, that's not at all an indication of how hard he will fight for us at City Hall!