CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2017 GENERAL ELECTION CANDIDATES!!

Congratulations to Lt. Governor Ralph Northam, Justin Fairfax and Melissa Dart who won spirited primaries.  Special thanks should also be given to Tom Perriello, Gene Rossi, Susan Platt and Lizzie Drucker-Basch for running excellent campaigns and helping bring out a record number of Democrats to vote in the June 13th Primaries. 

As Goochland Democrats we are looking forward to working to elect the entire 2017 VA ticket: Ralph Northam for Governor, Justin Fairfax for Lt. Governor, Mark Herring for Attorney General and our two House of Delegates Candidates:  Melissa Dart for the 56th and Francis Stevens for the 65th. 

We are looking forward to working with the Coordinated Campaign and will keep you updated on how you can get involved here in Goochland.  In the meantime, use these resources to get in touch with individual campaigns:

Ralph Northam http://ralphnortham.com

Justin Fairfax http://www.fairfaxforlg.com

Mark Herring https://herringforag.com

Melissa Dart: https://www.dartfordelegate.org/

Francis Stevens: https://www.stevens4delegate.com/

THE  GOOCHLAND  DEMOCRATIC  COMMITTEE
GOOCHLAND  COUNTY,   VIRGINIA

OUR PURPOSE:

To support the values and principles of the Virginia and National Democratic Parties.


GET INVOLVED:

We welcome you to join us at general meetings, signup to become a member, and volunteer at events.

To receive more information and be added to our email newsletter, complete and submit the following membership application and send to GDCVirginia@gmail.com. 
DOWNLOAD OUR MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION HERE OR YOU CAN DOWNLOAD FROM OUR "ABOUT US" TAB.
gdcmembershipform01.16.updated5.17docx.pdf
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OUR NEXT MEETING:

Saturday, June 24, 2017  9:30-11:30 AM
Location: Goochland Library

    Have questions?  Fill out the form below:

We have a candidate for the VA 65th!!
Francis Stevens is our Democratic Nominee for the 65th District.
Here is his website information:

www.stevens4delegate.com





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HOW TO ENGAGE IN BETTER POLITICAL CONVERSATIONS

To recap key points from video at upper right:

  • Polarization is getting worse in our country, that the divide between the left and the right is as bad as it's been in really any of our lifetimes
  • Most alarming of all of it is seeing this rising animosity on both sides. Liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, more and more they just don't like one another. You see it in many different ways. They don't want to befriend one another. They don't want to date one another. If they do, if they find out, they find each other less attractive, and they more and more don't want their children to marry someone who supports the other party, a particularly shocking statistic.
  • Empathy and respect. If you think about it, it's the very least that we owe our fellow citizens.
  • Liberals tend to endorse values like equality and fairness and care and protection from harm more than conservatives do. 
  • And conservatives tend to endorse values like loyalty, patriotism, respect for authority and moral purity more than liberals do. 
  • Maybe this moral divide might be helpful for understanding how it is that liberals and conservatives talk to one another and why they so often seem to talk past one another when they do.
  • So what would work better? Well, we believe it's a technique that we call moral reframing, and we've studied it in a series of experiments. 
  • Liberals are on board for environmental protection. Conservatives, however, were significantly more supportive of progressive environmental policies and environmental protection if they had read the moral purity essay than if they read one of the other two essays. We even found that conservatives who read the moral purity essay were significantly more likely to say that they believed in global warming and were concerned about global warming, even though this essay didn't even mention global warming. That's just a related environmental issue. But that's how robust this moral reframing effect was.
  • If you want to move liberals to the right on conservative policy issues like military spending and making English the official language of the US, you're going to be more persuasive if you tie those conservative policy issues to liberal moral values like equality and fairness.
  • All these studies have the same clear message: if you want to persuade someone on some policy, it's helpful to connect that policy to their underlying moral values. 
  • Empathy and respect. If you think about it, it's the very least that we owe our fellow citizens.
Robb Willer is a professor of sociology, psychology and organizational behavior at Stanford University. He studies the role of morality in politics. His research shows how moral values, typically a source of ideological division, can also be used to bring people together. His political research has investigated various topics, including economic inequality, racial prejudice, masculine overcompensation and Americans' views of climate change.

Willer has won numerous awards for his teaching and research, including the Golden Apple Teaching Award, the only award given by UC-Berkeley’s student body. Willer's class, "Self and Society," was the highest enrollment class at UC-Berkeley. His consulting clients have included the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Open Society Foundation, the Last Resort Exoneration Project and the Department of Justice.
Willer's writing has appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post, including his op-eds "The Secret to Political Persuasion" and "Is the Environment a Moral Cause?"
Willer received a Ph.D from Cornell University and a BA from the University of Iowa. Before becoming a professor, he worked as a dishwasher, construction worker, mover, line cook and union organizer.


Thanks to Margaret Reynolds for letting us know about this great TED Talk.

CONTACT

The Goochland Democratic Committee
PO Box 125, Goochland, Virginia  23063
Email: GDCVirginia@gmail.com
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