Thursday, April 23 at 7 pm at Los Jimadores in Bedford

Hi everyone!  Our April meeting is scheduled for this Thursday at Los Jimadores starting at 7 pm. As a reminder, if you’d like to eat with us in the banquet room, please arrive by 6:30. For our guest speaker this month, we have David Mack Henderson, president of Fairness Fort Worth, to provide us with information on the status of marriage equality in the state of Texas.  For a quick background on Mr. Henderson:

When David was elected UT Arlington’s mascot “Sam Maverick” in 1980 he was asked to resign because he was gay.  Not only did he say no, but David founded the Gay/Lesbian Association of UTA.  Only eleven years post-Stonewall, this was one of first school sanctioned GSA’s in the US.  At 34 years, the GSA@UTA is older than official pride celebrations in both Fort Worth and Dallas.
Henderson led a similar LGBT group after transferring to UNT and helped start a state-wide coalition for the growing number of campus groups.  In 1984 he joined the Board of the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Alliance, managing daily operations at their fledgling community center. When the pandemic hit, was part of the original board creating the AIDS Resource Center, now the Resource Center.
David is a Realtor and tax accountant, with clients that have included one of the original same-sex plaintiff couples in the 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Court decision first legalizing marriage equality.  Within hours of the 2009 Rainbow Lounge Raid he was part of the core group organizing a protest and two days later a founding member of Fairness Fort Worth, serving today as President.  In a few short years FFW has led Fort Worth from international outcry to a proactive new model of LGBT inclusion for mid-size cities throughout the US.
Henderson teaches LGBT diversity classes for the City of Fort Worth, Arlington police, FWISD counselors, Tarrant County College, TCU and others.  At the invitation of The White House he is currently working on LGBT inclusion as the Affordable Care Act is implemented.  An HIV positive stakeholder, Henderson also serves on the team allocating $5 mil in federal Ryan White HIV/AIDS funds annually for 38 counties in North Central Texas.

In other news and events, we were happy to see many like-minded Democrats at Kathleen Thompson’s fundraisert last week.  While not an official MCD event, the club board and many members were present to help Kathleen as the fights for Grapevine and Colleyville students and parents.  To learn more about Kathleen, please visit her campaign website at http://www.votekathleen.com.

As to other local elections, the League of Women Voters of Tarrant County has been holding a series of moderated candidate forums.  John Schleeter from our HEB City Group (https://www.facebook.com/MCDHEB) has been posting about the forums, and if you’d like to see the remaining events, please click here:  http://www.lwvtarrantcounty.org/Documents/April%202015%20Forums.pdf.

That’s all for this month.  See you at the meeting on Thursday, and be sure to go out and vote on May 9.

Democratically Yours,
Clancy Cummings
President, Mid-Cities Democrats

More details to come; however, we’ll be meeting on Thursday, February 26 at Los Jimadores in Bedford.  The meeting starts at 7 pm — please arrive by 6:30 if you plan to eat.

State of the Union Watch Party and January Meeting

Tuesday, January 20th at 7 pm @ Los Jimadores in Bedford

First off, please note that we’ll be meeting on Tuesday this month instead of Thursday — please mark your calendar appropriately! With the President’s State of the Union speech before Congress just two days shy of our regular meeting, we felt it would be a great opportunity to bring us together to have a quick business meeting first and switch to the two TVs in the room. You’ll have food, drinks, and great company to cheer on the President as he sets forth his agenda for this year!

For 2015, we’ve already started off the year right with a wonderful Forward 2015 New Year’s Celebration event on January 3rd. Many of your fellow Democrats arrived to show their enthusiasm for taking on this off-election year. For Mid-Cities Democrats, we will remain focused on building the organization, identifying and supporting local candidates, and furthering the engagement of Democrats to their precincts. We’ve got some great ideas to keep people involved throughout the year, and I’ll give a glimpse into some of those when we do the business meeting portion of our night on Tuesday night.

To book your calendar for the State of the Union Watch Party and Meeting via Facebook, please see our FB event here:  http://goo.gl/rXLywS

If you’d like to get involved in a committee, we welcome all help and support.  From membership growth to fundraising, we want you to feel a sense of ownership with YOUR club.  If you’d like to be seated on a committee, please contact me or any board member directly.

Speaking of membership, are you a 2015 member of MCD?  Please remember that membership resets on January 1 of each year.  You can renew your membership at the door on Tuesday night or use our renewal page on the MCD website found here: http://goo.gl/KMzZ72.

Thank you to everyone who makes this club successful!  I look forward to seeing new and familiar faces on Tuesday.

Democratically Yours,

Clancy Cummings
President, Mid-Cities Democrats

More details to come, but we’re planning our Forward 2015 membership party the evening of Saturday, January 3rd in Grapevine.  Please mark it on your calendar to save the date!

Wednesday, November 19, 7 pm @ Los Jimadores in Bedford

Hi everyone! Let me start this message by announcing the date change for our November meeting. It is being held on Wednesday(!!), November 19 due to the Thanksgiving holiday on our regular meeting week. We’ll still be meeting at Los Jimadores as usual, and the meeting kicks off at 7:00. The focus of this month’s meeting is to hear from our local Democratic Party candidates, and most of those you supported have confirmed their attendance. Please come by, give your thank you’s, hear their stories of the campaign trail, and learn how we can all work differently next time for stronger results.

In club business, I am proud to announce our lineup for of the club board for 2015. As many of you know, Shelley Morales (Secretary) and Chris Hilbert (Fundraising Chair) are retiring from club leadership, and we thank them for their time and efforts over the years they have been serving as they have been dedicated to our club and to the causes we endeavor to champion. At our October meeting, we closed nominations for all positions, and we were able to hold a vote of acclamation to confirm each role. Replacing Shelley and Chris on the board will be Marva Allums and Richard Gaca, respectively. I’m excited to work with these two amazing individuals! Closing out the board will be Sean Hayward returning as Treasurer, Gary Livingston returning as Vice President, and myself returning as President.

2015 promises to be a year of rebuilding, both for the club coffers and for progressive causes. Please make sure you’re still a member in good standing by paying you annual $20 in club dues. Links below. Also, book your calendar for Saturday, January 3 for our New Year celebration!  More details to come, but we’re planning a pot luck dinner and party as part of a club re-enrollment event. Once we have a few more pieces finalized, I’ll send out a more detailed event listing, but until then, save the date as it will be a fun night!

If you’d like to get get a head start on renewing your dues, please click one of the links below:

To join as a Sustaining Member (monthly donation), please click:  http://goo.gl/pxhScS
To join as a regular member ($20 annually), please click:  http://goo.gl/DuirZo

Looking further down the road, we will be holding our Jim Wright Scholarship dinner in September. Anyone wishing to volunteer on the scholarship committee or dinner committee, please email me directly. We’d love your involvement in this wonderful cause and event!

Thank you all for an amazing year. We have our challenges to face, but as Democrats, we must hold our heads up high and keep looking ahead.

See you Wednesday.

Democratically Yours,
Clancy Cummings
President, Mid-Cities Democrats