My query letter to The Nation

So, I've been having fun with this blog, writing every day -- and you don't see what else I write, in terms of email, journal articles, newsletter bits, whatever. I write fast, and I write all the time.

All my life I've wanted to be a writer, but when I was younger, I was always afraid of rejection. Writing was my art, it wasn't just what I do. Well, today, at 44, writing is more what I am than what I do. And I've got a decade or so of experience with major donor fundraising and consultative sales, membership organizations, and similar headaches.

If you remove the fear of rejection, it's just a marketing problem.

So here is the query I submitted to The Nation today:

Robert Putnam’s recent book, Better Together, praises Portland Oregon as the American paragon of civic engagement. Howard Dean came here to make his first whistlestop with John Kerry, meeting with two dozen of his key volunteers to ask how to bring the Deaners into the Kerry fold. We were, as usual, ahead of him.

From the unemployed executive who prepares organic picnics from the farmer’s market for visiting pols, to an aspiring National Nurse, to the team of peaceable insurgents who are revitalizing Portland’s Democratic Party – the Deaners of Portland are geared up for the road to Boston and the White House.

As a key volunteer with the Portland Dean campaign, I’ve seen my city come alive with Democratic activism from elderly south Asian widows to eleven year old boys. Portland is making political organizing history by mobilizing every every class, ethnicity, profession, age, gender and sexual orientation.

Hundreds of twenty-somethings attended a political gala to hear rock stars and see high electeds model fashions on a runway. “Shoeleather brigades” and the Bus Project deploy SWAT teams of canvassers. We’re signing hundreds of new precinct workers – and making precinct work cool with our Feet on the Street program.

“Little Beirut” has grown up – we plan to be a model for the country, leading the rest of the states in grassroots savvy in this online/offline campaign. We’ll teach every progressive in the country how to take back the country – and the DNC – over the next four years.

I also submitted half a dozen other articles on varying subjects to half a dozen other magazines. I'll tell you if anything comes of it.