—On a crisp November evening three weeks after the election, about 600 local activists gathered on a sound stage at the old Mack Sennett studios in Silver Lake where nearly a century ago the Keystone Cops slipped on banana peels and dodged pies in the face.
The crowd, which quickly overflowed the available seats and sat on the bare floor, had been convened by Beau Willimon, the creator of the Netflix series “House of Cards,” and a still-idealistic veteran of Howard Dean’s insurgent 2004 presidential campaign. As Willimon took the microphone, a gray scrim hanging behind him bore the projected exhortation: SIGN UP— ACTIONGROUPS.NET, a pitch for Willimon’s informal network of grass-roots efforts. The disheartened but tentatively defiant message of the evening: “I won’t quit—if you don’t quit.”—On a crisp November evening three weeks after the election, about 600 local activists gathered on a sound stage at the old Mack Sennett studios in Silver Lake where nearly a century ago the Keystone Cops slipped on banana peels and dodged pies in the face. These avatars of Hollywood liberalism had just suffered a similar humiliation and had come to figure out how to pick themselves up and start all over again in Donald Trump’s America.
It was not supposed to be like this, a defeated army sitting on the floor of an empty sound stage grasping for a chance at political impact. This was the class of people who were supposed to have a reserved seat at the table at Hillary Clinton’s first White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Now, like the deep-pocketed celebrities and industry titans who by one reliable estimate had raised some $60 million for her candidacy here, they were suddenly out in the cold. On the floor.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
