Flour Power Success
The Flour Power bake sale was a huge success, bringing in over $2600 between the St. Paul and Minneapolis locations. That’s not exactly going to turn the tide of any election, but it’s much more than I thought was possible.
I was happy for Jane, Rhonda and Debbie, who all put in a lot of time and effort to make the sale a reality. When they first came up with the idea, I’m not sure they had a goal in mind, but I am confident that whatever the number was it was something less than $2600.
Jane was very stressed in the days leading up to the sale, especially once she saw the amount of baked goods they had. She had visions of returning home with 400 pounds of brownies, cakes and cookies. As it turned out, everything was perfect. They ended the day with a little product left over, which meant that they hadn’t made too much or too little.
For my part, very few people had any questions at all about issues or platforms. For the most part, we were preaching to the choir. I spent most of my time explaining what MoveOn.org was, and yelling out things like “Gain weight for Kerry!” I usually don’t like to engage people in any way, but there was something empowering about standing behind all those baked goods. It felt good to connect with people who felt the same way we do about what’s happening to this country. We didn’t need to stand around and get angry and hash it all out, though there were some people (buyers and sellers) who wanted to do that. Mostly, the situation is a known quantity at this point, and this wasn’t about spreading any kind of message or convincing people so much as it was contributing resources. Sometimes all you can do is put some money in a jar, eat a brownie, and cross your fingers that there are enough other people feeling the same way.
It was encouraging to see how happy people were to support the cause, and many people thanked us for putting the thing together. Several people even asked if Flour Power was some kind of national organization, which wasn’t a far-fetched conclusion because Jane, Rhonda and Debbie had very professional-looking shirts and buttons with their Flour Power logo on them.
While the idea and the groundwork was all done by Jane, Rhonda and Debbie, there are so many people to be thanked for baking the foods, working at the sales themselves, or spreading the word about the sales. It was truly a group effort.
Late in the evening, we all kicked back with a stiff drink and toasted the results. Jane, Rhonda and Debbie were exhausted, but it was that good kind of exhausted, when you know your crazy plan went over huge, your self-doubts were erased, and you knew you did something to try and reverse a bad situation.
6:44:38 PM 
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