Andrew Solomon got his first taste of political activism in the short-lived Wes Clark primary campaign, organizing volunteer cell phone banks in New York and doing his darndest to hold up a 10-foot Clark sign at a highway off-ramp in frigid Manchester, New Hampshire.

Andrew Weinstein began the last presidential election cycle as a volunteer for the Howard Dean campaign in the fall of ‘03. When that ended with a thud, he stumbled across the nascent ACT New York in spring of ‘04 and became a Co-Director in July.

Heather Roberson came to ACT NOW by way of the 2004 election, during which she moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to work as a volunteer for America Coming Together (ACT). She connected with ACT NOW before the 2006 mid-term elections with the aim to, once again, experience the gratification (both instant and long-term, as it turned out) of a good old-fashioned, on-the-ground voter contact campaign.

John Raskin began working with ACT when he founded Democracy in the Park, an all-volunteer organization whose members gathered in public parks around the country during the 2004 election season and used their free weekend cell phone minutes to call voters in swing states.

Rachel Burd can only put her wildly diverse background under the heading of “freelance troublemaker.” She has been an organizer, a publicist, an advocate, and a grantwriter for unions, community groups, and labor-community coalitions, and the campaigns she has worked on have included health care, social services, workplace organizing drives, and the arts.

Rebecca Schrag is a native Manhattanite who is fiercely loyal to the bluest part of this great blue state. She spent much of the summer and fall of 2004 attempting to spread blue-ness by phone banking to swing states and leading bus trips to Pennsylvania.