Albert Socolov’s introduction to political activism was at age 15, speaking on New York City street corners to raise money for the loyalists during the Spanish Civil War. After college and four years in the army during World War II, during which he participated in the Normandy landings, Al entered NYU Law School, where he was a founding member of the NYU Student Division of the National Lawyers Guild.

Unwilling to take it any more, Alex Hult went to Cincinnati in the fall of 2004 to work with America Coming Together. Intending to stay only for the weekend, he found himself there through Election Day organizing volunteers. Convinced of the efficacy of door-to-door canvassing, he joined up with Act Now in the summer of 2006.

Allison Tupper’s political activism began with running a recycling center in the West Village, registering voters for McGovern, and fighting Westway. Who remembers neighborhood recycling or McGovern or Westway?

Brooke Brod began volunteering with Act New York in 2004, spending the summer and fall touring the many fine neighborhoods of Philadelphia, Allentown, Levittown and (after a last minute call from Andrew Solomon) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania registering voters and turning them out.

Chris Asta got into politics by becoming an obsessive political blog-reader. Like many fellow “bloggers”, this led him to Ned Lamont’s senate campaign, on which he worked as a volunteer coordinator during both the insurgent primary and subsequent general election efforts in 2006.

Ethel Sussman, red-diaper baby, feels as if she’s been involved in politics for her entire life, having been deeply affected as a child by the Rosenberg case and the McCarthy period. She did both organizing and civil rights work in the 60s . . .

Gene Hill’s roots in politics go back many generations. A descendent of New Mexico’s early governors (when Spain and Mexico ruled) and grandson of that state’s Democratic Party chairman from the FDR era, Gene acquired his earliest political experience serving on the student senate (and then as entertainment chairman) of the University of New Mexico.

Jack Stoller has been active in campaigns dating back to canvassing in downstate Illinois for Mike Dukakis in 1988. He worked as a greeter opposing New York City’s non-partisan election referendum in 2003, poll-watched in Florida for John Kerry in 2004, volunteered for Reform Ohio Now in 2005 . . .

Margot Albert’s political activism began as a law student in Los Angeles, where she served as Executive Director of El Centro Legal Clinics. In that capacity, she was involved with a number of clinics, but it was the registering of the homeless in Skid Row for the 2004 election that was the most meaningful, and the impetus for her current involvement.

Nathan McNeil hails from the great state of Washington, and has been stranded in New York City for much of the past ten years. Nathan worked with some of the Act New York crowd during the 2004 election cycle, and spent that Election Day weekend running around Philadelphia with posters and canvassing sheets.

Paul Weidner, toward the end of a successful life-long career as a stage and theater director, and at the beginning of a so-far very short career as a novelist (Memoirs of a Dwarf, Terrace Books, in fine bookstores everywhere), got so fed up with the Bushies that he joined America Coming . . .

Sasha Wolf began working with America Coming Together in the fall of 2004, and eagerly stayed on when ACT NOW became a Political Action Committee in its own right.