[Sosfbay-discuss] Fw: Regional meeting

[Caroline Yacoub]

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Caroline Yacoub <carolineyacoub at att.net>
To: Santa Clara - San Mateo Communications <sc-sm at lists.sonic.net>
Cc: Caroline Yacoub <carolineyacoub at att.net>
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 10:46:56 PM
Subject: Regional meeting


                    Regional Meeting--Jade Palace--September 29, 2009

In attendance:
Jim Stauffer--Regional Rep.
Tian Harter--SCCC
Warner Blomberg-GPUS delegate
Don Davis--was on SM board
Gloria Purcell
Margaret Pey--Treasurer, SM
Vi Minh
Brian Good
Andrea Dory 3 terms on SCCC
Caroline Yacoub==SCCC
Binky Bachelder--SM County Council Chairperson
Susan--SM
Cindy
Dana St. George--SCCC
Gerry Gras

Jim suggested we discuss three topics: 1) how are the counties doing? 2) state of the stae party, 3) electing a new regional rep.  Margaret also wanted to discuss the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.

1)What's going on in the counties?
Binky said San Mateo has been inactive, but they're trying to pick up. Sanda and others are busy with other things. Theydo have money. They are going to look at what they did in the past, mailings for example, and see how effective they were.
Margaret said that Ray Toby talked to them as a campaign consultant. He knows how to get lists of who voted and when. We could get him to give a talk to both counties.
Andrea said we should do this this winter.
Warner said Ray thinks we think too small. We need candidate training.

Andrea said Santa Clara County is doing outreach. We are trying to get emails rather than doing mailings. We are doing a lot of tabling. We have organic seeds. Warner grew some, and the results were great. We need to go to farmers' markets.
Caroline suggested having Ray at our next Food 4 Thought in January.
Tian thought there should be more than one speaker.

2) State of the state party, Jim Stauffer
Our voter registration peaked in 2003. All political parties are losing registrations.
We have to worry about losing our ballot status. If we keep dropping 8-10% per year, we will be off in 3 years. The Green Party has been an experiment in structure. The state party has a series of standing committees who do the work. Only 2-3 committees are currently functioning. There have been internal problems in the state party. We have no center focus--no one basic issue. We need to sit down and figure out what this focus should be. ((editorial comment: does the name "Green"  suggest anything?))
We should have on-line voting to take care of decision-making that is now being done at the plenary. We need to get our counties organized and energized in order to get the state going.The last thing to be discussed at the upcoming plenary is restructuring. Jim thinks this restructuring is a mess. We should not have more than  half the delegates be elected at large. Gloria asked if restructuring will be brought to a vote on Sunday afternoon. If so, she, and probably others, will leave early, so there wouldn't be a quorum.
Vi raised the issue of outreach for candidates.
Warner said that in the state party there have been some small successes in recruiting people to run for statewide offices. So far, the only people he knows of who are running for statewide offices are from southern California.Laura Wells said she would run for Comptroller. The deadline for declaring is in February.
Susan asked if other state parties were having the same problems as California.
Gloria said California is so big that it's more like national than other states.
Cindy (sorry, I didn't get her last name) is from Nebraska. She was in on the start of the Greens there.She worked on Nader's campaign and on two congressional campaigns.
Brian asked if we could split into northern and southern California parties.
Warner said no.
Vi said that before she joined the Green Party she was in the Peace and Freedom party. She said we should make it easier to put Green people on the ballot--not make it sound like such a big deal to run--just get names on the ballot.
Warner said we should have a candidates' schoool.
Jim said we don't have a snowball's chance of winning in a partisan election. We need to work on IRV.
Tian said we need to get people to run for County Council.
Vi said we should build alliances with other peace groups.
Gloria said she couldn't get the Sierra Club to endorse her.
Andrea said we are starting to get into a real working relationship with the Single Payer people.
Gloria said "Fair Vote" is doing a good job. We have a couple of Green people on their board.
Jim said people pushing for a constitutional convention onclude Steven Hill and Steve Chessin., who are heavy hitters for IRV. We need to push that in the constitutional convention.
Andrea said we need to get the word out regarding proportional representation--let people know our democracy is old, creaky, and needs desperately needs fixing.

3)Replacing the Regional Rep--Jim Stauffer
Jim will vacate the office at the end of the year. During this time when the Coordinating Committee is being restructured, it would not be good for our seat to be vacant. The time commitment could be just a few hours per month, but you are expected to do state work. There is a liaison from the CC to each working committee. Jim will send the job description out. We need a competent person.

Warner said several years ago both counties made a procedure for choosing a rep.  Both counties need to agree and follow the procedure.

We should also have an alternate to serve when the rep is absent and to help. Gerry and Dana did this together. They felt that the rep needed to be at the general meetings of both counties and the state meetings.

We need to get candidates. They need to go to both counties. In santa Clara, the rep is selected at the general meeting. In San Mateo, they do it at a county council meeting. They have to agree.

Warner will contact Jim Doyle to get this item on the agenda for the October 7 meeting.

4) Once again Margaret reminded us of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. We should google it and find out things we can do.
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