[GPSCC-chat] registration drive challenge, Re: Agenda for Jan. meeting

[Spencer Graves]

       If Cameron's assessment is accurate, it goes a long way to 
explaining our shrinking numbers.


       When I mentioned I was doing something with the Green Party, a 
30-something friend of mine said, "Aging Hippy."  I think an 
overwhelming majority of the electorate, and a far greater majority of 
the Occupy movement, supports our platform far more than that of any 
other political party in the US today, but they largely accept the 
brainwash that voting for us is throwing away their votes.  I think the 
reality is that voting for any candidate whose campaign budget exceeds 
what can reasonably be raised from Joe and Linda Middleclass is voting 
for bribery, and the only votes that count are for candidates who can 
NOT afford television advertising.  The US government will continue to 
be sold to the highest bidder -- one dollar one vote -- other candidates 
are elected in sufficient numbers to turn this around.


       Many younger folks are doing things with Occupy.  They could be 
supporting us, but we need to teach ourselves how to meet them on their 
turf.


       I'm also talking to myself with this:  I have accounts with 
Facebook and Twitter, but I've done very little with them.


       By the way, you are welcome to attend a "Wiki Workshop" at the 
San José Peace and Justice Center today starting at 2 or 2:30 PM today 
after the San José Occupy General Assembly.


       Spencer


On 1/22/2012 10:33 AM, Cameron L. Spitzer wrote:
> Our registration efforts over the last ten years have been
> impaired by an inability to collect and organize and retain
> contact information.  New people write their names on a clipboard,
> and it sits in someone's garage for a year or two, and
> we discard it.
>
> Normal political organizations use computer software for that
> task.  But we are not a normal political organization, we
> are uniquely reluctant to use computerized tools,
> Facebook, Gmail, and SMS notwithstanding.
> (The reasons *why* Greens prove uniquely averse to computer literacy
> are irrelevant, we just are, and we're not going to change.
> It took enormous, sustained, pervasive peer pressure to get
> us on Facebook, Gmail, and SMS.  That peer pressure doesn't exist
> for other network services, and there's peer pressure to *avoid*
> any service you have to learn about or understand to use well.)
> At the local campaign, county, and state levels, free tools
> have been provided and no volunteers found who would
> actually learn and use them.  I didn't even use the systems I
> installed, and neither did anyone else, not the custom system
> we had ten years ago and not today's world-wide standard, civicrm.
> Our state and national parties use commercial service bureaus
> instead, and that's expensive and risky.
>
> They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing
> over and over and expecting a different result.
> Any renewed registration drive for our county must be
> designed for pencil, paper, voice phone, and photocopies.
> If our tablers have to touch a computer to record a new
> volunteer, that volunteer will be lost.  If our volunteers have
> to learn to use *any* software tools, they will drop out of
> that part of the project.  We would be insane
> to insist we're going to respond any differently this time.
>
> Best,
> -Cameron in San Jose
>
>
>
>
>
>> Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2012 08:13:41 -0800
>> From: Wes Rolley<wrolley at charter.net>
>> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64;
>> 	rv:9.0) Gecko/20111222 Thunderbird/9.0.1
>> To: Post South SF Bay discuss<sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
>> Subject: [GPSCC-chat] Agenda for Jan. meeting
>> As a political party, it is incumbent on the GPCA to protect its ballot
>> access.  In recent years, that has fallen drastically.
>> With a GPCA target of 100,000 new Greens to be registered, each county
>> needs to take on it's share.  If you divvy up that large number based on
>> current registration, Santa Clara County needs to register a little over
>> 4,000 new Greens by the November election.
>> While Santa Clara County GP has an active tabling program, I don't see
>> that this will bring in 4,000 new Greens... based on past history.  So,
>> how do we get to that number?  I suggest that it needs new ideas and
>> some organizational structure for getting beyond our tabling efforts.
>> At least, we should have a committee to refine those ideas and agree
>> that part of each monthly meeting should be a simple report on the
>> current status of the effort... how many new Greens have been
>> attracted.  Maybe, if we measure progress, we will have more progress.
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-- 
Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Technology Officer
Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
751 Emerson Ct.
San José, CA 95126
ph:  408-655-4567
web:  www.structuremonitoring.com