[GPSCC-chat] Minutes of November meeting Green Party of Santa Clara County

Fri Nov 30 20:50:01 PST 2012

To see if you are ready to sit in the same room with a Republican or Libertarian and talk politics, try watching the Lone Liberal Rumble or Big Picture Rumble segments of Thom Hartmann's Big Picture on www.rt.com. Channel 103 on Comcast in SJ area at 4PM and 7PM Mon-Fri. Most of the time when these people come on that segment I hit the mute button until the segment is over. They have all kinds of whacko rationalizations for beating up their fellow man with austerity measures coming out of the mouths of the people he has on that segment of his show. Tonight, the Libertarian guy repeated the discredited notion that raising the minimum wage significantly reduces employment opportunities.  There is a nice article on wikipedia that shows some decent studies that put that notion to rest. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage .  Also, even people on the left (such as Steven Argue on Facebook) often put forward the childish argument that "your
 sources can't be trusted because they spit out capitalist propaganda".  That was Steven Argue's response to my pointing out to him that the article located here
http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=505
took info presented by the Wall Street Journal and made a good argument that small businesses pay their employees more than large businesses. He totally disrespected the quality of my sources ("A google search for articles on instances of small businesses paying lower wages is not reliable" or "wikipedia can't be trusted") because the information I presented went against his personal experience that small businesses tend to pay their workers less.  My experience is that, within the same industry, smaller businesses pay their workers more.  They also offer more hours of work and are easier to work for from a performance demand point of view.  

Good luck.

John Thielking

PS Steven Argue has a bias against wikipedia because they wouldn't allow his editing of the page on Mumia Abu-Jamal to stay up.  In most other instances, wikipedia is not biased against our interests.

--- On Fri, 11/30/12, Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com> wrote:

From: Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com>
Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] Minutes of November meeting Green Party of Santa Clara County
To: "John Thielking" <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>
Cc: sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org
Date: Friday, November 30, 2012, 3:41 PM

      The essence of democracy, according to the research I've found most persuasive, is not elections but civil society, with civil society defined as the ability to find common ground with others, set aside your differences, and work together for the common good.  Any nation with a sufficiently robust civil society will ultimately get electoral democracy if they don't already have it.  Conversely, formal elections in nations without civil society have tended to become increasingly farcical and are often suspended.  (See the Wikipedia article on "Civil Society.")  The rise of shock jocks calling liberals "pin heads" and equally virulent reactions from the left to me are disturbing trends towards reducing the power of honest democratic politics in the US.  

      "Politics is the art of the possible," according to Otto von Bismark, who convinced waring German noblemen to set aside their differences and build a nation greater than themselves -- modern Germany (Wikiquotes for Bismark, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck).  

      Harvard law professor and constitutional scholar Lawrence Lessig identified the corrosive influence of money in politics as the "gateway problem" facing the US today in the sense that we must solve this problem first before we can hope to make real substantive progress on any of the other major problems facing the nation and the world today (Wikipedia, "Republic, Lost").  Lessig observed that the Tea Party and the Occupy movement have two things in common:  

            1.  Both oppose crony capitalism.  

            2.  Elements of each group accuse any in each group that tries to talk with the other of treason.  

Lessig says that if we can ignore our differences and collaborate on our shared concern, crony capitalism, we can solve that problem.  If we don't, the ultra-wealthy will further enrich themselves at our expense (Wikipedia, "One Way Forward").  

      I do not believe that people on the Left know the "truth" and people on the Right do not.  I continually look for defects in my current knowledge, because I know that I too often do stupid things based on things I know that ain't so.  There are clearly people in the Tea Party who are paid to do what they can to prevent the public from obtaining information Tea Party members need to make better decisions.  But people on the Left have blind spots also.  

      I think it's possible to build a broad coalition including most of the Tea Party and most of the Greens, Peace and Freedom Party, Republicans and Democrats to fix our crony capitalism problem.  For more on Lessig's efforts to do this, see "rootstrikers.org" and "http://interoccupy.net/blog/money-out-voters-in". 

      Best Wishes, 
      Spencer 

On 11/29/2012 10:55 PM, John Thielking wrote:

The Green Party of Santa Clara County consensed to co-sponsor the Dec 8th event with Sharat Lin being the only speaker. 

John Thielking, post meeting, has withdrawn Peacemovies.com as one of the co-sponsors of the event. 

--- On Thu, 11/29/12, Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com> wrote:

From: Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com>
Subject: [GPSCC-chat] Minutes of November meeting Green Party of Santa Clara County
To: 
Cc: sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org
Date: Thursday, November 29, 2012, 10:36 PM

Please post any additions, corrections, clarifications, etc. to this list.  Thanks.  Spencer 

On- 11/29/2012 3:45 PM, John Thielking wrote:

Seeing no objections to the draft agenda, this is now the final agenda for tonight's meeting. The only addition to the agenda is that an Iranian named Tanyer Vakili  (a friend of Leyla) has confirmed that he will be speaking at the Dec 8th event on Iran, Syria and Israel/Palestine.  Thanks.

John Thielking

--- On Tue, 11/27/12, John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com> wrote:

From: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>
Subject: [GPSCC-chat] Draft Agenda For GPSCC GA Meeting On November 29, 2012 7:30PM San Jose Peace Center
To: sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org
Date: Tuesday, November 27, 2012, 6:48 PM

Final  Agenda for November 29, 2012 Green Party of Santa Clara County GA meeting

7:00-7:30 
So far as I know, we don't have a speaker lined up for this time. possible speaker - a welfare recipient 5 min?

7:30 
Meeting begins. Identify facilitator, note taker, time keeper, vibes watcher and agenda preparer for next meeting.

facilitator:  Tian  

Note taker:  Spencer 

time keeper:  John t

vibes:  Dana & Gerry 

agenda preparer:  John Thielking 

7:35 
Introductions and announcements. Changes to agenda. Review minutes from October's meeting and approve. Announcement: 

Sat. Dec. 8, New Community of Faith, 6350 Rainbow Dr., San José, CA 95129,  2-4 PM:  Dr. Sharat Lin speaking on "War and Peace with Iran, Syria, and Palestine / Israel"

AACSA fundraising fish fry December 8 African American Community Services Agency -- What time?   11 - 6  304 N. 6th St., San Jose, CA 408-292-3157

Tian Harter 

Dana St. George 

Gerry Gras 

Caroline 

Drew Johnson  

Spencer Graves 

Pete O'Brien, Peace & Freedom Party 

John Thielking 

Fred Dupperault 

David Merritt

Sandy Perry 

7:50 
Treasurer's report and hat passing. Jim Doyle As a part of the treasurer's report: 5 min 
paypal donation & $50 annual fee to SOS 

collection:  $30 cash + $25 check 

7:55 Holiday Peace Fair. 

Who is tabling? 

Dana & Gerry 11-noon 

Betsy 12-2 

John Thielking, all day 

Who is doing our dessert? 

Dana St. George 

Any ideas for student helpers? 
John and Caroline.     

8:05 Human Rights Day march. Caroline. 

Dec. 2 (first Sunday in Dec.) Story & King organized by Volutarios de la Comunidad -- 3 mile march to City Hall.  

Dec. 7 - austerity crisis march - 

Dec. 10 similar march in Sacramento(?) 

8:10 Demonstration to support Medicare, Social Security, etc. before they get thrown off the fiscal cliff. 
Caroline 

(1) Flash Mob in San Francisco, Dec. 7, someplace;  contact Sandy.  

(2) tentative:  demonstration at Zoe Lofgren's office Monday, Dec. 10 organized by Single Payer Coalition + ???  ... contact Sandy.  

8:20 Sandy and Drew report on organizing at De Anza (10 min) 
      Need to make announcements in the proper classes early in each term to get students to volunteer to do project(s) with the Green Party

8:30 Caroline and Sandy report about Gavilan organizing. (5 min)       

8:35 Report back from Jr State. 

Great event.  Do It Yourself button machine sold like crazy.  

8:40 Should we start a series of pizza parties and/or other general interest events to build third party support? Should regular monthly meetings continue in current format or should the work be delegated to micro-committees who only have to check in with County Council to get approval for spending money? Contact Libertarians, Peace and Freedom, etc about pizza parties. Find out if we can get a regular venue for a GMO free potluck instead of a questionable GMO content pizza place. And/or should we try to spice up the monthly meetings by actually having speakers at 7PM-7:30PM? 
Th. Dec. 27:  Tian will see if he can get his clubhouse for a holiday.  Tian will notify us tomorrow.  

** What about webinars?  

** What about having meetings in different places?  

8:55 youth connections - 5 - 10 min 

9:00 4 year electoral plan 10 - 15 min 
infrastructure, candidate(s), fundraising, gotv, social media, etc. 
Next step:  Get CiviCRM software working for us.  

Generate joint list of candidates with Peace & Freedom, etc.  

9:10 Jazzing up our literature and translating it into Vietnamese. Caroline 
Jim Doyle has a volunteer who wants to do something.  We want something more eye catching.  Many places we go in San José, there are more Vietnamese than Hispanic.  

9:15 Techie committee for web site(s) and discussion of issues re:web sites and their accessibility. For example John Thielking has put out a job on a tech web site that allows people to hire web developers to hire someone to find a tech solution to the Google mobile rendering problem (where Google displays an inadequate “optimized” display of web pages on cell phones.) I am requesting that anyone I hire for this job will license the html code solution (if available) for Peacemovies.com and for free distribution to the Green Party and other interested parties. Caroline wants the web site to be updated with the correct contact info and up to date issues and events. 

9:25PM Last minute planning for Dec 8th talk with Sharat Lin and Pete O'Reilly and possibly one other speaker on the subject of War and Peace with Iran, Syria and Israel/Palestine. Does the Green Party want to co-sponsor this event? Do we need to pay money for the venue? John is covering gas money for any out of town speakers who want to speak (Peace and Freedom party invitations have been sent out to people in SF). No more than 3 speakers are recommended for this event. 

An Iranian named Tanyer Vakili  (a friend of Leyla) has confirmed that he will be speaking at the Dec 8th event on Iran, Syria and Israel/Palestine. 

      Drew knows a Tanyer.  

Drew will try to organize a meeting between Sharat and Pete.  

Spencer proposes the Green Party endorse a presentation by Sharat Lin at the New Community of Faith Dec. 8.  We have a consensus.  

John is concerned that more than one point of view be presented.  Drew has Tanyer in his class, and Tanyer talks all the time.  John 

9:35 Meeting ends 

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