Here’s what I just posted at the DemMeetupHosts yahoo group:

Last night at our meetup, after we had a great discussion on election reform, the Olympia Dem meetup group decided to cut our ties with meetup.com and organize, at least for the time being, on Yahoo groups. We’re also working with our county party to see if we can organize on their website.

The reasoning has been the same that as what we’ve been discussing here recently, that the decision to institute fees was just too much. In Olympia, we are already paying $24 a month for our room.

Personally, I would still like to see the DNC step forward with a grassroots, meetup.com-type organzing tool that county and local parties can use to organize meetups. We’re seeing a real interest here to use the meetup as a sort of “entry level” meeting or forum for people who want to be more involved in Democratic politics, but don’t quite have it in them to make a county party business meeting.

For those that are interestd, here’s a link to the new yahoo group for Olympia, Washington:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/olydemmeetup/