Category: Uncategorized (Page 43 of 49)

It looks like the DNC is gathering info on Democrat meetups.The DNC will only develop a new tool to replace meetup.com if we tellthem. Let your voice be heard!

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/

Great op-ed in the Seattle Times today on the Top Two.

…The party bosses didn’t like Democrats picking Republicans, and vice versa. They won their lawsuit, and last September, for the first time in 70 years, Washington primary voters were confined to candidates from only their chosen party.

People hated it so much that, two months later, voters adopted by initiative a primary that is all but blind to party. Next September, voters will go back to choosing among all candidates for a political office. The top two highest vote-getters advance, regardless of their party.

…They can convene all they want, but the result will amount to nothing more than an endorsement. Washington voters have embraced a “qualifying” primary and rejected the parties’ nominating primary — the parties should respect them.

If Vance, Berendt and their party cronies don’t like it, they have only themselves to blame.

It doesn’t get to all the points I would make, but it gets the argument out there. I would actually contend that dropping opposition to the Top Two would actually be good for the Democratic Party.

And, here is why. The Times article puts it right out there: ” The party bosses didn’t like Democrats picking Republicans, and vice versa.” From the point of view from people inside the parties everyone is either a Republican or a Democrat. Taking this point of view a little further, if you don’t choose a party, you can’t vote in a primary.

And, as my logic train chugs on, since most people in Washington don’t see themselves as either Democrats or Republicans (or, if they do, they sometimes they like the Democrat over a particular Republican) closing up the primary will close these folks out of the political system. And, as Democrats, this is the last thing we want to do.

Open parties, open ballots.

Restore The Democracy in Washington State

If I was running against Paul Berendt for state chairman earlier this year, I would have made my campaign all about one thing:

The Democratic Party should support the will of the voters of the state of Washington and not sue to overturn the Top Two Primary.

In fact, we should embrace it. We shouldn’t be in this lawsuit along with the GOP to overturn a popular initiative. Even if its not perfect, it represents what the people of Washington want, not to be driven to choose a party.

Most Washingtonians, if you asked them, would probably say that they were Democrats. But, it’s not as simple as that. Most Washingtonians don’t want to be labeled, and as Dino Rossi showed us last fall, we would rather go with the less partisan, less Olympia, less establishment guy.

The top two isn’t about “I don’t want to be labeled,” it’s about not wanting to be part of the establishment. Democrats used to understand that:

Known during the 19th century simply as “the Democracy,” it all but invented the repertoire of mass politics with such innovations as storefront offices, precinct captains, and torchlight parades. The party embraced immigrants, Catholics in particular, who were set upon by “anti-Papist” mobs and moralists who tried to outlaw their saloons. Most Democratic stalwarts were male, and nearly all were white. But they still proudly considered themselves the bone and sinew of a “people’s party.”

So, why are we joining arm and arm with the Republican Party, to make our party look even more like a bunch of establishment hacks? If the GOP wants to walk that way, fine let them. If our state leadership actually sees some functional good in having a closed primary, then let the Republican Party carry that fight. Every political party in Washington will reap the benefits (by the way, where are the Libertarians now?) but, only the GOP will have to lose that public relations debacle.

A couple more arguments for supporting the Top Two as a Democrat:

1) If the primary is all about choosing a party’s nominee, why should the taxpayers have to pay for it? There is not a good answer for that.

2) I had a lot of fun at the Presidential caucuses last year. Tons of people came out, it was invigorating to see so many people involved. And guess what? It wasn’t a close primary, it was an open caucus! These things work, and they work great if we’re trying to bring people into the party from the grassroots. So, lets have more of these.

By embracing the Top Two primary and Washington State’s anti establishment feelings towards elections and party affiliation, we can actually help build the Democratic Party in Washington. I know it sounds counter intuitive, but as Joe Trippi once said to Howard Dean,

We don’t have to be the party of exclusion. We don’t have to be the party that tells people, “We decide who is a Democrat.” We can be the Democracy.

Oly Dem Meetup update

As you can see from the homemade link to the right, I’m already thinking about ditching meetup.com for all the fun they’ve been having raising rates and such. Yesterday I sent out an email to our more active Dem meetupers to guage their response to moving on from Meetup.com and becoming a lower case meetup

Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 10:08:20 -0700 (PDT)
From: “Emmett O’Connell”
Subject: Possible changes to our meetup

Hello everyone,

By now you probably recieved the announcment for this month’s meetup, including a short discussion on the changes that meeutp.com is making. Right now they are charging $9 a month for their service for meetup hosts, which in the past had been free. By 2006, they will raise that rate to $19 a month.

We are already raising $24/month for our room at the Olympia Center, and I feel $9 and eventually $19 a month for the service meetup provides is not worth it. I was wondering how everyone else feels about this.

I’ve talked to John Cusick with the county party and he feels ok using the TCD’s website (thurstondemocrats.org) to organize the meetups. We also have an existing yahoo group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/olydemmeetup/) that has a lot of the same functions that meetup.com has.

So, there are option out there if we want to move away from meetup.com. What do you think?

Thanks,
Emmett

The replies I’ve gotten so far have been encouraging, so this time next week, we might be looking at officially ditching Meetup.com in Olympia.

Kari does a great job organizing what has been going on out there into a good post at politicsandtechnology.com, and he point us to a really good article on the entire meetup “kerfuffle” at the Personal Democracy Forum.

ALSO, next week, Tuesday, May 10, the Olympia Democratic Party meetup will be discussing Election Reform! With this weeks signing of several election reform bills by our Governor Chris, this should be an interesting one.

Using your old general campaign email list to run again in four years? Spam.

Can anyone else see what is wrong with this picture?

“Democratic insiders” say that Sen. John Kerry’s (D-MA) “unprecedented direct access to so many current and onetime supporters” — through a database of 3 million voters he compiled during last year’s presidential campaign — “is a huge advantage heading into the next Democratic presidential primary,” The Hill reports.

“Only the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and MoveOn.org can boast of contact lists as large, say Democrats familiar with Kerry’s database.”

Meanwhile, “the political team Kerry has hired to staff his new leadership political action committee, Keeping America’s Promise, indicates that he is gearing up” for another shot at the White House.

I signed up for Kerry’s email list back during the pre-convention general campaign, not because I like Kerry (even thought at the time I did), but because he was the FREAKING nominee! And, the email list was one of the best ways to feel involved in the campaign. I’m still getting emails from this guy, and that’s one of the reasons I’m not using that particular email address.

May Day will Certainly SUCK!!

Honestly, I’ve never been a fan of May Day in any of its forms. I’ve mearly participated as a viewer. It has been a spectacle for me, but a spectacle that I appreciated for what I think everyone took it for: whatever you make of it.

No one person or group defined May Day, so it turned into one big smelly hippy, anarchist thingie that would just happen. Pretty cool, I guess if you’re a hippy with a drum or a anarchist. Anyway. This year the Freakin thing is planned and sponsored. Sponsored by the wobblies, yes, but still…

On Sunday, May 1st the Industrial Workers of the World and the Olympia Workers Association, joined by working class organizations all over Olympia, present International Labor Solidarity Day, at 12 noon at Sylvester Park in downtown Olympia.

For over 100 years May First has been celebrated as International Workers Day: a day for working people to celebrate and remember the power they have when they stand together. 100 years ago workers exercised that power and won the 8 hour workday. In the 20th century the power of labor solidarity won workers victories like the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. Now those rights have become so standard we often take them for granted. We celebrate May Day to remember those who died at the hands of business and government to make the worker’s life better. Still, a workers life is hard in Olympia but we still have the power to stand together to fight for the rights all working people deserve: job security, health and child care, and a living wage. Come celebrate May Day at Sylvester Park and stand up for workers rights. By standing together the workers of Olympia are more powerful than Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Come to the park at noon to hear speakers, the music of Harry Levine and Margaret Fortune, and meet local working class organizations. Make picket signs at the park and join us as we take back the streets for the Workers’ Solidarity Parade, leaving at 2:00.

May Day Will Suck

Or that is what I expect. After hitting high water marks in 2000 and 2001, the yearly rebellion fest has slowly petered out to the point that it is really super lame. I used to get ramped up by this point, all worried about what might happen. But, I’m not even worried this year, It will be lame.

Otherwise, here is the announcement for the planning meeting of the spontaneous event.

Kari tracked this down for us:

“I just spoke face to face with Scott Heiferman. Scott hosts the NY Technology MeetUp at the Apple Store in Downtown Manhattan where I’m sitting right now. I asked Scott, point blank, if the $9 was instituted to help them from going out of business. Basically, he said that if they didn’t do something — sell banner ads, etc., — that, yes, eventually, they would go out of business. They felt that if they had to generate revenue to stay in business, it should be a small fee that would come from their member-supported community.”

But, still the charge will get in the way and the DNC should so something, create a meetup type tool at democrats.org. I’ve liked meetup.com since Dean for America used it in the early part of 2003 to basically launch their campaign, but with the $19 a month charge by next year, it has outgrown its usefullness as a political organizing tool.

Lots of discussion going on at the Dem Meetup Hosts yahoo group right now. Plug into that and you’ll get a good dose of how we might be able to reach past meetup.com. The most hopeful email I’ve gotten today was from Ralph Miller:

To: DemMeetupHosts@yahoogroups.com
From: “Ralph Miller”
Subject: [DemMeetupHosts] DNC and MeetUps
I understand that there are plans at the DNC to relaunch their website in June. The revamped site will likely include tools that will enable us to schedule our Meetups directly.
-r

Another good suggestion came from Jon Garfunkel who suggested CivicSpace as a replacement for the tools curretnly offered by meetup.com. Are there any other existing tools that we can latch onto?

Good all around guy Kari Chisolm, and fellow Western Dem, followed up on my Kos postings at his politics and technology website. I’m pretty dumb for not enlisting Kari’s insight in this discussion earlier.