SC Call Notes — 8 April 2005
Participants:
SC: Jo Chamberlain, Jake Schneider, May O’Connor, Jody Haug, Greg Gerritt, Gwen Wages, Peggy Lewis, Marc Sanson
Staff: Brent McMillan, Emily Citkowski
Facilitator Marc Time Maya Notes Greg
Abbreviations used:
AC = Accreditation Committee
ANM, ANMC = Annual National Meeting Committee
BAWG = Ballot Access Working Group
BRPP = Bylaws, Rules, Policies and Procedures Committee
BC = Black Caucus
CC = Coordinating Committee
CCC = Coordinated Campaign Committee
CG SC = Campus Greens Steering Committee
ComCom = Communications Committee
DC = Diversity Committee
DIA = Democracy in Action internet service
DRC = Dispute Resolution Committee
FC = Fundraising Committee
FEC = Federal Election Commission
GP = Green Party
IC = International Committee
LC = Lavender Caucus
NPWG = Nominating Process Working Group
NWC = National Women’s Caucus
PEC = Presidential Exploratory Committee
PCSC = Presidential Campaign Support Committee
SC = Steering Committee
SPWG = Strategic Plan Working Group
[Brackets denote editor’s suggested corrections. Some punctuation corrections done with no content change. -ed.]
Published Agenda
2 hr 20 min so far
5 min – facilitator, timer, note taker (Greg); agenda revisions; approval of minutes
15 min – Campus Greens – 7:15 Eastern – or whenever works for them (Peggy – including invitation)
30 min – staff reports
Brent – PD/CCC/BAWG(COFOE)-PCSC//13 April call with Cobb-LaMarche;//Nader-Camejo call?//Minnestrista exhibit
Emily – Interns//Green Card//etc.
5 min – Voting Queue (Greg)
5 min – Work Groups follow up – SPWG (Brent); NPWG (Greg)
5 min – Article 3 – committee R&P’s (?)
5 min – Salzman post (Greg?)
5 min – Glenn Ross lawsuit (Jake)
5 min – Climate Crisis Action meeting in NYC 8 April – GPUS rep (?)
10 min – Election for SC replacement – 2 wk disc, 1 wk vote (Greg)
10 min – Tulsa convention – schedule, agenda, etc. (Jody) – before we’re tired…
Portfolio reports:
15 min – FINANCE Portfolio (Jake, Marc): Finance, FundCom
Tier 1 proposals – International Committee, ANM Committee
Online Fundraising Consultant //Fundraising Asst Coordinator (Jake)
Staff training (Brent, Emily)
5 min – ELECTORAL (Jo): CCC, Office Holder Network, PCSC, Legal Team – trademark
5 min – POLICY (Greg, Gwen): Platform, Peace, Intnl, DC, Strategic Plan
5 min – OUTREACH (Peggy): Media, Green Pages, Merchandise, Campus Greens
5 min – INTERNAL (Maya): Personnel – review draft manual, Dispute Resolution;
(Greg): BRPP – nomenclature
5 min – INTERNAL (Jody): Accreditation, ComCom, Event Planning
Agenda Review: add Lease on Office runs out in October and we probably need to move. Question about distributing survey at Annual Meeting.
Campus Greens
Andrew Warner from Campus Greens Steering Committee came on the call at 7:15 to discuss what is going on with Campus Greens. CG has gone through hard times and now has no office, no staff, and no list serve. It has just regained access to its website. The questions that seem to be going around are whether it should stay a 501c3 or morph into a more political organization (a 527) and become much more tightly tied to the Green Party.
Some of the issues that must be contended with as this decision is made include that if Campus Greens becomes more overtly political it will be unable to get grants and unable to tap school resources, as those go to non-political groups only.
If CG is to be more closely tied to GPUS, what is the way to do it? Caucus? Probably not though most CG members could join Youth Caucus. Network? So far only office holders network exists and that may not be a good model.
GPUS can help CG in any way that it chooses, they can accept money from us even if they are a c3 organization. GPUS is helping them get a list serve set up again. There has been some discussion about giving them a desk in the DC office, that discussion will continue, partly because CG has to decide what it would do with such a desk, and how to make sure that person fits into the office.
CG voted last year to have no dues from its members or affiliates. That may need to be revisited, but as it was not doing much, no one wanted to give it money. What are the relationships between CG chapters and state and local parties? Could that be a source of energy to help CG? Andrew left the call at this time.
SC agreed to conduct a conference call with CG SC on Wednesday April 13.
Staff reports
Brent:
Cascadia Campaign School went very well, though attendance was below what they were hoping for. Ross Mirkirimi, Green on the SF Board of Supervisors, was the keynoter. Identified new candidates in WA and OR.
Big Donation this week from Mazess’. We have all seen the discussion. Next mailing will be to OH recount list.
Chesapeake Campaign School in DC April 23. Agenda should be done by Monday.
New London, CT will have a school on May 7 Others are being planned around the country.
9 wins so far this year, 3 in IL last week.
GPUS is meeting its fundraising goals for the year. Partly from large contributions, partly from direct mail, partly because internet fundraising is working alot better. It may be time to send a proposal to the CC to free up tier 2 money for committees.
SC is very alarmed about the tone of conversation on the lists, and with a violent threat from one Green being conveyed to another, if the violent tone of conversation is not damped down, we may see real violence. There are some rules/laws about threats over the internet and the SC is going to try to get those out for the CC to see. We need to take action to improve the tone. The Sierra Club has some rules on these things that the SC will examine and see if they are useful to our situation.
Right now the Greens really need to look at our culture. Part of it is that some parts of the party thrive when a dialectic is set up, but they thrive at the expense of the rest of the party. How do we get the discussion going forward rather than back and forth across fissures in the party?
With BRPP working on rules of how committees can protect themselves and get back to work, when those are passed, folks will realize there are real consequences for the violent tone; that the violent tone will cause them to be removed from lists, and maybe that will help rein it in. Maybe not.
David Cobb will be in DC on April 13, and Brent is working to arrange a conference call between SC and Cobb for that evening. SC has not yet debriefed Cobb and Lynne Serpe and they have much ballot access info that we can use.
Brent will look into the request from a museum in Indiana looking to set up interactive exhibits on political parties. The museum is associated with Ball St U and Brent is an alum.
Emily:
Looking for summer volunteers and interns. If you know anyone appropriate who will be in DC this summer, let her know. Tuesday there will be a phone bank party at the office calling sustainers nationally to renew and donors in DC seeking to have them become sustainers. The Green party card has brought in about $8000 so far and more than 140 cards have gone out.
A volunteer in the DC office is starting to work with state party coordinators for the card program. So far 10 state parties have a card coordinator and we are seeking coordinators in all of the other states. State parties cooperating with the program receive a cut of the money. On-line fundraising in March took in $8500. $700 from general donations, $5300 from Green Party card program, $800 from new sustainers, $1500 for merchandise, and $125 for Black Caucus. January on-line donations totaled about $1500 and in Feb about $2000, so Green Party Card program has a big impact.
Converting the office to open source software and converting fundraising and communications software to open source. Code weavers are working hard and if all works out a switch will be made eventually.
Codeweavers are asking for assurances that if they develop good products that GPUS will actually use them and that they will be available to state parties. SC clearly agreed with both conditions. There may need to be a more formal document between GPUS and Codeweavers over licensing, etc and we shall keep working on that, based on a draft code weavers have circulated. We may do a call with the Codeweavers on the 22nd.
Voting Queue:
Currently Under Discussion–
ID 132 – Approval of the Rules Policy and Procedures from The Finance Committee
Floor Manager: Jake Schneider
ID 135 – Hosting of the 2005 Annual National Meeting
Floor Manager: Greg Gerritt
ID 134 – Open Ballot Bylaws Amendment
Floor Manager: Greg Gerritt
Currently Voting–
ID 128 – USGP to become an organizational member of US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
Floor Manager: Jody Grage Haug
ID 129 – Changes to the GP-US Bylaws that define Committee and Caucus Membership
Floor Manager: Marc Sanson
ID 130 – Bylaw Amendment to explicitly include Alternates as representatives to the Coordinating Committee
Floor Manager: Jo Chamberlain
ID 133 – SC Term conditions
Floor Manager: Greg Gerritt
Votes are all going forward; none of the votes look to be particularly close. Of the things coming up, the vote on whether to have an open or secret ballot for the SC election will be voted this week, ending just before the balloting is supposed to begin for the SC election. SC agreed to delay balloting for SC election by one day so we could see the results of the voting on methodology and know what to use. It looks like the voting page upgrade for IRV will be ready and can work with either open or secret ballots. If it is ready we shall use the new system. Greg will follow up with voting page team and elections team to make sure all is in place.
BRPP is almost ready with wording to change the terminology in the bylaws from CC to NC and that will go to the voting page when it is ready.
SC then returned to discussion of violent email traffic. SC agreed to take the following steps as an beginning.
1. State Party of violent and threatening posters will be notified and asked to help stop the violence.
2. Send out Sierra Club guidelines for people to check out, see if they will help us.
3. Develop actual consequences for these kinds of postings going out, including preparing a statement saying that violent posts will bring immediate cessation of list privileges. CC will have to approve that but once drafted it can be voted on. Greg will produce a first draft.
4. Gwen will talk to her fellow delegate from MS Victor Fleitas about working with her to talk to the state party of the person who recently threatened another Green in a private email.
Working Groups:
SPWG Brent — Survey design moves forward, thinking about using a web based system, “survey monkey” to get the survey out and into the hands of Greens to fill out. This has some costs associated with it so SPWG may come to GPUS for budget allocation soon. Most concerned about making sure the survey is widely distributed and hits all demographics. The WG has replace 3 members who dropped off with new members chosen from the initial list of potential members submitted by the state parties.
Presidential Nominating Process WG Greg– List is still a pretty harsh environment, which is expected given that all of the factions made sure they were represented on the WG by bulldogs for the cause. There has been some progress on a few issues, but many other issues are still unresolved and reflect real differences about what is the right way to do Green politics. The co-chairs are working on a report and hope to report by the April 15 preliminary reporting deadline that was in the resolution creating the WG.
Again the SC needs to remind all Committees to finish their procedures and policy documents and get them submitted for a CC vote. Discussion noted that many committees are actually working on these fairly diligently. BRPP is going to be asked to come up with a more fully developed set of committee p and p’s that can be put in place for any committee that does not get their own done by x date and can be used by new committees until they develop their own. Jody will circulate a list of potential things to include in p and p documents.
Salzman post:
Charges of secret committees run by Greg and Maya trying to take over the party were met with laughter, though also a note that this relates to the general tone of the party discussion referenced previously.
Glenn Ross lawsuit: Ross, a Baltimore Green, is suing MD election officials as they violated MD law by letting a candidate that had not filed campaign finance reports stay on the ballot. Legal fees are high so SC voted unanimously to authorize $1000 donation to legal fees for Ross case and will inform MD delegation that they can, if they choose, bring a resolution to the CC asking for a further donation. (GPUS bylaws state SC can make expenditures of up to $1000 a month even if they are not in the budget; they just have to inform CC within a week of the expenditure being agreed to)
Climate Crisis meeting in NYC. GP was represented by Julia Willebrand and Lorna Salzman both of NYC. We hope to get a report soon.
Annual Meeting in Tulsa. Still need more paperwork from OK Greens and facilities detailing costs. On campus rooms will be much less expensive than rooms at the last two annual meetings. We need to figure out what we need for workshop space, etc. before we will know what the overall cost of the event will be and what registration needs to be to cover our costs.
Discussion of agenda for meeting. Thursday: committee and caucus meetings/workshops. Friday AM: committee and caucus meetings/workshops. Friday PM, Saturday all day, Sunday AM: Plenary sessions. Question about how many non-CC members will attend and should there be workshops at these times needs to be worked out. Sunday PM: committees/caucuses.
Clearly lots of details to be worked out. Vote on location will allow everyone to start making arrangements for travel.
Other things to work out include facilitation and what business will be on the plenary agenda. The note Greg sent to CC last week brought few responses. One said more business; other said lots of business but no or very few items to be voted on as they prefer to use voting page for making decisions and it was noted that when GPUS votes on resolutions at annual meeting they are often unfinished resolutions and we get into all sorts of messes.
Both SPWG and PNPWG will have reports to make and both will need very wide discussion so that is likely to be much of the agenda. Neither WG will likely have much ready for voting.
Gwen asked if she could distribute a voluntary survey to CC delegates as part of her thesis research. We agreed she could have a few minutes to explain it and as responses were voluntary, there would be no harm in its distribution so CC delegates could fill it out.
In Tulsa we need a dedicated media room. Properly set up. Rooms for mini campaign school, office for staff and SC and host committee.
Portfolio review
Finance Portfolio
Jake, Marc: Need a budget for Tulsa. Also some SC members need costs for going to Tulsa covered. How should that be done, where in the budget does that come out of? Tier 2 budget would allocate $600 to SC expenses but that may not be enough. Needs further discussion.
Fin Comm will discuss sending proposal to free up tier 2 committee and caucus money soon. Tier 2 is about $21000
IC is asking for $2100 to send delegates to Federation of Green Parties of the Americas meeting this September. Tier 2 would give them $1500 for this.
AC is asking that their tier 1 allocation of $100 be released. SC approved.
Job descriptions for Assistant Fundraising Coordinator and Online Fundraising and Outreach Coordinator were both approved. Money is already in budget for Direct Mail consultant and this is a better way to use it to get the work done. Approved descriptions and agreed to seek applicants.
Staff training: SC members have had discussions with both Brent and Emily about places where they need skill strengthening and all of SC agreed that it is important to provide staff with opportunities to upgrade skills and do professional development. SC agreed that this is a good investment and that money for office budget is appropriate place for this to come out of. Fin Comm will review.
Electoral Portfolio
Jo: CCC needs a better mechanism for replacing members who fade away. There is lots of work to do and too few people doing it. Other parts of portfolio are quiet.
Trademark GPUS applied for a trademark on Green Party. Right after that a person in CA also applied. Brent will follow up on this trying to figure out who else applied for a trademark on Green Party.
Policy Portfolio Greg, Gwen
IC has resolution on Palestine in voting queue. Platform is quiet. Peace is working on p and p’s. Black Caucus is discussing Aimee Allison’s campaign.
Outreach Portfolio Peggy
Campus Greens we discussed tonite; will do call with them soon. Green Pages cranking along; media committee just doing its thing; merchandise coming to life.
Internal portfolio Maya, Jody
Personnel policy under review; volunteer is drafting salary equity proposal that was discussed two weeks ago at SC call; DRC is quiet. UT turned down an offer to have DRC facilitate discussion in their factional fratricide situation. BRPP is working on removal process, and technical language to change name of CC to NC.
AC: OK is accredited, work with MT is slow. VT comes up occasionally in discussion but no action yet. SC agreed to look into ways to help the situation in UT and VT but no good ideas yet. Communication is quiet. More Code Weavers were recruited for the network at Cascadia Campaign school.
Adjourned 10 PM EST
Minimally edited and HTML formatted by Charlie Green