CDLC Report & How to Be a Delegate
Thursday January 24, @10:27AM, by Mike Heichman, Secretary of the CDLC
Subject : CDLC Report & How to Be a Delegate
from the CDLC dept.
Summary :
Below is a report from CDLC for the 1-27 State Comm. meeting and information on "how to be a delegate to the GP Convention".
Text :
CDLC REPORT FOR THE JANUARY 27, 2008 STATE COMMITTEE MEETING
& HOW TO BE A GRP DELEGATE TO THE GP CONVENTION

Mike Heichman, Secretary of the CDLC
mikeheichman@verizon.net 617-265-8143

The CDLC has been dormant for some time. At a previous meeting of the State Comm., I resigned as the Interim Coordinator. Thanks to Elie Yarden for stepping in and moving the work of the committee forward.

I believe that it was in November when Elie and I talked and decided to call a meeting. I called many members of the State Comm. and especially focused on calling on members who I thought were not very involved with the business of the state party. I am very glad that some of them responded.

From our first meeting to the present moment, we have only had enough members, time and energy to work on the presidential primary. Our Committee has spent no time working on 2008 town elections, other 2008 races (congressional and state legislature) or ballot questions. However, Elie has been working on some of the research and compiling some data, which will be helpful for our future work. I believe that the fault lies not with our current members and meetings. Instead, the larger problem is that CDLC has been dormant for so long and that we have too many members of the State Committee who do not belong to any committee, including this one.

My hope is that more State Comm. members will join this or other committees and that we will be able to grow our membership and continue moving forward with our work throughout the year.

MEETING #1: 12-20

Present: Elie (Interim Coordinator), Gary, Ralph, Grace, Emily, Rob & Mike (recorder); 3 from Boston, 1 from Cambridge, 1 from Worcester & 2 from Amherst. Thanks to Grace for arranging the space for us in Worcester.

A. Presidential Primary

1. We agreed with Adcom’s recommendation that we NOT have an event with the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
2. We made the following major decision: We will seek to organize 2 forums: in Roxbury and Springfield/Holyoke. We decided to focus our limited energies on 2 events in different regions of the state and chose locations in large cities with a high concentration of low-income people and people of color.
3. Draft Title: “What would it look like to have a Green Party President at this time in history?”/”What would it look like if the Greens were the dominant political party in the country today?”
4. We would invite all candidates who will be on our ballot. Someone mentioned about a surrogate speaker, but we didn’t discuss this.
5. There was a proposal that we would see if we could get PBS to cover our forum (national publicity); we would need assistance from the national Greens.
6. There was a concern that some of the candidates might not have the $ resources to come up to MA for our events No one had any positive ideas. We also mentioned that we would need party funds for our small campaign.
7. There was a proposal that we would have a press conference at the State House. At this event, there would be a videoconference and the media would have an opportunity to interview the candidates. No one expressed interest at this meeting to work on this idea.
8. We decided to create a piece of campaign literature to publicize these 2 events. We also hoped that the GRP Newspaper would be ready for our events in sufficient quantities.

B. Delegation of Tasks

1. Gary, Ralph and Mike would work on a Roxbury event. The first task would be to contact Mel and Chuck.
2. Rob and Emily will help with the event in Springfield/Holyoke. Emily will contact Rick, Luis and Martina and offer Rob’s and Emily’s assistance in working on the event.
3. Mike will send out a draft of things that will be needed to be done to prepare for these events.
4. Emily will contact Eli (ComCom) and get information for our campaign literature.
5. Elie will contact the presidential candidates and figure out the best dates to have these 2 events.
6. Grace will make contacts with others who will help us with these 2 events. Grace will see if she can get us a location for the Springfield/Holyoke event at AIC

MEETING #2: 12-27 in a Thai Restaurant in Worcester

Present: Elie, Ralph, Gary, Emily, Ellie, Grace (facilitator), Rick, Maureen, Mark, Kirk & Mike (recorder)

A. Reports

1. Elie’s Report: Elie gave a report of his contacts with the presidential candidates and his request for assistance from Greg Gerritt (from the National GP) who is willing to come up from Providence for a meeting in Boston. He will contact the GP about assisting with Gary’s idea of getting PBS to cover our forum.
2. Boston Report: Gary, Mike, Merelice and Lawrence met with Mel. Gary contacted Chuck who will be contacting Roxbury Community College this week.
3. Emily’s Western MA Report: Emily contacted Eli B (ComCom) who will be busy until January. She was unsuccessful in contacting Martina. However, she was successful in contacting Rick and Ellie (who joined us for the meeting). Rick contacted Luis B, who will help with the event in Holyoke. Luis will contact Holyoke Community College for a potential venue. We discussed this venue and others-maybe the First Baptist Church in Holyoke. (Note: Luis has a radio show.) Grace will contact AIC in Springfield as a potential site.

B. When should we have our forums?: We agreed that the best dates would be the weekend (Friday-Sunday) of January 26-28 (potential conflict with State Comm. meeting) or February 1-3 (just before the primary).

C. The question was raised whether or not the GRP could raise $ at these events, especially if the venue was at a public institution. We need to ask Jamie and Dan.

D. Elie is expecting to hear information from all of the candidates by Jan. 4.

F. We made a list of the kinds of support we would need form the State Party

G. Restructuring CDLC

1. Gary was elected Male Co-Chair.
2. Emily declined (for now) to be elected Female Co-Chair.
3. Mike was elected Secretary.
4. Mike and Gary will serve for the next 6 weeks and then we will have new elections.

MEETING #3: Phone Conference,1-06

Present: Gary (chair), Emily, Eli B, Rob, Rick, Elie, Mike (Secretary), Maureen, and Grace

A. Reports

1. Elie: He contacted all of the campaigns (Nader, Mesplay, Swift, McKinney, Ball) and he has nothing solid to report from anyone! He was not confident that we would hear from the candidates soon. He contacted the National GP and requested their support in getting PBS coverage for our forum(s). We will not be receiving any support from the national. We briefly discussed that there would be a “debate” in San Francisco on January 13. They are planning to create a video that would be accessible

2. Report from Springfield/Holyoke: no progress yet

3. Roxbury: Incomplete attempts to get in touch with Chuck, who is contacting RCC.

B. What are the implications of these reports?: Initially there was a great deal of concern with the lack of progress in getting the venues and more importantly getting positive responses from the candidates that they could potentially attend. There was an alternative proposal that we attempt to organize many smaller events around the state and we could use the SF video as part of the draw. We would also inform the candidates of the scheduled events and ask them to rsvp if they could attend. At the same time there was a strong argument that we should continue to give our initial plan more time.

C. Decisions

1. We will continue contacting the candidates and getting the 2 sites.
2. We would need the commitment of at least 3 candidates and at least 1 site by our Wednesday meeting.
3. We will ask Adcom to authorize some $ for our forums. Additionally we want Adcom to know that we will need assistance from different GRP committees and that all members of State Comm. will be needed to be contacted and asked for assistance with the 2 forums.

MEETING #4: Phone Conference, 1-09

Present: Emily, Mike (Secretary), Rick (facilitator), Rob, Elie, Grace

A. Reports

1. Response from Candidates

a. Mesplay: Very doubtful that he would come
b. Swift: Needs $ to come.
c. Draft Nader-He won’t be coming to our forums. The CA event is the only thing that he has planned so far. There are FEC and other legal issues. Howie Hawkins from NY will be able to attend representing the “Draft Nader” campaign.
d. Ball: His situation is complicated and unclear.
e. McKinnney: Confidence was expressed that she could come the first weekend in February.

B. Regional Reports

1. Roxbury: Chuck can get us RCC. We believe that it will be free for Saturday and it might cost us $120 for Sunday. We were not fully certain of all of the dates for those two weekends.
2. Holyoke/Springfield: We can get AIC and HCC.

C. Adcom Report

1. Their major financial priority is to pay for the cost of the mailing of the newsletter. They hope to be able to provide some $ to make it possible for all candidates to attend our forums.
2. Adcom is hoping to have the newsletter out before the Presidential Primary. They will be assembling it by January 14 and hope to include information about our forums-deadline is the end of this week.
3. Adcom was told that some of us wanted the State Comm. meeting scheduled for January 27 to be postponed, but they decided to move ahead with their date
4. Adcom expressed concern that all of our candidates who will be on our ballot will not be participating in the televised CA forum. Maybe we should add a youtube presentation for those candidates.

D. Discussion and Decisions

1. We did not consider Howie Hawkins to be a candidate or a representative of an announced candidate. By consensus, we decided that he would not be a surrogate speaker.
2. Concerns were again expressed that we were running out of time and did not have enough confirmed information to move forward.
3. We decided to make one final attempt at contacting the candidates.

MEETING #5: Phone Conference, 1-17

Present: Mike (Secretary), Emily, Rob (facilitator), Maureen, Grace, Gary, Rick & Elie

A. Merelice’s e-mail message from today was read and briefly discussed.

B. Organizing “GRP Presidential Primary” Events in Different Locations

1. Report from Western MA

a. On Feb. 2, we will have an event at Holyoke Community College.
b. On January 29, we will have an event in Amherst.
c. We are attempting to have an event in a library in Holyoke. There have been some complications.
d. We may have an event in the Montague Library.

2. Report from Roxbury: A couple of us have been contacting members of our Boston chapter and potential allies and inviting them to a meeting at Chuck Turner’s office tomorrow (Friday) at 4:30.

3. Nashua River GRP meeting tomorrow (Friday) night. They were hoping to have the video, but it won’t happen.

4. The Worcester Chapter will have a meeting/event later in January.

5. Encouraging other Events

a. We decided to send an e-mail to different groups. This e-mail would provide some more information and would encourage members of the State Committee, other local chapters, other local GRP activists and interested GRP members to organize events before February 5.
b. We will create a “model” flyer which we will send out by e-mail. We hope this will encourage others to adapt our model flyer and make changes for their local events.

C. What if you want to contact GRP members in your area?

1. You can get a list to organize party events.
2. Contact Emily and Grace for assistance with the details.

D. The SF Campaign Video

1. Hopefully, we will be getting the video of the CA 1-13 debate in the next couple of days. The idea was presented that 6 copies would be made.
2. We discussed issues around the video including:

a. Quality and length of the video
b. Can it be edited? If yes, we discussed some potential people.
c. ComCom is too busy with the newsletter to help with this project.

E. Will candidates attend these smaller events?

1. We will attempt to use our website to list the upcoming events.
2. We will notify the candidates and tell them about the website. Gary will be the initial person for the candidates to contact.
3. Anyone who organizes events, send the details to Grace and she will forward the information to the Tech Comm. and they will put up the information on our website.
4. Our best guess is that we have lost the opportunity to have the big candidate forums and most likely, the candidates will not be coming into our state before February 5.

F. What if we need $ to organize these events, get and edit the video, etc.? Mike will send out the forms for people to fill out and to send back to the party.

G. If you need membership materials for these events, contact Dan M for buttons. (He may know about other materials.)

1. List of members in their area (if requested)
2. Do we think we will need any $?
3. Membership Materials

H. Will the GRP Newspaper be ready for the upcoming events?

1. It appears that the newspaper won’t be ready for distribution until the end of next week (best guess-January 25-27).
2. Mike will contact Eli B (ComCom) and ask him to send an electronic version of the newspaper. From this resource, he will send out a draft, which can be used for literature at these events. (information about the candidates, the primary election, how to be a delegate, etc.)

I. Preparing for the January 27 State Comm. Meeting

1. Mike will prepare a draft written report and Gary will make an oral report.
2. At our next meeting, we will vet the proposals, which pertain to the work of CDLC.

OTHER INFORMATION & NEXT STEPS

A. The meeting on January 18 in Roxbury was not successful. Only 3 GRP members attended and no “allies” attended. A couple of other GRP members sent word that they would help with the meeting. Chuck said that the only available date for RCC would be on January 26. The decision was made not to have an event in Roxbury. Instead, we would see if we could get the video on the local cable station.
B. Next CDLC meeting will take place on Thursday, January 25.
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HOW TO BE A GRP DELEGATE TO THE GP CONVENTION

As the Massachusetts affiliate of the Green Party U.S., the Green-Rainbow Party will be sending thirty two delegates (and thirty two alternate delegates) to the 2008 Green Party National Nominating Convention in Chicago, Illinois, July 10-13, 2008. Ours will be the fifth-largest delegation (with Pennsylvania) at the convention this year. We urge our members to apply to be delegates.

Becoming a delegate

There are two types of delegates:
• those pledged to a particular candidate,
• and those who are uncommitted to any candidate.

Anyone who desires to be a delegate for a particular candidate who is running in our state primary election should contact the candidate's campaign organization. Following the February primary, candidates are then required to present the Party with a list of the people they want as their delegates.

On behalf of the Party, the Candidate Development and Legal Committee (CDLC) is accepting the names of Party members who desire to serve as uncommitted delegates and alternate delegates. Those interested should state their interest in a letter to the CDLC by April 8. The letter must include the prospective delegate's name, address, phone number, email address if available, and a statement of up to 100 words describing his or her reasons for wanting to serve as a delegate. Letters may be emailed to delegates@green-rainbow.org or mailed to:

Green-Rainbow Party
PO Box 440353
Somerville, MA 02144-0004
Attn: CDLC

All delegates and alternate delegates must be members of the Party at the time of exiting the presidential primary or submitting the request to be a delegate, whichever is sooner. If not yet listed in the Party's copy of registered GRP voters, the prospective delegate must provide proof of Party enrollment.

The State Committee will select uncommitted delegates and alternate delegates by April 18 and notify delegates of their status promptly. Acceptance letters must then be returned by April 30.

A diverse delegation

To promote a diversity of voices at the convention, the GRP has set the representation goals for its delegation. The goal is that our delegation consist should be half women and half men. In addition to this goal, our further diversity goals are that the following groups represent the listed percentage:
• African American 11%;
• Latino 14%;
• Asian/Pacific/Native American 8%;
• and Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender 14%.

Each goal is independent of the others and a delegate can count towards more than one diversity goal.

Any member who belongs to one of these groups and wishes to be a delegate is encouraged to identify herself or himself as such.


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