Individual reports from: Aaron Lipke, Tammy Tatum, Michele Delehanty, Karine Megerdoomian, Jodi Beebe ============================================================================ From: "Aaron Lipke" New State Representative ---------------------------------------- Here are a few of my notes: The plenary in general was well executed. The process was at times excessively boring and I fear that people will get turned off by the state meeting process though I feel our presence and the presence of a good amount of greens greatly improved a lot of the work being done by the state groups. Afterwards I felt that we had all participated in some good work, though it was time consuming and at times frustrating. I spent time listening to ACORN and other Renter's rights groups present ideas on forming renter's rights groups. I feel that information will be very useful as an Uptown Green considering how renter's rights are one of the major concerns of the constituency the Uptown Greens hope to represent. I was elected to the position of State CC regional rep for SD and Imperial County and had an opportunity to meet many of the people I will be working with and for at the plenary. Having a number of people at the plenary was exciting because we all got to see the state party function and got to share our opinions afterwards. Many of my most inspired moments of Green Party action are echos of the experiences I've heard about at the plenaries I've been to. ============================================================================= From: Tammy Tatum Delegate ---------------------------------------- What follows is a summary of the meeting of the Clearinghouse Committee held during the January plenary 2002. Chair: Jo Chamberlain email: joc@pobox.com web site: -Explanation on what is the function of the Clearinghouse. Communication with the public (phone, email, snail mail), referrals to Countys & other groups, literature generation & dispersal. -Report from Sacramento County on the progress of setting up the Sacramento Office to take care of several of the functions of the clearinghouse. Sacramento County was expecting to have the office completely setup by mid-February. -Discussion of the financial needs of the Clearinghouse and what should be included in the budget request to the Coordinating Committee. - Discussion of some web site issues brought up at the IT meeting. Due to a lack of time this discussion never happened. Tammy Tatum ============================================================================= From: John and Michele Delehanty Delegates ---------------------------------------- Plenary Report From Michele Delehanty First, let me thank everyone for the opportunity to serve as a delegate. It is an honor to be from San Diego County. Where I think San Diego Sparkeled: I think the San Diego County Greens were served well by the delegates at this plenary. It was the first time in the past 5 plenary sessions that I have seen all delegates present throughout the plenary sessions so that when there was a need for voting our delegation was present and ready to go. I was especially impressed with our first time delegates, Jodi Beebe and Aaron Lipke who were very attentive to the business of the plenary. The San Diego delegation, with the leadership of Ric Newberry, was one of the few counties to submit written comments on the Platform testing for consensus form. While we could have used a little more time to get this ready, all delegates that met for the two sessions together prior to the plenary participated and gave thoughtful input. On the floor of the plenary, this input was referred to and several tings were incorporated into the platform planks. Armenian Genocide Item: Karine Megerdoomian did a great job of answering questions and addressing the issue before the plenary delegation when the item was challenged. After some discussion, the item passed and will be taken on to the National for support. Workshop Session Report: Due to my involvement at the state level I attended those workshops that pertained to Platform and Green Issues. Platform Committee Workshop: Participants discussed the process of updating the platform planks and were given opportunities to sign up to work on the next round of planks. Participants had the opportunity to add planks to this list as well. The next round of planks to be updated will include: Corporate Reform Media Child Care Immigration Peace & Non-violence Sustainable Building Practices Government Spending Readers will be needed as well as people to pull together the drafts of the updated planks for the next plenary. This is open to all Greens interested in these specific planks. Green Issues Working Group Workshop: There was a review of the work so far Green Issues has beeen involved in. There was a discussion of how Green Issues Working Group perculates ideas and positions that are then passed on to the Platform Committee. A schedule for monthly conference calls will be set up to focus on the Green Issues topics that are included in the listserv system. These include: Energy Environment Single Payer Health Care Criminal Justice Peace & Justice Social Economic Justice Education Electoral Reform Media People talked about a few issues The working plan for 2002 was discussed and a rough budget was drafted. Communications between plenaries will be done by email listserv, mailings and conference calls. I also attended part of a workshop on Rent Control. The issues our working poor and middle classes face here in San Diego are similar to many other places in California where housing costs have soured while wages have remained stagnent. The means of obtaining rent control has many hurdles to overcome and here in San Diego we face a tough and well organized real estate lobby when it comes to getting city governments to support renter's rights and rent control ordinances. I have materials if anyone is interested. Election of new Regional Coordinating Council Representative: I think that this was the most difficult issue for us to address. We looked at several options and after discussion of these decided to elect our representatives and alternates using the default method at the plenary session since we had representation from both counties present and this was a fair representation of both counties based on registered greens and number of delegates assigned to each county. Getting adequate representation from both counties together in the near future seemed unlikely, and there seemed to be a need to have continuing representation on the state Coordinating Council. Respectfully submitted, Michele Michele Delehanty, consultant San Diego Hunger Coalition ============================================================================= From: Karine Megerdoomian Alternate Delegate ---------------------------------------- I mainly attended the Workshops. The first part is the summary of the workshops and at the end, there is the detailed report for the living wage one. =================================== CONTENT: Part 1 - GROW meeting - Living Wage Workshop - FACTS (Three Strikes Law) Workshop - Webmaster Workshop - Candidates Workshop - Update on the Armenian Genocide resolution - Opinion on the Scheduling at the Plenary Part 2 - Detailed report on the Living Wage Workshop ------------------------------------- GROW MEETING GROW = Grassroots Outreach Working Group The focus of GROW is to help local Green Parties grow. For this purpose, several groups or "teams" were created: 1. County Council Support Group: the task of this group is to go to areas where people are not happy with their county council or are having problems (e.g., if there is someone who blocks everything) and help them facilitate a discussion --- sort of initiating a "peace process" negotiation. The goal is to help counties solve their internal problems and focus on growing the locals. Michael Borenstein is heading this group. 2. Voter Registration Group: to help organize aggressive voter registration campaigns. Faramarz Nabavi is heading this group. 3. Video Group: to produce training videos and distribute them among locals so they can train for tabling, voter registration, phone-banking, etc. Leslie Bonnet is heading this group. 4. Literature Group: I actually suggested this group because some of us in San Diego felt that we need new brochures, pamphlets, literature at our events or for tabling, but that we don't have enough resources, skills or time to create nice ones. I suggested a Literature group at the state level so that we can have a centralized place for creating Green Party brochures and info about state-level issue campaigns, to distribute to locals. This way, if there are good things being done around the state, it can be used by everyone and the locals will not duplicate each other's work. And of course, your truly is heading this group!! If you would like to help out as wrie to the Green Party of the US). I didn't write down the names of the alternates. Further info: ------------------------------------- LIVING WAGE WORKSHOP Presented by: Kevin McKeown, City council member and mayor pro-tem of Santa Monica Vivian Rothstein and Madeleine Janis of the "Living Wage Campaign" in Los Angeles and Santa Monica Summary: This was a great presentation on what it takes to pass a living wage ordinance in your city. The presenters have been doing this for years and have won a living wage ordinance (henceforth LWO) for the LA airport employees and more recently, in Santa Monica. The presentation outlined how we should organize for such a campaign beginning with coalition-building and discussing research, using the media and a legal strategy. The second part of the workshop discussed the LWO that was passed by the majority Green Council to raise the wages of the workers in the luxury hotels in the tourist zone of Santa Monica. It was shocking to hear the amount of money the luxury hotels (those with annual gross receipts of $5 million or more) are currently spending (in the millions) to make sure they will not pay a living wage to their employees! Now, there is a referendum scheduled on the Living Wage Ordinance on November 5th. Implementation of the ordinance will be delayed pending outcome of the vote. The campaign in Santa Monica needs our help to get out the vote for November. Read the "Detailed Report" below for more information. Opinion: I feel that a study of the living wage campaign can really help uspeople have experience and have already run a few successful campaigns. Further info: www.laane.org Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy Kevin McKeown's website Delegate ---------------------------------------- Plenary Report LA Plenary Jan. 18th was glad to hear many delegates voice their opinions in assisting to craft more solid positions on important statewide issues. The education plank squeaked by only after delegates were asked to vote individually, since there were some (but not enough) delegates who were unable to step aside regarding their concerns about the plank. In fact, a fellow Green mentioned that it was the first time in approximately five years that a plstatewide and nationally. I was unable to attend the large dinner and talk by Gubernatorial Candidate Peter Camejo because I had not ph fellow GP members, I would have preferred the option of conserving my money by staying at a local GP member's home. In general, I found most if not all of the attendees to be very progressive in their visions for the party and their communities. All in all, I came away having met a large number of peoplet once we knew the outcome of the regional representation vote, that we would discuss potential candidates at the next general membership meeting to be voted on at the next plenary. However, since our region remained unchanged, it was determined that the delegates would immediatkground on pertinent issues and what their obligations and duties at the plenary will be. I would recommend a more democratic selection process for CC representation, which would include better communication to party members about when the current CC rep. is scheduled to move on so that anyone who is interested in fulfilling that position, will know the deadline for submitting their name as a candidate for delegates to have a fair and informed vote. The best way for regions that span more than one county to accomplish this, is to have a joint meeting of delegates from those counties with candidates for CC representative so that those in San Diego County can be come acquainted with candidates from Imperial County and vice versa. ============== End Reports