july25,2005 Green Party, FNU (Fremont/Newark/Union City) --Calif., USA Report on GP-FNU meeting, Tue, July 19, 2005 Number in attendance: 6 1) Final preparations for co-sponsoring film on July 23 We decided at our June 7 meeting to join TCPJ (Tri-City Peace & Justice) to co-sponsor the film "Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land: U.S Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. It is to be followed by a panel discussion. Tonight we agreed to have a Green Party person give a few remarks in the introductory phase of the program, to let the audience know that there is a local Green Party group now. One person also will distribute flyers about the program between now and July 23. The program is set for 7/23 (Sat) 1:30-4:30pm, at the Fremont Main Library, 2400 Stevenson Blvd. (at Paseo Padre, near the corner towards Lake Elizabeth). Set-up will begin at noon. 2) Possibility of tabling at Fremont Art & Wine Fest Aug. 6-7 Despite the site for non-profit groups at the festival being located quite far from where the festival-goers walk through the festival, we decided to set up an informational table. The non-profit area is on a first-come, first-served basis, so we have to come early, before the 10am opening. We'll make a Green Party sign large enough to see from a distance, and have some literature, voter reg forms, and hopefully an edited video showing key video clips on various issues. Several people volunteered to attend the table, and Sheena will coordinate the staffing of the table. 3) Report on Patterson Ranch Development Our main person involved in this issue was not able to be at tonight's meeting, but others briefly recalled that people with Friends of Coyote Hills/Fremont reported on a recent Fremont city council discussion of the issue. Despite the bulk of the public at the meeting being against development, one city council member (unnamed) claimed that the "silent majority" of Fremont wanted development. 4) Subsequent films, other new activities We will show another film. For the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we'll show "Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire" on Friday, Sept. 9. 5) Green Party of US - Annual National Meeting The national committee of the Green Party is holding its annual national meeting July 21-24. Several items are on the agenda, but three are generating a lot of controversy. They are proposals by the state parties of New York, California, and Vermont. These proposals were initiated by the loosely knit group "Greens for Democracy and Independence" (GDI), started by 2004 vice presidential candidate Peter Camejo. The first GDI proposal seeks to modify the formula for the share of delegates to the national party. Hindsight shows that the 2004 presidential nominating convention gave widely varying representation to individual Greens, according to which state party they belonged to. Some states had about one delegate for each thousand Greens. (With 157,000 registered Greens, California had 132 delegates.) Some states had closer to one delegate for each hundred Greens. The most extreme example was Iowa, with 90 registered Greens -- it got nine delegates, one for every ten Greens. To remedy this imbalance, the first GDI proposal calls for adoption of a "One Green, One Vote" policy. To implement this, each state party would count its members by whatever measure they feel is best, and report the resulting count. Each state's share of delegates to the national committee and the presidential nominating conventions would then be based on this reported size of the state party. The methods of measuring membership size are not mandated; this reflects the great variation in political party laws in different states, as well as the different choices made by state Green parties. Thus, under this proposal, each state party can choose the method that it feels is appropriate. Possibilities include registered Green voters, people on sign-up sheets for party activities or mailing lists, number of votes received by Green candidates, etc. A second proposal would give each Green candidate contending for the party's presidential nod the right to accept or reject locally chosen delegates for that candidate. This is a safeguard against people becoming delegates for a candidate they do NOT like, in order to switch their vote to their truly preferred candidate once their vote is no longer "bound" by their state party. Such behavior, though rare, is unethical. The third proposal is perhaps the most controversial. It would make it a policy for the national Green Party to refrain from endorsing candidates from the Democratic (or Republican) party, and to urge the state parties to adopt a similar policy. (To leave maximum flexibility to locals, the proposal does NOT urge the policy on local Green party organizations.) This proposal jumps directly into the hornets' nest of when or whether to support the "lesser evil". --You can read the GDI proposals at these GPUS web pages: GDI #1 - Instituting Internal Democracy In The GPUS http://green.gpus.org/cgi-bin/vote/propdetail?pid=153 GDI #2 - Delegate Selection To The National Convention http://green.gpus.org/cgi-bin/vote/propdetail?pid=154 GDI #3 - Green Party Affirmation Of Independence http://green.gpus.org/cgi-bin/vote/propdetail?pid=155 There may be amendments made to the proposals at the meeting. Voting on the proposals may take place at the national meeting, or the meeting may decide to delay voting until after the meeting, moving the vote to the web-based voting system that the National Committee uses between national meetings. 6) Preliminary planning for ecology festival We deferred this to a subsequent meeting. NEXT MEETING: Wed., Aug. 10 at 7:30pm, Newark Public Library ************* NOTE: ************* THIS IS A SECOND CHOICE; THE FIRST CHOICE OF ************* TUES. AUG. 9 WAS NOT AVAILABLE.