What can The Green Party of California accomplish in 2011/2012? How?
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Kendra Gonzales (Ventura): increase registration by one half by doing a huge push via tabling, community events, campus outreach, social networking, (Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, etc.) expanding our main stream media list and presence, improving our website, using more video, more "fun" local events...get liberals in a room, with their guard down, having fun...get them to re-register right there and then. How many of us carry around registration forms with us everywhere we go?
(yeah...me neither, but I should! And I will!)
David Gesinger (Contra Costa County): I suggest the following three points as a place to start.
1) Hire a professional firm to get all of the outdated and unattended websites off the web and combat deliberate misinformation or false websites. There are organizations that can help make this happen, such as reputation.com (formerly reputationdefender.com).
2) Tone down the rhetoric. In order to be politically successful we need the support of the majority. The 'sky is falling' tone that many in the party insist on espousing alienates the majority of the voting public. We as a party do not need to change our positions on issues, however we should be very thoughtful in how those issues are framed and presented. Employing the help of professional linguists may prove a tremendous benefit.
3) Treat fellow members and everybody else with respect! We should respect the majority and take our personal egos out of the equation. Cussing at each other and strangers who disagree with you, calling supporters and other party leaders names is counter productive and retards growth and involvement. Members of the party should not be wiling to sabotage the progress of a given item simply because they feel their ideas are the best and only way to move forward.
These three things, if addressed, could go a long way in getting more of the 100,000+ registered greens in California actively involved and excited about the party. The general public is ready for something other than the two major parties, lets give them a real third option.
COMMENT
Joe Giambrone said:
"Hire a professional firm to get all of the outdated and unattended websites off the web "
Why would you need to hire outside contractors to do this?
And similarly:
"Employing the help of professional linguists ..."
Your suggestions mostly revolve around paying out money to private firms, or am I completely off-base here?
If there are "100,000" members, and a presumably significant portion looking for ways to help, then the idea that the first priority is to go find someone to pay to do the work is completely inefficient and wasteful.
People WANT to help. They don't seem to be permitted to do so. That reflects a failure to keep communication lines open with the base.
I have a real strategy for turning this decline around (which you may have already seen), and it has several pretty straightforward things to do. These will lead to a more connected community that works together more efficiently and gets people motivated:
-JG, 2/4/11#
Jenni Woodward (SF):
- Re: "get the bogus, unattended sites off the Internet," that can't be done. But all the "authorized" GPCA sites can have an up-to-date list of both the authorized GPCA sites and the unauthorized, bogus, mis-information sites -- which each real site shares and keeps updated with the other real sites. jgw110908
- Re: "100,000 members," I'd like to capture their opinions and in effect encourage them to be more active at least by giving feedback. I will try to update the surveying component of my CAGreenIDEAS.org web site (1) to reflect the questions posed by the few more active members contributing to this GPofCalWiki site. (2) I'll configure the surveys on CAGreenIDEAS.org to make a count of how many are for or against or "don't know" about any and all of the questions published here. I'll let that survey be open to accepting other GPCA members' online votes or preferences for, say, 3 months. I'll try to set it up so the survey posts a running updated "results" web page with the current results to-date of that running- or on-going survey. (3) If the GPCA 'leadership' requests, I can reset the for/against/no-opinion counts in any particular survey, reopen it for an agreed-upon set of weeks, and collect and web publish those results as well... in effect allowing the GPCA to have ad-hoc "straw polls" online with input from as many state-wide members as possible. jgw110908
