Monroe County Green Party Meeting - November 18, 2000 Place: Monroe County Public Library (Ellettsville Branch) Meeting Room Ellettsville, IN Time: 2:15pm - 4:00pm Attendance: Heather Drake, Peter Drake, Isabel Piedmont, Jeff Melton, Ken Rogers, Stephanie Kimball, Vic Kelson, Milton Fisk, Julie Roberts, Danna D'Esopo Jackson, Michael Berndt Facilitator: Jeff Melton Scribe: Heather Drake The meeting began at 2:25pm with a round of introductions. The agenda was approved with several additions and the minutes of the 1 November minutes were approved unanimously. * Media Report Jeff reported that the Herald-Times wrote a story about his desire to run for the 8th District congressional race. The story ran on the front page of the regional section and included a photo. He will also be recording a Speak Your Mind piece for WFIU on Monday. He will post the air time to btowningreens as soon as he knows the date. Ken received a call from Lisa Sorg of the Independent. She wanted to discuss the success of the Nader campaign in Monroe county compared to other counties in the state. Unfortunately, official statistics are not yet available from the Elections Division. Julie volunteered to contact Bob Saltzberg about the possibility of a program on WTIU addressing the topic of third parties and the media. * Email Report Peter reported that there are 64 members on btowningreens and 23 on btowningreens-discuss. People were reminded to use them carefully. Peter will investigate the composition of the discussion list to be sure that all members are also on the announcement list. If they are, announcements can be posted only to the announcement list rather than both. Also, if messages are not of benefit to the entire list, people were encouraged to reply only to the sender, especially on the announcement list. * Campus Report No members of the IU Greens group were present. The group discussed ways we can strengthen our ties with the IU Greens and help encourage them to stay active now that the election is over. The idea of holding occasional joint meetings on campus was widely approved. Isabel volunteered to contact the leaders of the IU Greens to see if they would be willing to conduct a joint meeting with MCGP. A tentative time of 5:30pm on Thursday, 30 November was proposed. Isabel also volunteered to help facilitate this meeting. She will send more information on time and location to btowningreens after she talks with the student group. * Regular Meetings for MCGP Ken conducted an email survey to try to find a good time for regular meetings. He received only a handful of responses. The group considered having meetings on different days so that people with other regular commitments would be able to attend at least some of the meetings. Regular meetings were also proposed with the main advantage being that people would not get confused about when and where meetings would be held. The group decided to plan our regular meetings for the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of every month. Julie volunteered to facilitate the next meeting. She will contact the Bloomington library to reserve a room for December 5 from 7:00pm to 9:00pm. She will also make advance reservations for the first Tuesday for as many months as possible. Michael volunteered to check with Harmony School as a potential alternate meeting place. Julie volunteered to check with the Unitarian church as another potential alternate meeting place. Stephanie and Heather also volunteered to host meetings at their homes if needed. * Treasury Jeff reported that we collected $43 or $44 from the Green Halloween. Peter reported that he spoke with Jay. Jay has been swamped and suggested that the group might want to appoint a new treasurer. Isabel volunteered to serve as the new treasurer. She took possession of the Green Halloween money. The group agreed that it might not be worth the effort of setting up a checking account until we have more funds. Isabel will still call around to find out details about checking accounts for future reference. * Election Results Ken reported that official election results have not yet come in from the state. He hoped to hear from them sometime in the next week. A story in the Herald-Times had earlier reported that Marc Haggerty received 269 votes in the congressional race. Nader received about 7% of votes cast in Monroe County. In some precincts, he earned as high as 30% of the vote. * Electoral College Rallies Two rallies against the electoral college were organized by people via a web site at www.countercoup.org. The first rally was held on Saturday, November 11, at 1:00pm in front of the Justice Building. About 40 people from a wide variety of backgrounds attended and many of them spoke. Media coverage included a story and photo from the Herald-Times and a photo from the Independent. The second rally was held at 1:00pm today at the Monroe County Courthouse. About a dozen people attended and there was no media coverage. Peter reported on a petition that he has drawn up to send to Indiana state representatives and senators urging several points of election reform, including the a proportional allocation of Indiana's electoral votes rather than the current winner-take-all scheme. The group then had a lively discussion on the merits of a popular vote vs. a reformed electoral college and instant runoff voting vs. choose one voting. It was proposed that we organize a public, educational, panel-format meeting on this topic for the very near future. Possible panel members include IU faculty in political science and history as well as our state-level elected officials. Part of the program will be presentations on the history of the electoral college and possible alternatives. Part of the program will include audience questions and participation in the discussion. Vic, Stephanie, Michael, and Julie agreed to form up a committee to put the event together. Isabel also pointed out that the Federal Election Commission has an informative article on the electoral college at their web site (www.fec.gov). * MCGP Charter Heather and Isabel agreed to begin work on developing a charter for the group. Michael provided a copy of the Saint Joe Valley Greens charter for consideration as a model. Heather will also see if Paul can be convinced to join the committee. They will try to have a proposal pulled together for the next meeting. Once we have ratified a charter, we can also investigate affiliating with the national Green organization(s). The group also discussed our proposed non-profit status. Since one of our main activities will be running candidates for office, tax-exempt status will not be possible. Stephanie, who has experience with forming a non-profit group, also pointed out that it is a difficult and expensive process. Ken volunteered to send email to the national Nader campaign for advice on organizing and coordinating. * Center for Participatory Democracy Stephanie gave a brief presentation about the Center for Participatory Democracy. This non-profit group has already been established. The Center's main goal is to educate people about how participatory democracy works and help them develop the skills needed to be effective and active citizens. The group agreed that MCGP and the Center would be good potential partners for educational events and activities such as publishing candidate information at election time. Anyone interested in helping with the Center's work can contact Stephanie. * Election Committee The group discussed our need to get more information about state and federal code so that we can nominate candidates, run campaigns, and keep financial records in full compliance with election laws. Everyone agreed that it would be good if we could find an attorney willing to advise us. We will also need to get more information to determine our overall strategy. Which races are winnable and thus deserve the bulk of our resources? Which candidates should come from the county vs. state levels? Stephanie and Jeff both agreed to begin looking into some of these questions. Jeff mentioned that the Indiana election code can be found at the Saint Joe Valley Greens web site (www.sjvgreens.org). * State Green Party Efforts to organize a state Green party are in flux. Ken estimated that there are about 15 people from the Nader/LaDuke campaign committee who are very interested in pulling together a state party. They are trying to schedule an organizational meeting for sometime in December or January. * Citizen Action Committee - Nader Dinner Nader will be speaking in Indianapolis on Saturday, December 9, at 5:00pm at a benefit dinner for the Citizen Action Committee. The cost is $35 for individuals or $25 apiece for groups that reserve a table of 10. Ken volunteered to organize our reservation. He will send email to the announcement list with details. Julie also volunteered to contact the Herald-Times with contact information about the event. * Newspaper Ads Peter suggested that we develop and run occasional newspaper issue ads. Each ad could include information and a shocking graph to try to inform the public about Green issues. Julie offered to get a rate sheet, but pointed out that such advertising would be quite expensive. Milton suggested that guest editorials in the Herald-Times might reach a larger audience while also having the benefit of being free. * Reading Group Jeff announced that the reading group will try to meet again on Thursday, November 30, at 7:00pm (or after the joint Greens meeting) at Secret Sailor to discuss the Communist Manifesto and commentary. The readings are on reserve at Secret Sailor. The meeting concluded with a review of commitments and adjourned at 4:25pm. Notes submitted by Heather Drake