[Pvgreens-discussion] First 2007 Meeting Soon - Visualize a Healthy, Active Local Party

[Eric Fried]

In just a couple of weeks, the Poudre Valley Green Party will hold its first meeting of 2007...indeed, our first meeting in many moons. (We wanted to get together for a Winter Solstice Party, but the weather had other plans.) The meeting will be on Thursday, Jan. 25 at 7 p.m. at Joe Kissel's house, 913 West Oak, Fort Collins. 

The idea is to refocus our efforts, get ourselves organized again, and start to move forward. Oh, and drink beer, have some food, and enjoy each other's company.

In order to start discussion about the way forward (and stop thinking about holidays and blizzards and endless school breaks) I offer the following question: What would a healthy, active, relevant Poudre Valley Green Party look like? 

A few suggestions to start it off:

1) We would be focussed on a few key areas, rather than scattering our efforts over so many fronts we dilute our effectiveness. Running candidates or ballot initiatives is one obvious focus, but even without those we could engage in campaigns centered on winnable goals relating to protecting the Poudre/stopping Glade Reservoir, or fighting for public transportation and trains/buses as part of overall transportation planning, just to pick a couple of examples.

2) We would have good means to communicate with the hundreds of registered Green Party members in Larimer County, including a regularly updated website, email, phone trees, mailings, press releases and enjoyable meetings.

3) We would have a way to contact and integrate new members in our group, from educational events to social occasions to skill training to relevant and useful volunteer tasks to helping plan and carry out campaigns.

4) We would have a general plan of action and organizational development, and a budget to carry out our activities, including a way to raise funds. 

5) We would have volunteers taking on and carrying out significant tasks, being accountable to the group without having to check in with everyone every time they do anything, such as treasurer, meeting convenors/facilitators, new member coordinator, media/outreach coordinator, database/website coordinator, someone to update and put out our brochures, someone to pick up and process the mail, etc. Obviously, the number of such roles depends on the number of active members, but the whole point is to organize ourselves in such a way that we enjoy what we are doing, feel that our energy is well-spent, and our actions are effective. If we do that, we will grow, and there will be more people to share the load.

Thoughts?
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