GPCA Coordinating Committee Dysfunctional???

The Cal-Forum is now featuring the discussion of another sign of the fissures in the Green Party of California that I have talked about. There has long been a thread of dissent that found the Coordinating Committee (CC) to be "dysfunctional." At times, it appears that there is a disconnect between what is really happening and what the CC is doing. Nowhere is this disconnect more visible to the public than in the fact that it is almost NEVER the public face of the party.

To make a comparison with other political parties, when the press wants to get an official party position on a given situation or issue, they either go to an elected official of that party, or to someone from the official party organization. For Republicans, this means the Governor, possibly a leader in the state legislature like Tom McClintock or Duf Sundheim, the party chairman. Sundheim gets a lot of TV time. For Greens, we almost never use the official party structure as the source for even our own internal communications: Green Focus or the press releases. That gives the CC a cloak of invisibility behind which they can do whatever they want. I would be that most Greens do not even know who the Co-Coordinators of the CC are (Susan Peterson and Jared Lahti).

I know that volunteers can not afford either the time off from jobs or the travel expense to always be everywhere at every meeting. But, I was surprised this year at how disconnected some CC members are from real events. In late July, I asked a CC member about what had happened in Tulsa at the National Meeting. We all now know how rancorous that meeting had been. This member admitted that they did not know and would have to ask somone who had been there. I know that had I been a CC member, I would have wanted, no required, immediate feedback had I not been able to attend.

I want to give some transparency to the internal operations of the party. Some things should take place behind closed doors, but, for the most part, decisions as to whether a given committee should be established and the solicitation of volunteers to that committee should be public. I know that when I was appointed to the Parks and Recreation Commission in my town, the entire interview process was public and my application statement was a matter of public record. In the Green Party, with our focus on concensus decision making and open governance, I would expect no less.

In the interest of gaining some increased transparency as to what is going on in the CC and why it is happening, I am offering Susan and Jared the opportunity to be additional authors on this blog so that they can speak for themselves.The Cal-Forum is now featuring the discussion of another sign of the fissures in the Green Party of California that I have talked about. There has long been a thread of dissent that found the Coordinating Committee (CC) to be "dysfunctional." At times, it appears that there is a disconnect between what is really happening and what the CC is doing. Nowhere is this disconnect more visible to the public than in the fact that it is almost NEVER the public face of the party.

To make a comparison with other political parties, when the press wants to get an official party position on a given situation or issue, they either go to an elected official of that party, or to someone from the official party organization. For Republicans, this means the Governor, possibly a leader in the state legislature like Tom McClintock or Duf Sundheim, the party chairman. Sundheim gets a lot of TV time. For Greens, we almost never use the official party structure as the source for even our own internal communications: Green Focus or the press releases. That gives the CC a cloak of invisibility behind which they can do whatever they want. I would be that most Greens do not even know who the Co-Coordinators of the CC are (Susan Peterson and Jared Lahti).

I know that volunteers can not afford either the time off from jobs or the travel expense to always be everywhere at every meeting. But, I was surprised this year at how disconnected some CC members are from real events. In late July, I asked a CC member about what had happened in Tulsa at the National Meeting. We all now know how rancorous that meeting had been. This member admitted that they did not know and would have to ask someone who had been there. I know that had I been a CC member, I would have wanted, no required, immediate feedback had I not been able to attend.

I want to give some transparency to the internal operations of the party. Some things should take place behind closed doors, but, for the most part, decisions as to whether a given committee should be established and the solicitation of volunteers to that committee should be public. I know that when I was appointed to the Parks and Recreation Commission in my town, the entire interview process was public and my application statement was a matter of public record. In the Green Party, with our focus on consensus decision making and open governance, I would expect no less.

In the interest of gaining some increased transparency as to what is going on in the CC and why it is happening, I am offering Susan and Jared the opportunity to be additional authors on this blog so that they can speak for themselves.