Oh my gawd

That was the reaction of Los Angeles Green Activist, Lisa Taylor, after she spent some very hectic hours tabling at this past weekend's LA City Environmental Youth Conference. According to Lisa, she was swamped.

I thought the crunch would be later in day, instead of early, so I was a bit overwhelmed. At 8:30am I had to hide half the sticker/button stock under the table so there would be some left later and I kept saying "please take just one and make sure you wear it or display the sticker!" It was wonderful and hopeful seeing all the interest from these kids! they stayed at the booth and talked/listened, they didn't just run by grabbing buttons like we have seen at other events.

I get two messages out of this story. One is that LA is truly different, but that is another post to come shortly. The other is that this is where the future of the Green Party can be found.

We need to focus more attention, more effort on reaching out to youth. We spend more time hashing through policy discussions and trying to be more right than the other parties while they are out organizing young people and keeping their majority.

It would be impertinent to ask Lisa what she was going to do as a follow up to this, so I won't. I will ask all California Greens what they are going to do to replicate this in other cities, other communities. Maybe one key is to set up local Green Speakers lists, those who can make time available to talk to students about Climate Change, Water Policy, the Iraq War, Environmental Justice and all of the issues on which we have the moral high ground and are not using it effectively.

Thank you, Lisa, for the work that you did in pulling this together. Having seen some of the notes flying around, I know this event would not have happened had it not been for your persistence.