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Strategic Saturday

Here in Wisconsin, we held a strategy meeting today. With the help of some mighty fine facilitation, we were able to identify a number of short and medium-term goals, and worked out some realistic ways to meet them. It will come as no surprise to most of you that the two things we talked about most were bringing in new members and drumming up a bit more money. We don't expect to make as much as the corporate-sponsored parties, because... we're not corporate-sponsored. In fact, if we had 0.1% of their money, it would represent a considerable improvement over our current situation.

Still, it's worth stepping back far enough compare our influence in the political sphere as compared to our finances. A passably-good way to quantify this is with our electoral results. Our dollars-to-votes ratio is not just better than either corporate party, it's vastly better -- in every race a Green has ever participated in. All the stats I've ever seen have the Green at well under a dollar spent per vote, where the Democrats are at $3-5, and the Republicans as high as $8.

Anyhow, back to today. The other major topic of discussion is the database we're working on, which is part of the new website we're creating. Once all the kinks are worked out, it will be a very slick system that effectively decentralizes our information, even as it consolidates it... all through the magic of open source.

It's all pretty cool, and when the new site goes live, I'll talk about it here. We can't exactly show off the database, for security reasons, but I can tell you where we got it and how you can get one of your very own. Stay tuned.

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Strategy? We don't need no stinking strategy...

esteban, congrats on the strategy session.

In South Carolina we have had maybe six state wide gatherings. One lasted about four hours and was *supposed* to be a strategy meeting. The rest have lasted literally no more than two hours each.

It's difficult to see how my state is going to make any serious head way with such a low level of participation, so I have handed off any real expectations at that level and am concentrating on local chapter work. In addition I have left my national committees to help make the transition to local affairs more effective.

I will continue to write, and may even do more of that than in the recent past.

One thing we have done locally is make a distinction between strategy, tactics and logistics, trying to put as much emphasis on logistics as possible. In other words, the strategy to make fundamental local change is to take control of the county council. The tactics cover a wide range, from door to door work to name recognition. The logistics are cash, people, platform planks, press releases etc.

The point is, we must get better at what we do, and that demands, for now, limiting our focus on those things we can do well.

I believe the national party should be fundamentally reformed. The fact is, in my opinion, for the Green National Committee to be effective, it too must limit the scope of what they hope to accomplish. For example, resolutions calling on local chapters to use their influence to promote a boycott of Israel may make us feel warm and fuzzy, but what is the practicle impact? Not much I dare say. What strategic plan is behind such a resolution?

The national committee should focus on developing a strategy, oh, I don't know...say electing 1000 Greens to office in 2008. Then, the national committee must focus on what tactics are needed to have such an impact...say ballot access in every possible state. Then the national staff should be given the tools to facilitate the logistisc needed to make it happen..say national fundraising that brings actual thousands of dollars into campaign coffers.

These are just three examples, and perhaps very poor ones at that. But fighting over what specific stand we should take on a national or international issue is not always productive.

The questions are, what do we want to accomplish, what do we do to be sucessful, and where do we get the tools to be effective.

Instead of addressing these sorts of questions, of late, the national committee is arguing over the size of delegations to the Annual National Meeting. I am not saying these are not serious issues, they are, but they don't get anyone elected. If the Green Party would pay attention as a strategy to everything local, the question of how many delegates SC gets Vs how many CA gets would be less critical.

And besides, so long as almost all Green convention delegates are self-financed the chances are good that we will continue to see basically many of the same people and attitudes at every convention.

How about a limit on how often someone can represent their state? How about a requirement that each party pay for their delegate travel? How about something different, for we certainly don't seem to be headed towards accomplishing our goals as we might want. I know we are not doing enough in South Carolina to satisfy me.

  • By Gregg Jocoy at 2007-01-22 16:20
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Good thoughts.

I'm not surprised that people are arguing about delegate allocation, as that was a big controversy last time around.

Still, overall, I think you're right that our primary focus must be at the local level. There should be some attention to national matters, and even international, as I've written here recently, but most of it should be local. We're all quite good at thinking about abstractions, but that doesn't translate well into action.

I've long said that the distinction between "realos" and "fundis" is a false one. The real distinction is between people who seen the Greens as a vehicle to make serious social change on the one hand, and on the other hand, people who are looking for a debate club, or worse still, a small pond where they can be the big fish.

  • By esteban at 2007-01-22 18:33
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