Sunday, February 11, 2007
Delegate Allocation Committee proposal heads for defeat
The Green National Committee has been unable to get a lot accomplished of late. Unable to muster a quorum, my offer to serve as a forum manager failed. The last two budgets have failed, and the GNC is now reviewing a proposal from Georgia to extend last year's authorization to bring in income and spend it until a new budget is passed.
Now the GNC is poised to reject the proposed re-writing of the rules used to determine how many representatives each state gets on the GNC. The proposal also allows for the use of proxies for those states who cannot, for various reasons, mostly scheduling of state wide meetings, cannot fill their posts for a while. This part of the proposal is set to "sunset" after a year, meaning that no state would be allowed to continue use of proxies after a year, regardless of how difficult or easy it may be for a given state to fill it's ranks.
The fundamental problem is that the state of California, which has uniformly voted for the proposal, will grow in influence while some other states, perhaps like Texas which has voted uniformly against the proposal, might lose some.
To me, the real "power", if any exists in the Green Party, is inside the working committees of the national Green Party. The Green National Committee does not coordinate gathering signatures to get Greens on the ballot. The GNC does not raise funds, handle the money, decide what merchandise to stock, issue press releases nor recruit candidates. All this is done by working committees, and if a state feels a need to gain more influence over the Green Party, that is the place to exercise the power that comes from productive work.
To be frank, much of what the GNC does falls into the category of either chest thumping, vendetta, or silly stuff no one should waste time on.
Now the GNC is poised to reject the proposed re-writing of the rules used to determine how many representatives each state gets on the GNC. The proposal also allows for the use of proxies for those states who cannot, for various reasons, mostly scheduling of state wide meetings, cannot fill their posts for a while. This part of the proposal is set to "sunset" after a year, meaning that no state would be allowed to continue use of proxies after a year, regardless of how difficult or easy it may be for a given state to fill it's ranks.
The fundamental problem is that the state of California, which has uniformly voted for the proposal, will grow in influence while some other states, perhaps like Texas which has voted uniformly against the proposal, might lose some.
To me, the real "power", if any exists in the Green Party, is inside the working committees of the national Green Party. The Green National Committee does not coordinate gathering signatures to get Greens on the ballot. The GNC does not raise funds, handle the money, decide what merchandise to stock, issue press releases nor recruit candidates. All this is done by working committees, and if a state feels a need to gain more influence over the Green Party, that is the place to exercise the power that comes from productive work.
To be frank, much of what the GNC does falls into the category of either chest thumping, vendetta, or silly stuff no one should waste time on.
// posted by Gregg Jocoy @ 11:15 PM 
