Rural Green Caucus

I really am glad to see this blog up and working. I noticed that you referred tothe caucus as a caucus of the "GPUSA". I beleive it is the GPUS now, right? I miss the Greens/GPUSA for some things but we can't dwell in the past. The GPUS is also willin gto have caucuses reprsented on committees and that is something we need to follow up onas soon as we get accreditation. We need a person on the CCC so candidates from the rural areas are not misundertood in their campaigns.

How do we get accredited? We just need the SC right? This caucus wouldn;t go thorugh the DivCom would it.
Each........
David Silva

That was a good catch, David. Thank you. Either my editor or my fingers seem to have autofilled the term. Generally, this typo is without as much meaning as it is here. The correction has been made.

What hasn't happened is a general discussion (there were no easy yahoo discussions in 1990) and a general vote on actions arising from the discussion (personally I naively thought voting to determine party policy would naturally happen). Won't this give us power, wisdom, and credibility? Straw polls, secret or closed meetings, paid reps and proxies, hidden agendas, cronyism, corrupt handling of money; these things are happening and proof of them is documented. Such lack of integrity prevents us from achieving the natural and expected position of leadership the world needs, and that we can provide. I'm not sure what talking about caucuses and accreditation can achieve if we don't first have honesty and integrity and credibility and humility.

There are a several fallacies in these charges. One of which is to equate integrity with wider participation in direct voting on anything. It is even true that you can have integrity without openness. There may have been many funny (if not sleazy) deals made in the "smokey back rooms" of presidential politics. Still, the deals that gave us Eisenhower and Stevenson as candidates produced results that were better than Bush and Gore.

The problem with that is the fact that you never know when integrity happened. The same smokey back room gave us Huey Long and legacy of Jersey City's one time mayor Frank Hague.

It is not clear why you think that this applies to the Green Party. It is clear that the way to fix it is to become the process. It is to get this caucus organized, accredited and to be the open, honest servants of those whose voices are not yet being heard.

Wes wrote: "One (fallacy) of which is to equate integrity with wider participation in direct voting on anything" in response to Seabob's statement that wider voter participation would increase integrity. So, if wider voter participation doesn't increase integrity, then what would? Just asserting we have integrity doesn't mean we have. And how would you measure it if we did? Would it be because someone says we have integrity, or because after education and voting many people agreed we have integrity? It seems the voice of voters would carry more weight than an assertion by anyone that we have the needed integrity.

Wes wrote: "One (fallacy) of which is to equate integrity with wider participation in direct voting on anything" in response to Seabob's statement that wider voter participation would increase integrity. So, if wider voter participation doesn't increase integrity, then what would? Just asserting we have integrity doesn't mean we have. And how would you measure it if we did? Would it be because someone says we have integrity, or because after education and voting many people agreed we have integrity? It seems the voice of voters would carry more weight than an assertion by anyone that we have the needed integrity.