[Northampton-GP] RE: My position on State Committee and Responsibility for WMassGreens listserv

[John Pepi]

Hi  Folks:

Not sure who is signed up on this list but I want to reach Hampshire
County Greens re: my position on State Committee
and the wider Western Mass Greens re: the WMassGreens listserv and
Valley Greens website.

I can longer be active with the Statecom. When I ran for this position
in September, not only were there a paucity of candidates for Statecom
but I also didn't know at the time that my mother would pass away and
I'd be taking care of my father. I can only stretch myself so many ways
before imploding. I figure I can spend about 3-5 hours a week now in
political involvements. Statecom would take up half or more of this time
and I'd rather be working directly on the anti-war, anti-imperialism
effort, helping to strengthen Green locals and working with my campus
union. 

My question to you is whether you and other Greens in the Hampshire
County locals want me to stay on for another meeting or two of the
statecom in order to preserve your votes in its deliberations.  I can
attend at least one of these two but I won't be doing committee work
with statecom or keeping up with the statecom listserv.  If there is
someone who wants to replace me and some mechanism to get them on the
statecom, that would be ideal. If I hear no strong sentiments about this
topic, I will submit my resignation to statecom next week.


Secondly, 8 months ago I'd told Kate Harris I'd take on the WMassGreens
listserv.  I haven't yet (for a variety of reasons I won't bore you
with) but it is time to do something.  Kate has hung on a lot longer
than she'd have liked. My feeling is that if Greens want to take
responsibility for this moderated bulletin-board style list, we can and
should define what purposes it should serve (including priorities for
listings and any limit on number of postings each week). I no longer
want to take this on. Kate told me there were in the neighborhood of
600-800 people signed up to this listserv, yet there is no way to find
out who they are (unless, I suppose, we asked them). 

I recommend that western  Green locals discuss the options not only for
the listserv but for the Valley Greens website which is being handled by
Mike Sherrard (Hampshire collge student who is leaving after May). Maybe
these could be a function of the Connecticut River Valley Greens as a
Green entity with a regional focus and a desire to support all the town
locals. While the WestaMasslocals and Northamption Discussion lists
function differently (and for a narrower group of people) than the
WesternMassGreens listserve, one option I suppose would be to close it
down.


Yours,

John Pepi