[Procedures] Committee Membership Question

[Merelice]

Hi Jim,

Well, as I think about it, the answer is more complex that I expected to be.

Officially, I'm on the procedures committee. As a co-chair, I have
said I would temporarily help with fund-raising until we get a
functional committee, and that in my view should be a top priority for
AdCom. (In other parties, the main function of the Chair is
fundraising.) So on paper, those would be my two working committees.

I am also in the Rainbow Coalition Caucus -- which supposedly doesn't
count as a working committee. But given its work on the foreclosure
crisis, it functions more like a working committee than an identity
caucus. In fact, I and others are interested in combining the active
Rainbow Caucus and the inactive Abolish Poverty Committee, since the
Rainbow generally tends to work on actions related to abolishing
poverty. And unlike the other identity caucuses, anyone can join the
Rainbow Coalition Caucus.

As Party Co-Chair, I'm also on quite a number (but not all) of the
committee email lists, just to get an overall picture of what's going
on. I rarely participate in whatever email thread may be taking place
and most are pretty inactive. Given the role of Co-Chairs in the
presidential nominating process (and the fact that Nat and I had to
meet deadlines when the CDLC was defunct), I have occasionally
responded to discussion on the CDLC list, but I neither attend CDLC
meetings nor participate in its deliberations and voting. Also, since
the Co-Chairs are the spokespeople for the Party, Nat and I tend to
stay in touch with the Communications Director and Committee.

In the last couple of years, the party has set up a couple of focused
and time-limited working groups, the most recent being the Advisory
Ballots Working Group. Well before I was elected Co-Chair, I joined
the Strategic Plan Working Group (SPWG). Since the State Convention,
when some SPWG members were elected  to office and others joined the
State Committee, SPWG has faltered -- which could be seen as proving
the wisdom of limiting the number of committees people should work on.
Nevertheless, SPWG members do feel it's important to wrap up the
working group's assignment, and we're still trying to carve out the
time to do so.

The potential for having a local chapter in Brookline is very strong.
But it hasn't been something I could take on. I stepped in to organize
the Suffolk and Norfolk County Convention because others did not
follow through, and I was able to get good help from Mel King and
Lawrence Fine in making phone calls for turn-out.

Merelice


On 5/14/08, Jim Hammerman <jim_hammerman at terc.edu> wrote:
>
> Dear Merelice,
> I've been thinking and worrying a bit about how many commitments you have
> for the GRP and wondered about which committees you're officially on.
> Obviously AdCom, because that's what it means to be Co-Chair. But which
> other ones? My understanding is that we're required to be on 1 but are not
> allowed to be on more than 3, in part so as to support one another to avoid
> burn-out.
> Thanks for giving me this teeny bit of a picture of the work you do for the
> GRP.
> All the best,
> Jim
>