[statecom-discuss] Re: List needed ASAP of voters Arlington, Acton, Wayland, Agawam Medford, Hampshire, Somerville

[Ron Francis]

Hi Eli,

None of the efforts that involve people from other areas of the state have been generated by the West Somerville GRP !

The Local Organizing Initiative is a separate beast as is the Common Local Ballot 2008 group that met tonight.  

It is unfortunate that people would get confused in this way since the outreach for these projects does not involve or even mention WSGRP in any way as being an instigator. !  (Probably folks are confusing use of the WSGRP model in other communities which is different than the WSGRP executing the model.  Some folks in the WSGRP don't even know about the Local Organizing Initiative !)

So this un-named person's concerns need to be addressed and you can give them my contact info so that this can be clarified.

By the way, the initiatives that I am part of have drawn in at least 5 folks that previously were less involved.  It is inevitable that every action that we do wins and loses supporters.  So I would not try to give the impression that because one person was not happy with one particular groups' initiative is an indication that the initiative is not a good development.  We lost zionists too when we stood for human rights for Palestinians  - and supporting human rights for Palestiinans was a positive development, wouldn't you agree ?

I do agree about coordinating calls and if the membership committee would like to propose a schedule then that would be good.  Our initiatives have been upfront about the timing of the outreach that we are doing and what we are saying and so I invite the membership committee to do the same.  

I don't know of any efforts by the membership to do outreach and certainly none have been posted in minutes... so I think you should ask membership committee to be upfront about any plans that it has and to be transparent and post them.  (It is not as if we do a lot of phone outreach as it is... ).  By teh way, the outreach for both Common Local Ballots and Local Organizing Initiatives will both be finished by the way in about 3 weeks.  In that time I have serious doubts that there will be some competing outreach effort.  If there is then they can just wait, if they really feel that people can't handle two phone calls in three weeks.  (We aren't going to create a socially just world by next month so they'll survive waiting)

Finally, it is not Somerville people doing the Local Organizing initiative.  It is individuals from the communities who are interested in doing the project.  So for example, there is a person from Arlington who wants to do the Arlington organizing and that person was contacted by a person from Brookline to be encouraged to do it !  No Somerville involvement at all.

The person in Arlington has a right to have contact information from the party about people in Arlington (assuming that the person agrees to any list-usage requirements which I think are very reasonable requirements)

I hope this clarifies some of the misconceptions and falsehoods out there (some of which you stated in your post) 

What is interesting to me is that a lot of the new people getting involved seem to have less of the concerns that you are indicating and in fact seem very excited by the new initiatives.

for going forward:

1) I suggest that we state the policy about list usage and determine who can get what lists and under what conditions.   If the people agree to the list usage requirements, then let's get on with it.  Perhaps Dan can tell us the rules about sharing info in the party on lists and other things... 

(I will also state that I will not wait forever.  I can go to the Arlington elections office tomorrow and under the law, they must give the full list of GRP people tomorrow and I will do that if the contact info is not forthcoming)

2) i will mention in the minutes of CLB2008 minutes posting that  WSGRP has nothing to do with with the effort....t so that it is clear.

Do you have any suggestions for moving forward ?

Ron 617 230-2835



Eli Beckerman <elibeck at gmail.com> wrote: Ron, I don't have easy access to the campaign database (I'd have to go
to Lexington), but apart from that, I want to raise some concerns with
the process here.

At the last Tech Committee meeting we discussed the need for a)
cleaning up the GRP database and b) having a process for the use of
those lists. Jill's campaign is going to be giving the GRP her list.
The Tech Committee will be getting info from the various campaigns and
then paying for a service to get them cleaned up. And I learned that
we do have a process for use of the GRP database (though I'm not
familiar with it).

I think it's crucial that lists get cleaned up as they get used --
that any calls made get fed back into the originating list. If someone
says "stop calling me, I hate the Green-Rainbow Party" that needs to
get propagated back up the chain.

I think it's also important for calls to happen in a coordinated
fashion -- that we don't have 4 different working committees making
calls about 4 different things in the same week. In the Membership
Committee we talked about trying to build synergies into the phone
calls made -- getting local people to make fundraising calls (and to
build the party locally at the same time). The Membership Committee
should be taking on the type of request you are asking for -- but we
were going to wait until the database has been updated. Another
difference is that I imagine we would give the local lists to people
in that area -- not to a Somerville GRP member who is pursuing an
ad-hoc statewide initiative. But I'd be interested to see what the
policy actually is.

In one case someone has actually left the party because of the
confusion in getting a call regarding one of your statewide organizing
initiatives and feeling excluded from the party's decision-making and
feeling that it wasn't very grassroots for the West Somerville GRP to
be telling them they knew how they should be organizing their local.

Another concern I have is why isn't this happening through the
Membership Committee in the first place?

eli

On 3/1/07, Ron Francis  wrote:
> I asked Pat about list info for varoouis cities and he responded:
>
> pkeaney 
 wrote:
>
> Jill has that info. You could probably get it from Eli Beckerman.
> Sorry for the delay - I'm in Chiapas, returning 3/7.
>
> -------- Original Message --------
>
> ==> From: Ron Francis
> ==> Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 16:36:38 -0800 (PST)
>
> hey Pat, Do you have the names and contact info for registered
> voters in Arlington, Acton, Waltham and Agawam ?
>
> If I recall your
> Somerville names also had phone numbers which is critical, but what I
> really need is the names of all GRP's in each of the above towns and
> contact info if possible. Each of these towns has people who are
> interested in starting / revitalizing a GRP chapter using the Nuts
> and Bolts modeled first run in West Somerville.... another 6 to 10
> towns will also be needed.
>
> Ron 617 230-2835
>
>
>
> Thanks Pat for the forward reference to Eli and Jill for a list of
> registered voters,.. and will look forward to your report from Chiapas...
>
> Turns out now that I'll also need Hampshire, and Medford now as more and
> more people are interestred in the Local Organizing Initiative (LOI).
>
> It's very encouraging that people are willing to try the WSGRP Nuts and
> Bolts model that Michelle and I developed in their own communities.  As I
> indicated over a year ago, there isn't any reason why we can't have active
> and/or reinvigorated locals in 20 more towns using the Nuts and Bolts model
> by the end of the year, ... and as the data comes in I'm becoming a
> believer;... people want to do it and it's just great !!
>
> I was going to just get the lists from city halls and then do a phone search
> but that will cost about  $20 per town !  (It's crazy that you have to pay
> to get lists....).  By the way, our Secretary of State candidates in the
> future should change that .... it's outrageous that a citizen has to pay for
> the address info of other registered voters when the info is basically cost
> free to obtain.  Anyway...save that battle for another day !
>
> If any of the committees, or of the statewide campaigns, have the info for
> people in the above 7 communities, can they please forwarded to the Local
> Organizing Initiative (Jon, Bagelman, Michelle, Jenna and I).  I did obtain
> info for Somerville last fall and that was helpful....
>
> One of the reasons we did the statewide campaigns was to get local contact
> info so that people who want to do various local organizing would have a
> better chance of doing it... but that doesn't work if we don't have the
> basic contact info !   It would help if the various campaigns and anyone who
> has contact info can pass it along....
>
> Jamie is putting together an updated list for Somerville by the way, so
> please add Somerville as the 7th town where local information is needed.
>
> We would like to begin outreach this weekend as the people in 4 of the above
> 7 communities are ready to go ! and we just need the lists to execute the
> model.  If the info can be gotten to us by tomorrow, than that would help.
> It is not critical that the lists be 100 % accurate.  We did fine in
> Somerville with a 35% accuracy rate for our lists...
>
> thanks so much for your help and hopefully prompt reply
>
> ron 617 230-2835
>
>