[statecom-discuss] Internal education & improved use of our time at StateCom

[Eli Beckerman]

Mike,

I appreciate your desire for "internal education", and I
would like to suggest, as a member of Mystic River Green-Rainbow Action,
that more appropriate venues for internal education might be
a local chapter, the state and national conventions, and
perhaps special meetings or events set up around internal
(and external) education.

MRGRA has recently started to discuss one of the ten key
values for 30-45 minutes at the beginning of our monthly
business meeting. You are welcome to join us to see how it
goes.

I worry about how our time is used in our State Committee
meetings, because they are so few and far between, and
critical decisions need to be made there.

In this regard, I want to call your attention to something I
observed in Saturday's meeting. We spent a tremendous amount
of time hearing concerns on process, on language, on
clarifying intents, and on intricate details of esoteric
plans. That is not the stuff that gets most of us out of
bed, away from our families, and across the state to spend a
beautiful day. The amount of time spent raising concerns and
process questions was extraordinary, and it was mostly done
by very few people.

I am very thankful for John Andrews' plea towards the end
that there were important decisions that needed to be made
-- because at that point I was not sure if anything could be
salvaged.

And I am very thankful that after that plea, in a short
amount of time we made tremendous headway on other urgent
proposals (of genuine importance to the people of this
Commonwealth) and the contentious delegate selection
plan as well!

And I am thankful that people put aside their concerns so
that we can move forward.

As far as internal education goes, I would like to hear your
thoughts on how a functional communications committee could
provide tools, libraries, etc. so that its very intelligent
and thoughtful membership could educate themselves. The
links that Grace provided would be a welcome addition to
a library based on the ten key values... and such a library
would itself be a welcome addition to the website.

Eli

PS: Personally I left Grace's proposal out of the ranking
because it called for actions to proceed the meeting. Recall
that there were 11 proposals and only 10 opportunities to
rank, and so I left out whether or not I had any concerns. I
wouldn't be surprised if others did the same. It wasn't
necessarily ranked highly.. it just didn't register many
concerns.

PPS: I was dismayed by the use of our time at State Com and
am interested in considering possibilities for improvement. If we
had not voted to stay there until 6 we wouldn't have accomplished
anything other than the new member orientation and a fantastic lunch at mi
plaza / nuestras raices!