I was one of the few councillors who opposed the Byzantine interpretation of bylaws that dogged GPBC’s efforts in 2007. When I was Organizing Chair (previous to 2007) I introduced Regional Organizers (as well as regional reps)and some much simpler operational guidelines to make the local organizing run smoother. This was effective in building the regional teams but was all undone in 2007 because of an overly bureaucratic approach.

GPBC membership voted on the military issue at the 2007 AGM and decided to accept Amnesty International’s guidelines (proposed by me)on military involvements rather than a pacifistic approach (proposed by you and some other people).

My personal viewpoint would correspond with yours in an ideal world. Unfortunately we do not live in such an ideal world. As an example: one of the most heavily militarized country per capita(switzerland)has maintained it’s neutrality and territory relatively bloodlessly since they booted the Austrians out centuries ago.They have not done this by being pacifists but by being armed to the teeth so it is too costly for their neighbours to mess with them.

When humans can stop their incessant greed and grabbing for each others resources then I will agree that the huge efforts wasted on military should stop completely. Until then: you and i will have to differ on this.

Hopefully we can work together in other areas (like bioregions for example) to save as much of the planet as we can.

It certainly needs a lot of saving.

I’m also amazed that a person such as yourself, whom I understand partly owns a company that makes military video range-finding gear and video surveillance software, would even contemplate membership in a Green Party that is nominally opposed to militarism — at least it was when I joined a long time ago.

Could you please explain how you reconcile your commercial and Party activities with the stated aims of grassroots empowerment and non-militarisation of the BC Green Party — or are you the shape of things to come?

Stuart:

I really like the idea of using bioregions to define regions — are you going to bring this idea to the AGM in the form of a structural rule change? Do you have a sense for how many regions there would be and what the boundaries might look like? I think you are right that we are struggling to engage the grassroots and we need to support that as a party. maybe we should select candidates on the basis of their commitment to organize in between elections as well. We seem to attract candidates, but then nothing happens ‘tween elections. There was a regional office in prince george (now closed though) which was supported by the CAs in the region – that happened organically due to people in the area willing to organize. There’s nothing stopping people from organizing, but as you point out maybe there’s nothing helping them do so either.

Brian had an idea to use the Internet for policy development and I think this could still work — someone needs to facilitate each area of discussion and agree to write out a policy or nothing will come of online input. So maybe we need policy moderators or something like that to help facilitate or document consensual decisions from the discussion on a topic area.

BTW, members can vote on policy without coming to the AGM — ballots can be mailed in. This is not as good as participating on an ongoing basis. But at least members have a voice of some sort. I don’t believe other parties do this at all in any way…but could be wrong.

I look forward to more ideas about how we can engage grassroots and get people interested in organizing and working locally.

Great post!

What do you think about the policy resolutions proposed for the 2008 AGM posted here?

Everyone is invited to propose a new policy resolution and comment on resolutions proposed by others.

Go Green!