I spent seven hours at our party convention in Clark County WA (suburb of Portland OR) yesterday as a precinct officer and precinct delegate. It was the best in memory for a lot of reasons, which I'll describe below the fold.
But as Democratic ACTIVISTS (we DO get out of our pajamas, don't we???) we should be curious about what happened at County Conventions around the country, because those are what feed delegates and resolutions to the state and national conventions. So, after I share the Clark County report, feel free to add yours in the comments.
What worked so well at Clark County:
1. We have a new hip chair (a Kossack) who understands technology, knows how to run a meeting, can speak (thank you Toastmasters), and has tremendous organizational skills.
2. As folks were gathering a looped slideshow was running on a big screen - images alternated among local candidates and elected officials; inspiring quotes on democracy, courage, peace, etc; party gatherings; local scenes. Really set a great mood.
3. Our keynote speaker (State Senator Craig Pridemore) did a great job laying out the issues before us on just a few hours notice because our scheduled speaker, Congressman Brian Baird had gotten stranded on the tarmac in DC with a lame plane. [Note to meeting planners: always have a skilled understudy in the wings!]
4. Candidate and current officeholder speakers were limited to 3 minutes and we had a timer.
5. The two most frequent resolutions that came up from the caucuses: Get out of Iraq now, and Impeach Bush. (Lots of cheers when these results were announced!) I thought, WOW, we're more progressive here than I thought. But then I realized that we were a self-selected group of extremely devoted Dems and it wasn't that surprising.
6. Resolutions from the caucuses had been sorted by topic, cleaned up, organized and printed by the Resolutions committee in the convention handbook and posted on the party website ahead of time so folks could review them. Similar ones had been combined so we only had ONE HUNDRED FIFTY to review (daunting in itself!).
7. We went thru the resolutions by topic. So, for example on Environment, there were ten suggested resolutions. All were considered agreeable UNLESS someone voiced an objection - and if you objected to one, you'd say "I object to #7 because it is too vague (or worded poorly, or whatever) and if a certain percent of the group seconded that objection it would be put on a list to discuss later. Then we'd vote to accept all but #7 in the Environmental group. We moved thru 150 resolutions very quickly that way. No wordsmithing or discussion here.
8. We were surprisingly agreeable. I know getting Dems to agree is like herding cats, but when it came time to fine-tune the objected-to resolutions that had been tabled, the word-smithing went really fast. Only two people were allowed to speak to a change and were limited to one minute. Sometimes a change was a little off and someone would offer a friendly amendment to improve it. Some were just struck wholesale. There were no shouting matches, no hard feelings if a pet resolution went down. Amazing.
I left feeling more hopeful for our local party than I have in years.
Now. What happened at YOUR county convention??