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Because the bylaws specifically calls for two co-chair positions, the council does not need to approve of the election. It is mandated by the bylaws.From the bylaws, section 5.8, “If a Green Party of Colorado officer’s position is vacated in between official state meetings, the Council or both co-chairs in agreement may make a temporary appointment in the manner as specified in the Procedures and Guidelines until the next state meeting under consultation with each local.”This is precisely what is being done in this proposal.With the vacancy, it is not democratic for me to unilaterally make the choice. The council must decide via this vote. There is also previous precedent here: http://gpco.fullydefiant.com/forum/index.php?topic=234.0Further, the Boulder cochair nominated one of the candidates up for election, raising no objections, therefore presumably your own chapter approves of this process.Please take a vote, or if you will not, ask your chapter to appoint an alternate who will.
No, I don't mean to be insulting at all. I'm simply recognizing that you were not in support, and when you say “do not agree as worded,” and given that you did not present an amendment, I have to conclude that you didn't agree.If I misread your intention from your words, I apologize.
Michael, let me quote the bylaws for you, even though you did vote no on this:
III. Membership3.1 A Green Local must agree to:* Accept the Ten Key Values and to manage the chapter in accordance with those values.* Abide by the bylaws of the Green Party of Colorado.* Openly support only the national candidates selected by Green convention, state level candidates nominated at a Green Party of Colorado nominating convention, and local candidates selected with the criteria specified in sections 4.5.4 and 4.5.5 of these bylaws.* Make a good faith effort, where reasonable, to increase the number of Green voter registrations within the boundaries of their chapter.* Make a good faith effort to run state and local candidates.* Make a good faith effort to increase the number of qualified voting members within their chapter.* Make a good faith effort to fundraise for the operation of their chapter and to assist in the operation of the Green Party of Colorado.* Demonstrate evidence of commitment to, and good faith efforts to achieve, gender balance in party leadership and representation.* Demonstrate evidence of good faith efforts to empower individuals and groups from oppressed communities, through, for example, leadership responsibilities, identity caucuses and alliances with community-based organizations, and endorsements of issues and policies.Chapter officers and council representatives must not have been registered as a member of a political party other than the Green Party of Colorado for at least thirty days before nomination and must maintain registration as a Green Party of Colorado voter throughout the duration of the officer’s/representative’s term.A Green local must present its proposed bylaws for approval, and be approved by 60% of the voting Greens at a state party meeting, or by the state council.
So this isn't a question of my evolution. It's a question of being faithful to the bylaws, as well as to our requirements for accreditation with GPUS. This is a fundamental issue: is the Green Party an autonomous, independent electoral party separate from the Democratic Party, or not? If so, then we should not be concerned with other parties' nominees.My position is not changed. Neither has yours. And I understand you have a different opinion on this.It is my position as well that if your loyalties are split, then there is no way you can grow your own local. But this isn't material to the proposal on the floor. It's an important discussion that we're going to have later, however.
I wanted to address some of the allegations in the proposal, for everyone's information. I apologize that this post will be quite long.WEBSITEIn 2014, the members of the website committee consisted of Bill, Harry Hempy and myself. Harry resigned to run for governor, and the committee was only Bill and myself. Keep in mind that I was not state co-chair then, and the responsibility of appointing new members was Bill's, not mine.In 2015, Bill and I discussed moving the website to his hosting company and also tranferring the ownership of the domain "coloradogreenparty.org." The website up to that point was being paid for by Kevin Alumbaugh's wife, Liz Hamilton, as an unrecorded in-kind donation. Because we were not able to add email accounts and otherwise manage the website because we didn't have access to all the website controls, we decided to ask Liz to transfer ownership of the domain. Also, since the hosting was going to be more than $100 a month, Bill and I agreed that that expense was too high, especially since both he and I have our own shared hosting spaces where we could host for free for the time being.Bill and I discussed a few ideas, like setting up a shared hosting site where locals could have their hosting space together, splitting up the cost cooperatively. We decided that Bill should host the website on his hosting space. The first step was to ask Liz to transfer ownership of the domain.After weeks of waiting for Bill to ask, I went ahead and asked Liz myself, but I asked her to transfer it directly to Bill, not to me. See the attached file "GPCO domain transfer" for those details.Bill was still unresponsive, and I finally asked her to transfer the domain to me. That's why it's presently registered to me.Bill was supposed to set up a hosting space on his own server for the website. He attempted to do so, but apparently it was not done correctly, and a crisis situation emerged, because the state party website was now down over an election weekend, and Bill had gone out of town and was incommunicado.To rectify the situation, I went ahead and rebuilt the website on my hosting account, and that's where it still resides today. You can see documentation of that situation in the two attachments called "GPCO Website Login info."Understand that at no point did I make any unilateral decisions, and at no point was Bill not apprised of the situation.HOTSPOTBecause the Mercury Cafe in Denver does not have WiFi, and because we had to process donations through Jill's website, keeping in mind compliance directives from her campaign, I decided to get a mobile WiFi hotspot from Boost Mobile. The cost for the device itself was $125, which I paid for, and the data plan for it was $50 a month. The state party paid $50 only for one month's service. I have continued to pay for subsequent months of service, though I have been using it for state party business where needed. As Dave Bell pointed out in a previous post, we raised more than $2000 for the campaign because we were able to be connected to the internet.Below is a link to a screen shot of the banking transactions for the last 90 days so that you can see there was only one charge of $50 since getting the device in July.https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByNZ1Gqvs9d5Y0V3cEV2QjMtbDgNATIONBUILDERLaura Clark had been paying for Nationbuilder for over a year at a rate of $28 a month. Bill had done some initial work, uploading a portion of the voter database for Greeley. Keep in mind that this account was launched before I became co-chair in May 2015. But Laura was paying for a database that was not being used.Laura decided she was no longer going to pay for the account personally, and so the billing was transferred to the state party. You all voted to approve the expenditure of $28 a month at the state meeting in May 2015, and a couple of you pledged to help pay for it, though those pledges have never materialized.Later, after I became co-chair, Bill and I agreed to expand the capabilities of Nationbuilder so that we could send out more email blasts, robocalls and text blasts. Keep in mind also that Nationbuilder's cost expands with the number of records in your database, and we're approaching 15k contacts, and that we currently have more than 12, 000 registered Greens as of now. That cost is now $108 a month, and with the expanded features, we have reached a few thousand Greens, created phone banking lists that many of you have used, including Boulder, Mesa, Denver and Poudre. We have used the robocall and text blast capabilities to announce Jill's event in Boulder; to announce chapter meetings and launches for Pueblo, Platte Valley, Mesa, Avon, Longmont, Adams, Pikes Peak and Denver.We have to pay separately to run the robocalls, but it's always less than $10 per shot. It's an infinitely cheaper way than even postcards to reach many, many voters in one fell swoop, and it helps party activists stretch out their time to focus on other things.Below is a screen shot from Nationbuilder that shows the cost and some of the features. The cost of Nationbuilder is currently being supported by donations.https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByNZ1Gqvs9d5aHFjUnhodzNNMFEGoing forward, my recommendation will be for us to pay up front for a whole year of service, which will reduce our cost to $70.20 a month. Keep your eyes peeled for that proposal, because the bylaws only permit co-chairs to spend less than $200 a month without council approval.OTHER ISSUESThere seem to be quite a bit of distress around my personal opinion about finding the right prospects for partybuilding from among Sanders supporters. But just as Michael Haughey is apparently free to openly advocate for Green nomination of Bernie Sanders as late as the People's Fair in June (and within the Jeffco meetings), then I too can have an opinion about who really is the right prospect for us. Each of us have our own opinion, and I am entitled to mine as you are to yours. I have never offered that my opinion is the state party position, however.Additionally, I want to call out the elephant in the room, and that's the distress over my personal opinion, which I have shared with many of you, about Amendment 69. I am on the record as personally being opposed. That is offensive to some of you. However, I have never represented my personal opinion as the state opinion, I have never blocked any proposal brought forward, nor have I ever coerced anyone to take on my opinion. Of note is that many of the people who disagree with this proposal are actually Amendment 69 supporters...and even more to the point, the co-sponsors of the previous recall petition include a chapter that has voted to endorse 69.It would appear that some of you have vastly different opinions than me on at least a couple different material issues. I have not slandered any of you over it, however.RACISMThere is an updated sociological definition of racism, that goes beyond an anthropological human trait or simple feelings or speech that is bigoted. Instead, racial justice activists recognize that RACISM = BIGOTRY + POWER. It's easier to understand it as "institutional racism." Here's an older article with some insight on this. http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/08/racist-against-white-people/People who use bigoted speech are therefore not racists if they are people of color. Their speech cannot be used to curtail a white person's rights or access to jobs or positions. It is entirely possible for a person of color to be bigoted, however.It is time to update our definition of what racism actually is and to begin to scrutinize whether we are creating a welcoming space for people of color (and all other oppressed communities) to come and build up electoral and movement power together in the Green Party. I can tell you that we don't have that yet. The hue and cry over my controversial (to some) opinions, which are not binding, is just an indicator. The fact that Kevin has assigned me superhuman mastermind powers over intelligent, free-thinking (largely white) individuals, without considering that they are actively anti-racist in their own right, is another. Yet another is the failure of the proposal proponents to afford me any due process at all.It is very easy to uphold white supremacy, even as a person of color. There is more information on that here, and I invite you all to read and absorb. http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/10-things-everyone-should-know-about-white-supremacySeveral of us in the party are working on some workshops for our party that everyone will be invited to participate. I hope that everyone on the state council takes the time to open their minds and learn a bit more about how to open up our party.IN CLOSINGAt the end of the day, you all need to hear that I am not going to resign, and except for issues with health or work, I intend to run for reelection. So that means that we're in this together, at least for several more months. It is true that I am a religious person; I am a practicing Roman Catholic, and that means that forgiveness is my mandate. What that means to you is that you will continue to be treated with respect, if not always docility. There is excellent roundabout critique here, and in response, my further commitment to you is that you will get more communication about the way things are happening, regardless of my wish to help others save face, and that you will get copies of bank statements posted here with explanation of expenditures, whether we have a treasurer or not. I will take on that responsibility.We're in this together, folks. Let's try to make the best of it. You are right that we have an opportunity to bring on more members, and I intent to keep recruiting the best options from the former Sanders supporters, as well as continuing to bring on more and more recruits from oppressed communities. I continue to work hard fulfilling YOUR mandate from when I was elected co-chair, which was to build this into an electoral party and run candidates.What's your commitment to this process?Solidarity,Andrea Merida CuellarCo-Chair
My number is 303-550-0677, in case any of you want to discuss the situation with me directly. Thank you.
We have to agree that the end goal is single payer, even if we don't all agree that this proposed legislation is the way forward.Let's find a way to keep the team together on shared values, instead of continuing to make divisive shots across the bow, please.Now, let's move on to the challenge of helping our candidates. Thanks to everyone who participated here, either tacitly or otherwise.
I do not appreciate the insinuation that those of us who object, do so because we also agree with other conservative policy points. That is a very divisive and unwelcome insinuation to make.
This proposal, frankly, is out of line, especially at such a late stage in the game. It can be divisive when we already agree on universal health care/medicare for all but disagree whether 69 gets us there…and divisiveness is a bad thing before an election when we're trying to get our national candidate to 5% of the vote (as well as the downticket races like Arn's). We already have too many people sitting on their hands as it is, and a fight like this could make it worse.I formally request that you two withdraw this proposal, in light of the potential for division and because of two serious flaws in the amendment.What's so wrong with decentralized decisions on this anyway? Isn't it ok for some chapters to differ from others? Do we no longer follow the 10 key values?Denver took a position against 69 for the very concrete reason that the elected/appointed members of this oversight body cannot be recalled, which overrides our right to do so according to the Colorado Constitution. We decided that we preferred single payer AND democracy, not "single payer" OR democracy.The writers of 69 boldly decided to override a piece of our state constitution in that way.But there is a part of the state constitution that the writers of 69 seemed too timid or privileged to take on, and that is the prohibition of state monies to pay for "elective" gynecological services in the form of abortions. In fact, the legal counsel for 69 even wrote an opinion that said "nothing in Amendment 69 prohibits a resident from purchasing private health insurance that includes coverage for elective abortions." (see http://www.denverpost.com/2016/06/24/amendment-69-abortion-colorado/)Nothing? What about cost? The reason why working-class women often don't have abortions today is because the cost of an abortion is prohibitive.With that issue, this Amendment puts itself firmly in the camp of economic privilege.You see, this is the wrong amendment for this state party to take a position in favor, and I would ask you two to withdraw this proposal. We don't have to do what liberals do. We can be for medicare for all AND democracy. And we certainly don't have to play politics with our values just because people who will not join the Green Party think we should.Why create such division, so soon before Election Day, when our platform is already in favor of single payer, and when our presidential nominee supports the goal of the amendment, but perhaps not the amendment itself? Why would we be at odds with her as well?Bill and Susan, please withdraw this proposal. At the very least, please amend this so that we can all agree to the GOAL of 69 but not necessarily the amendment itself.Denver respects the GBGP's activism around this issue, and we don't see ourselves at odds, because we all want the same goal: medicare for all. I agree with Bob, that really what we should be doing is informing voters so they can make their own choice. Instead of taking a position, let's issue a pro/con document that will help voters decide.
