As an at-large member of the Libertarian Party of California's state executive committee (elected in April to a 2-year term), I'm trying to encourage more transparent practices in our organization, hence my distribution of this information and encouragement of non-insiders to weigh in and with your advice, help ensure that the LPC's elected representatives take actions which faithfully represent the grassroots members of our party and best advance the Libertarian goal of a free world.
At our last state ExCom meeting at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Ventura on June 18, our committee voted to hold next year's state convention in that location. I abstained on that vote -- my concerns were that other prospective bids were not given due consideration before a decision was made, and there was a lack of clear process, as well as my longstanding feeling that we should be moving away from hotel-based conventions and toward something more like PorcFest (see http://porcfest.com/news/npr-loves-porcfest, http://porcfest.com/news/who-what-when-where-why-how%20%20 ). On the positive side (the reason I didn't simply vote "no"), proponents of a Ventura convention gave a very impressive presentation, including bringing in local non-Libertarians to speak in favor of the proposal, and the location does look quite nice. As a practical matter, it seemed apparent to me at the time that the proposal was obviously going to be adopted regardless of how I voted (I believe there was one "no" vote, and everyone else present voted "yes"). Unfortunately, there was no agenda for that meeting distributed in advance, and members did not know we would be asked to approve a Ventura convention, so there was little opportunity for me to seek input from folks not on the committee.
This brings us to the present, and the email vote before us to approve a detailed proposal for the Ventura convention. My goal now is to get the best possible agreement we can from the Crown Plaza Hotel, and to exercise responsible leadership by not simply rubber-stamping proposals of this sort. Constructive input and thoughts from LP members on the proposed convention agreement attached below, as well as thoughts about process in general, would be most welcome.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
P.S. - When evaluating this or other convention proposals, I encourage folks to consider the points made in my LP Convention Manifesto, which can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GrassrootsLibertarians/files and (just uploaded) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lpradicals/files/ . If you are not on either of those lists and would like to see this document, email me directly and I'll send you a copy. Please forward this message to other California libertarian lists and interested persons.
P.P.S. - I am also seeking to encourage our committee to seek to build our institutional knowledge by getting and keeping on file details from past convention organizers of meal costs, room-stay requirements, hotel agreements, speaker expenses, and so on, and making this information available to those hosting our conventions or submitting bids, so that we can negotiate arrangements and plan events as successfully as possible, using our past experiences as benchmarks.
noon8window.pdf (36 Bytes)