Starchild has once again brought up the subject of a candidates/ballot
night, that the LPSF should hold in an effort to became, as the DCC
for example, more politically active. He has also requested a vote
from the officers regarding this endeavor. I have already offered to
*assist*, not to organize. So my vote of "yes" would be contingent on
Starchild and other interested LPSF members coming forth with concrete
plans regarding venue, time frames, specific volunteers committed to
accomplish specific tasks.
As I indicated in response to Starchil's appeal, I completely agree
with Starchild that the DCC is politically active, while we are not;
and as a political party, perhaps we should be.
So, there it is, Starchild. If there is interest, there will be
responses and volunteers. If there is no interest, there won't.
We've had two opportunities to gauge interest for this. Two months ago,
I asked for a show of hands of who would definitely attend a weeknight
event. I think there were three. More recently, I put a challenge out
on this and the discussion list that if enough people showed up at the
August meeting (I think 20 was what I said), and they were willing to
participate in a candidate night, then we'd do it. We had half that
number show up at the meeting.
I certainly have no problem continuing to gauge interest regularly for
an event of this type. It's just that the results of the polls aren't
changing with time. People just aren't interested in
discussing/debating these items and candidates. If they were, they'd
have been at last weekend's meeting. That postcard went out to over 300
people. Ten showed up. Please keep that in mind.
Based on the level of interest I've seen, I have to say that I'm not in
favor of a candidate night this year. Those of you who have been around
a while know that I was one of the most reliable attendees of such
weeknight events in the past. But I can't tell you the number of times
that Chris and I were sitting by ourselves in that Indian restaurant
(the carry-out place that was run by the Maharani people). When I have
Prop 8 events that actually matter, and when Starchild has prostitution
decrim events that actually matter, and when Marcy has anti-war events
that actually matter, etc., why should we reduce our activity in those
other events to do an event for LPSF that even our own members seem not
to care about?
I'm with Ron. We've got to get the overall commitment from the
membership to increase before we can successfully build the calendar.
For now, I think the 2nd Tuesday meetups are well attended enough for us
to put effort into them, and that's the sort of interest/attendance
threshold that we have to hold our other events to if we want to keep
from wasting our time.