Dear Marcy And All Others
As was pointed out by Rob Power in an earlier email of the +/- 2,100 Libertarians in San Francisco the LPSF has 12 active members. The new "Progressive" DCC Board by itself has 34 members backed up by 240,000 registered Democrats. We can't match those numbers.
I agree having candidates nights and outreach with other disaffected parties for joint meetings is crucial. However without the numbers of bodies needed to have anyone showing up let alone organizing it's biting off more than we can chew.
I believe we need to start with what we have in contacting the registered Libertarians by phone and mail to find out if they would become active and join the LPSF and pay the minimal $25 fee. This also points out another fact we don't have a treasury that has the dollars needed. So more LPSF members more $'s and more money to fund activities.
Remember as Burton said money is the mothers milk of politics.
We need active volunteer members who would contribute specifically to mailing and calling on those registered Libertarians and get them to a meeting or a drink night or dinner party or fundraiser whatever.
We need a ways means and method to get our message out - as the saying goes what kind of a sound does a tree falling over in a forest make when no one is around to hear it?
Right now we are the tree in the forest - we need to get people to hear us.
We need simple easy to get to easy to participate in activities and events as an attraction. These have to be well planneed in advance with lots of notices and invites to attend and so on.
We also have the need of people who have the time to go to day time activites like supervisor committee and board meeting and do ballot arguments and so on. As Starchild can attest to with the sex worker campaign and Mike Denny when he ran for Mayor enormous amounts of time are eaten up.
This means getting to retired people who would have the time and would agree with the Libertarian philosophy to participate.
This also means setting up a cell phone calling tree or a twitter - face book - myspace program.
So on and so forth.
But to make those all happen we need bodies and money.
So first concentrate on the bodies then the money then the activities. Then we will be atken seriously. This would also apply to having candidates for all offices - supervisor - assembly - state senate - school board - mayor and so on.
Ron Getty - SF Libertarian
Hostis res Publica
Morte ai Tiranni
Ron and Rob,
Your points about our relative lack of resources and numbers of
people interested in this type thing are certainly valid. It was
precisely with these kinds of considerations in mind that I proposed
co-sponsoring a candidate/ballot measure event with other groups,
rather than being the exclusive hosts ourselves. If we get behind it
as an organization, I will take the lead in organizing it and finding
co-sponsors. Here again is my August 1 message on the topic: