Mark,
Â
Sorry, I am with Cathi on this one.
Â
In Santa Clara County, I have NO IDEA who the Life members are. With the possible exception of yourself (presuming YOU are a life member), I am pretty sure they are doing zilch in terms of giving time to party activities locally. I join Cathi in asking you to document the correlation you say exists.
Â
Further, I am less than impressed with the whole concept of “Life Members”. I am a Life Member of the US Chess Federation. What this means is, that 30 years or so ago, I was able to send them $200, in return for which I got a subscription for life to the USCF magazine. Today, a year’s subscription costs $49, and a Life membership is $1000.  What this means is that, as Life members, if I and the LPers do not contribute additional money to our respective organizations, we are simply drains on their resources, because they continue to have to provide services to us for which we are not paying. Locally, I can think of one person who might be a Life member and who is contributing money to the Party. He is not active locally.
Â
So, among the local LPers who are possibly Life Members, we have one activist and one contributor. Not impressive.
Â
Further to Cathi’s point, I have saved emails from various people amongst the current LP hierarchy who govern this state, from back when I thought it would be productive to debate with them. The sense of these writings was that the value of an activist’s opinion was in direct correlation to how much that person contrubuted to the Party finances.
Â
People who care about causes will take to the streets and work their hearts out for no pay at all, and will support the cause out of their own pockets, making contributions of their time (which has a market value) and their money, which the hierarchy never sees, and seems not to value, probably because it cannot assign it to a bottom line anywhere in a set of books.Â
Â
The fact is, it will take both contributors AND activists in order to accomplish our political goals. To elevate one category over the other is just plain foolish.
Â
Regards,
Allen Rice
Â
Â
Â
Â