Mississippi LP convention attendees = more than the LPC convention attendance

Mark,

  I agree with most of what you've written below, although not that holding conventions in populous locations is necessary to attract people. Consider the Porcupine Freedom Festival (PorcFest for short), a state-level libertarian event held in New Hampshire each summer that draws as many people as our national conventions, or Burning Man, a non-libertarian event that happens out in Nevada in the middle of nowhere and drew nearly 70,000 people last year. And regarding the floor fees imposed on delegates as a condition of being allowed to vote on party business, we should *end them*, not "mend" them!

  On the dispiriting condition of our state party and need for change, however, I am strongly with you. What can we do to get the Libertarian Party of California back on track? Just as at the national level, I believe that making the organization's operations more transparent, participatory, and decentralized is key to becoming stronger. We can't hold state leaders accountable unless we know what they are doing, and if the tools and access for people to see what's happening, get involved and get stuff done are lacking, too few people will have much interest in paying attention to what they are doing, and too few people will be in positions to do so.

  My main specific recommendation at this point in time is that the committee structure that was set up at the first post-convention ExCom meeting (which I see as a positive indicator that ExCom folks may be more interested in reform than has been the case in the recent past) should be made more visible, empowered to get things done, and expanded to bring in more others to help, so that it isn't just the chair and whatever small circle he informally chooses to work with making decisions out of sight of the rest of us, but an active system of democratically operating working committees that report to the ExCom and are visible and open to the membership via LPC.org and conduct their business on email lists that anyone can join.

  Another thing that happened at the first LPC ExCom meeting of the new term is that I got appointed to the LPC Bylaws Committee (another positive indicator?). In that capacity, I am very interested in ideas and proposals for changes to the party Bylaws () that will help facilitate increased transparency, participation, and decentralization.

  As we begin our work as a committee, I'm seeking to ensure that the Bylaws Committee itself will operate in a transparent, participatory, and democratic manner, and I encourage ExCom members and members of the other committees populated by the ExCom at its March 30 meeting to work to likewise ensure that their respective committees do the same.

  My colleagues on the Bylaws Committee are:

Brian Thiemer <lpsolanocounty@...> (elected chair by the committee members via email after being nominated by Bill Lopez; no one else was nominated and no one objected to Brian being chair)
Jose A. Tovar <jose_tovar@...>
Kevin Duewel <kevin.duewel@...>
Bill Lopez <BillLopez1971@...>

  So far we've only exchanged a few messages during the past week regarding communication and procedure and choosing a chair. We have not as yet had any actual discussion of the Bylaws.

Love & Liberty,
                                 ((( starchild )))

P.S. - Please do not send me mass-audience stuff like this "bcc". I want the option of responding to the other recipients (horizontal many-to-many communication, instead of top-down, one-to-many communication). One alternative of course is to make the message recipients visible. Another is to post to one of several California libertarian lists where things like this can (and should!) be posted, as I have done in responding.

Oops -- meant to include this link to the LPC Bylaws in the parentheses in the 4th paragraph:

http://ca.lp.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Bylaws-2013-14-post-convention-130407-130506-bindable.pdf

Love & Liberty,
                   ((( starchild )))