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Re: efficiency


Evan,

I hope you will attend the meeting and prepare a handout. You are a valued participant in this process, and I'm truly sorry if I implied otherwise.

The problem from my perspective (and I know you can appreciate the juggling aspect of this), is that there seems to be some disagreement about what the "essential business" of our group is. For example, like you, I believe that the statement is a crucial group product that we can all rally around, and I do appreciate your efforts to help us get it done ASAP (your insistence certainly helped us make so much progress so quickly). However, at the last meeting, more than one person told me they thought that such "public statements" are a waste of time and no one (ie, no politicians) will ever read it, so why bother. Some also seem to feel that we should be focusing on broader issues than just what's happening in Boulder County, and that our limited local focus diminishes our impact. Also, I personally felt like there were first-timers who got left behind (wanted to ask more questions or wanted more thorough explanations of issues or technology) because our group as a whole is so far along in our process and was spending public time coordinating actions instead of answering their questions.

In the meantime, since the last meeting, we continue to be active, we've met with the County Clerk, we've been in the Daily Camera (and by extension Common Dreams nationally) and on Denver Cable TV. Independently, members of our group are writing letters to the editor, contacting their representatives and forwarding important information among the group. In addition to Boulder County specific efforts, we're connecting with Bob McGrath's efforts at the state level in Denver. His group seems to already be very active with state politicians, and he's putting a lot of effort into higher level organizing (statewide and nationally) than we are here in Boulder County, but his group is still smaller than ours and coming up to speed on the issues, too, and doesn't yet appear to be collectively as far along as we are. He will be joining us tomorrow night, and he's another dedicated citizen concerned about this issue who's willing to take action. I don't care if you like me or not, but you should come tomorrow to meet Bob and support his statewide efforts.

And that's what this is about, taking action on this issue. The meetings are obviously just one of those actions. From my perspective, the meetings are intended to be primarily about informing the public about this issue and creating a public space for dialog on the problems and potential solutions. That we have been able to get anything done -- let alone as much as we have gotten done -- with a group this large with such limited organizational history is quite phenomenal if you ask me, and speaks loudly to how deeply we all care about this issue. I'm extremely grateful that this is happening and that so many people are getting involved.

Tomorrow, we've agreed to participate in Mark's Progressive Action Public Forum that he has been holding regularly at the Co-op. The format we agreed with Mark is that there would be an opening forum on electronic voting pretty much as he had originally intended and planned, and that will include some background on the issue and a chance for people to ask questions and speak their minds. After Mark's intended forum, which I anticipate would probably last at most an hour (half an hour to 45 minutes seems more likely), we have been offered the space to stay in for the CVV meeting we scheduled last week at which time hopefully there will no longer be any unanswered questions from the public and we can focus specifically on CVV actions.

Again, sorry for getting frustrated about this, but I can only suggest that people who for any reason don't want to participate in the 7pm public forum dialog portion of tomorrow's meeting simply arrive later so that they don't get frustrated, too.

And, I honestly think a handout on the background is a great idea that I hope someone puts together for tomorrow's meeting.

I hope to see you there.

Joe



On Nov 19, 2003, at 1:54 PM, Evan Daniel Ravitz wrote:


Joe,

I won't be at the meeting or making up a handout. It's insulting to
infer that anyone in our group is against "public, open, educational
and consensus-driven group process" as you do below

During our 2nd meeting, because 20 of the 26 attending had been at the
1st meeting, and because we were playing catch-up with the County
which was about to award a contract to an unsatisfactory vendor, I was
trying to get us down to essential business quickly.

Evan