I usually don't take pictures at the Santa Clara County Green Party County Council meeting. However, Caroline wanted me to, despite the fact I'd forgotten to bring my camera. She loaned me hers, and even emailed me the pictures after I took them. With help like that how could I say no?

  

What I remember more than the substance of the meeting was the gossip we traded. Carol said she had gone to the MLK remembrance event in Palo Alto, and it had been more of a Democratic Party love fest for the people that had made phone calls for the Obama Campaign last fall. She said that Mayor Peter Drekmeier had handed out thank you awards to the organizers, who had gotten something like 20% of the phone calls made on behalf of that campaign done. Caroline was frosted because the newspaper makes our drought sound worse than it really is. Carol had a lot to say about the conference she had gone to in Colorado, where the organizers had gotten together left and right wing groups to talk about moving forward together. Cynthia McKinney had spoken at it, but she hadn't hung around long after that. The munchies were delicious.

We talked about such things as how to build membership. One of the problems is that a lot of Nader fans left the Green Party for the Peace & Freedom Party last fall. Because of this, Santa Cruz and San Mateo County Green Partys are inactive right now. There is a real need for more people to step forward and take on building those organizations. In the end we decided to do more follow-up on people that give us their information when we table.

Fundraising was another topic of conversation. Should we paint rocks and sell them as paperweights? How about making chip clips or T shirts? Maybe we should start plants in reused yogurt cups and the like with green tape or paint on them. The only thing that was clear was to have it on the table in April we need to get it going now...

Carol and I spent a lot of the meeting making buttons.

We made many copies of all the popular designs. They will probably all get exchanged for small donations at the Green Party table by the end of April.