There were lots of people at the table already when I got there.

There were a few more people along the wall to my left when I was taking these pictures, but I couldn't get a good shot of them. The facilitation team quickly decided that we needed to break the group into smaller ones if we were going to be able to get anything done. They spent some time dithering about if and how to do that, but finally it was decided to use the categories the platform is subdivided into. They wrote those on the board.

I decided to go to the Peace and Nonviolence group, which was much closer to a working group in size.

Of the people sitting in the circle below, only Paul was hidden behind someone else's head. You can see his leg between the woman sitting on the floor and the guy with his hair behind his ear. It turned out that the guy is a very experienced activist, and he ended up showing a lot of good leadership. I included this picture of him I took earlier in the day for completeness.

We did a go-around in this group, everybody spending some time introducing themselves and what they are working on. When they got to me I said I am "trying to find a way to use the internet that makes it relevant to state of the art activism." To make a long story short, we decided the best solution to our problems is to get the nonprofit organizations that espouse green values to see us as the electoral arm of their movements. Paul suggested we start by getting all of the peace groups organizing to fight against Bushes war to put "GREEN PARTY" on their fliers in the endorsements.

Across the room from where we were these people were trying to figure out how to manage such an important group. They finally decided that Starlene Rankin and Don Eichelberger would be the facilitation team. I heard mention of some plans for coordinating movement together, but I have not seen what that is going to mean on the ground yet.

I'm not sure what this group was up to, or where the other groups met. At the end of the meeting all of the subgroups rejoined the big circle, and some interesting things were said. It looks hopeful for the future.

3453