I volunteered to be a Santa Clara County Green Party delegate to the Green Party of California meeting in Seaside's Monterey College of Law. This is what I saw there.

  

The first thing that inspired me to get out my camera was Alex saying we would start the meeting in five minutes. He wanted everybody that hadn't registered yet to go over to the registration table and sign in.

  

I ended up with delegate card 42. The buzz of conversations around me was bright and mellow. Lots of people that hadn't seen each other for quite a while were catching up on the news.

  

        

The meeting was started by Mayor Delgado reading a poem about how much he loves the beauty of his world.

Then Owen Rubin gave us an update on Rubin vs. Bowen (California's Secretary of State), our challenge to Prop. 14 (the top two primary law). He said that in questioning the appeals court justices appeared hostile to the case. He is not optimistic that they are going to vote to throw out the top two primary. He expects they will find some minor technicality as the reason. Probably it will be that he didn't have standing to bring the case because he wasn't harmed, being only a voter.

Mike then explained that next year we are going to be running somebody for partisan office so that they can file another suit that covers the same ground from a harmed candidate point of view. As a practical matter it looks like the top two primary will be around for at least another couple of election cycles even if that lawsuit goes as well as can be hoped.

           

There were several people that had things to say about that. Wish I could remember what they said.

Before breaking for lunch we posed for a group shot. Thank you to the Law School staffer that took the pictures of all of us that wanted to be in it.

     

What I remember about lunch time was talking to Jan. She's elected to the Marina Coast Water District.

After lunch they had breakout sessions so that people into different things could caucus. The platform working group managed to snag this outside spot.

I think that's the Grass Roots Organizing Working group (GROW). Caroline went representing Santa Clara County. She said on the way home that she was happy she had gone to that one. Made lots of connections that she hopes to draw from later.

       

What I mainly remember about this one is I didn't get much out of being there. Don't even remember which group it was. I just don't enjoy long meetings the way I used to.

By far the most interesting part of the weekend was the Greens in Government Panel. Click above to go through my pictures from that.

     

Caroline was liking the gas prices. They really seemed at least a dime lower than bay area gas prices. For sure they are more than a dollar a gallon cheaper then they were a year or so ago. What a change!

When I first saw the "Obama Way" sign I thought maybe it was a joke. I remember when Obama got inaugurated San Francisco had a graffiti wave. Somebody had put "OBAMA" over all of the "BUSH" signs on Bush St. This wasn't like that. It was government grade signs. We followed the street from downtown to the bypass above it in the hills, and they had government grade signs with the double name the whole way. I asked about it, but none of the locals knew the story.

Sunday morning there was a plenary session where we discussed ballot access for next years Presidential candidates. Basically, to get a spot in the Green Party primary a candidate will have to come to our meeting in January and speak to us about it. They also have to have enough of a campaign that they've filed paperwork with the FEC, which means they have to have raised or spent at least $5,000 on the project by mid January.

Then we had breakout sessions. I didn't attend that one so I can't comment on it.

Not even sure what group that one was.

That was the IT group. I sat through that meeting. They were talking about migrating all of the Green Party's web presence to another service provider. Sounded like the project is a bit behind schedule. They sounded like they need some new volunteers that can do real work. I sat on my hands.

Over lunch later I found myself telling someone else about those Palo Alto foodies that have a slogan that goes "If it ain't fun it don't get done." If they can make weeding a garden fun, then it ought to be possible for the IT people to make IT fun. I've no idea how they would do it though.