Direct Democracy Conference in SF, End of July & begining of August, 2010.

Mike Feinstein posted something to the effect that he was looking for somebody to host an Indian Green during this Direct Democracy event in San Francisco. The URL for the event was in the note, and I visited it. Looked fascinating. There was no charge to register so I signed up. I missed the first few hours worth of stuff, but when I got there I quickly found out that it was as good as I was hoping it could be.

For me one major highlight was Tom Hayden's talk. He said "democracy has to be part of the fabric of your life" or words to that effect. They allowed two questions. Somebody came forward and asked something. Hayden was filling the air with an answer while I figured out what I wanted to say. I lined up, taking the other spot.

"In the mid '90s I met and old Libertarian that was pushing stickers that had VOTE ON NUCLEAR POWER, with a YES by the on position and a NO by the off position." He muttered something like "I hadn't heard about that" but I kept going. "Since then I've expanded the idea, telling people that we need to STOP VOTING FOR OIL COMPANIES AT THE GAS PUMP. What do you think of that general idea?

He said that there is a real need for structure, which my proposal didn't show. Then he said a couple (or was it a few?) terms before term limits came along Sacramento had closed down Rancho Seco, her nuclear power plant. He credited Sacramento's local utility being a democratic institution with making that possible. The voters voted SHUT DOWN THE NUCLEAR PLANT in a clear vote, and it happened. "Before the vote the opponents said the sky would fall, and guess what?" "The sky is still there."

Whitaker and Baxter were campaign consultants that created (Republican) modern media democracy as we experience it here in California today. McCuan pointed out that they believed their candidates should dominate the field. Their first state wide victory came against Upton Sinclair and his EPIC movement in 1932. They used some dirty tricks and smear tactics in their campaigns.

I didn't hear mention that one of the Assembly Candidates that ran with Sinclair was Robert A. Heinlein. He responded to the dirty nature of the experience by going underground, burying his politics in science fiction that was important to many during the space race. Heinlein is still widely read and available. His best books amount to a frontal assault on the pillars of the status quo that supported Whitaker and Baxter's candidates.

Nader phoned in his participation. He said such words as "citizenship" and "democracy". What I remember more about the evening than the speeches was the beer. It was strong and tasty, with a label that called it "Budgetary Alement - Strong beer for a weak economy."

Later I found myself talking about how in this modern digital age, you're not always sure if you're doing all of the respecting of others privacy that you should. Not only that, you're not sure your own privacy is being respected. However, considering that Nader called in to make a speech and took Q&A afterwards, it seems reasonable to conclude that the whole experience was on the up and up.

All of the other speakers were there in the flesh. They hung around to talk to people at the end to. The tone of the event was very much "lets figure out how we can work together." The book signings weren't in the same place, so I missed that part of it.

The public defender is doing a local initiative campaign in the City and County of San Francisco. He expects to fully inform the voters and win in the end. At the time he spoke the initiative had not yet qualified for the ballot, although he had submitted what he thought were enough signatures. Since then they have proved good. See SFSmartReform.com for more information.

I think this was the panel that I asked something like "Back in 1994 there was an initiative on the ballot in California for a nickel a gallon gas that lost by a lot. Since then nobody has tried to do that kind of thing here. Also, the oil, car, and tire lobbies have so outbid the rest of us for incumbent seats that getting elected with another agenda is not an option. What other approaches to the system are available in that situation? One of the speakers said something like "educate the public." The others might have said something, but I don't remember what.

I was shocked and alarmed to find out that Sacramento has so few reporters now. There were many more in the early '90s when I lived there. Back then they were already so thin that it seemed like the only way to get a story in the Bee was to get a wire service reporter to cover it and then ask the paper's editor to get it off the news feed. The days when they could be counted on to send a reporter to anything were long gone.

That reception was a remarkable event. For one thing, the food was VERY GOOD! For another the Swiss were putting their best foot forward. The Ambassador was introduced as having come to California after representing his government in Iraq. He spoke for a few minutes, saying that Switzerland is very in favor of direct democracy, and is a remarkable world power despite being a small country with not much in the way of natural resources. He didn't exactly say that, he just quoted statistics like "fifth largest banking country on the planet."

There was an Nth generation Swiss-Californian from Sacramento who gave a brief talk. She explained that her (Great-Great?) Grandfather had come to California from (she held up a card with a Swiss looking name she never said neatly printed in block capital letters on it) back in the days when democracy came from the barrel of a gun. He built himself a nice ranch, but later he sold the land to California and our State Capitol now sits there.

After that there were a few more talks by other conference participants. Things like a few words from an Indian Green that comes from a province there with 4.2 million residents "small by our standards." I heard that and I thought "that's as big as our biggest County, Los Angeles."

Grover Norquist is a name I've heard many times. I think of him as a total Republican. He said a few things that shocked me so much I didn't write them down. Stuff like "The Bush Administration had one story about what was going on for the general public, and something completely different for a much smaller inner circle." The comment I did note below was there more to illustrate that sometimes the State doesn't give people it doesn't like much choice.

Gross said something like "political power can be like light, or it can be like Machiavelli's Prince." He used the names of philosophers like they were everyday words that bring to mind specific images and tendencies.

This was another panel where I asked a question. It went something like this "Is there a role for the laws of physics in this stuff? I remember talking to a guy that told me he worked on the physics for the high efficiency LED bulbs that are currently taking over from the LPF fluorescents. Those guys are changing the way we see things in a real way. On another occasion I asked a New Zealander if she'd heard of Kirchoff's laws, which are key to understanding the way electricity flows in circuits. She said she'd never heard of them. I know it's not reasonable to expect everybody to have heard of that, but still. What's the role of the laws of physics?" Brulte and Hafner ducked the question. Gross said only "there is a role for the laws of physics."

Ross Day showed off his participatory democracy robot, "Petey". It has a touch screen that lets you go through the list of petitions currently circulating. If you want to sign one it prints a coupon for you to sign. Then you can put that in the mailbox on Petey's side.

We talked about many things. The format was called a "park bench." They had a half dozen panelists and an empty chair up front at the beginning of the session. The guy explained that if you felt you needed to say something, come up and sit in the empty chair. If the chairs are all full and you're done speaking, vacate and make space for someone else.

I took a turn to say that "people with common names have a very different relationship with their names than people with unusual names." I think I also mentioned that "There is only one Barak Obama in the USA, and the name of the President is a public utility." That contrasts with George Bush, which is in many phone books, and not just on the page where they list the elected officials.

Somebody else talked about Code for America, a group getting fresh college graduates to spend a year getting some small town's information online as a volunteer project.

The Humane Society has good luck with initiatives. They have gotten them on the ballot in many States (around 22 recently) in the USA, and a lot of them have passed. The most recent one in California was Prop. 2 the one about humane farm conditions. They created the laws against dog fighting that got Michael Vick, among others. I think they leverage the fact that people find it easy to identify with animals.

After that I left. They were looking for collective solutions involving ballot boxes and so forth. The whole thing just wasn't set up to work for solutions like "voting your dollars is a political act." Since then I've been wondering what that would look like. Maybe international standards for meanings of such terms as "world famous" and "okay".