The Biggest Lil’ Nominating Convention in Venice
By Sheila
Bernard
On Saturday, May 31, we held
the first ever community nominating meeting for Grassroots Progressive
Candidates. We formed our slate for the Grass Roots Venice Neighborhood Council
elections to be held Saturday, June 28. We’d like to share a little about
how we embarked on this journey and where it might lead.
Why Progressive Grass Roots
Candidates?
Grass Roots Venice
Neighborhood Council (GRVNC) began almost three years ago as an outgrowth of the
new City Charter for Los Angeles. Enthusiasm ran high as we gathered by the
hundreds for those first few meetings at the Boys and Girls Club. Something
wonderful was being born in
Venice.
Then began the grueling work of
creating bylaws, learning about the Brown Act and Robert’s Rules of Order,
learning that people should line up at the microphone for public comment, and
figuring out which if any issues would be considered by the new neighborhood
council. During almost a year of painstaking three-hour-plus meetings to settle
these matters, attendance dwindled somewhat, but many stalwarts kept on coming
until finally GRVNC was ready for
certification.
It was during that first
year that some of us got a little nervous. We saw bylaws discussions engaged in
by fewer and fewer people. We saw one bylaw passed and then rescinded by a
process we considered questionable. We heard some of the leadership express
reluctance to consider controversial issues, and preference to emphasize
information sharing and networking. We decided to put forward an alternative
view of the purpose of GRVNC. We wrote a platform that included planks on
housing, transit, health care, homelessness, development, the arts, and other
issues. There were about ten of us who worked on the platform over a series of
months. We ran a slate of candidates for most of the positions on the
board.
We received some criticism from
friends over the fact that the process of writing the platform and choosing
candidates was not an open public process. We had intentionally kept our group
small so that we could manage to write a document together. However, many of us
took our friends’ criticisms to heart. Below, where we discuss how this
year’s nominating meeting went, you will see how we attempted to make this
year’s process open and
public.
One interesting consequence of
the creation of the Grassroots Progressive Candidates slate was that an opposing
slate was created, called the “Groovenic” slate. This opposing slate
included every candidate who was not a member of the Progressive slate,
including Tisha, founder and president pro-tem of
GRVNC.
In the first GRVNC election of
June 2002, Grassroots Progressive Candidates won seven seats on the 21-member
board, in spite of the fact that the opposing slate included the founder of the
organization and many of the people who had been most visible in the bylaws
discussions during the formative year of the organization.
In the first year of GRVNC meetings,
our seven slate members on the board brought many important issues to the board
and added much to the liveliness and depth of the discussions. Several members
of the GRVNC board who had not been members of our slate voted with us in some
instances, and several have proven to be independent voters who vote on the
merits of each issue rather than by slate.
Occasionally, however, we have had
trouble getting items onto the agenda or trouble getting them passed. This is in
the natural order of things; you win some and lose some. But since we feel that
the Grassroots Progressive Platform expresses the views of the majority of
Venetians, protects the interests of the majority of Venetians, and protects the
character of Venice while advocating positive change, we decided that this year
we want to obtain a majority of Grassroots Progressive Candidates on the GRVNC
board.
What Happened on
Saturday?
Publicity:
Saturday’s meeting was advertised for over a month in the Beachhead, in
flyers distributed in local stores and organizations, and to many email lists.
The meeting was completely open. No observers were turned away, including one
member of last year’s opposing slate, who took copious notes on everything
that was said, including campaign strategy. We challenge the opposing slate to
be as completely open to public and opposition scrutiny as was the process on
Saturday, May 31.
Signing in: When
people came to the meeting on Saturday at Vera Davis Center, those who agreed in
principle with the Grassroots Progressive Candidates Platform signed in and was
given a card to use in voice votes, much as we have done in GRVNC meetings.
Platform discussion: During the
meeting, the platform was reviewed and some changes were suggested, such as the
following:
• We should more
specifically define the terms “low-income” and
“very-low-income.”
• We should include language on
assisted living, transitional housing, SRO’s (single-room occupancy
residences), lockers, hostels, and other measures which address homelessness.
• Since about 14 percent of
Venice residents live below the poverty line, including hundreds of children, we
should add language about poverty.
• We propose that GRVNC have an
education committee to advocate for tutoring and services for special education
students.
• We should oppose any
permit process that would compromise freedom of speech and expression on the
boardwalk.
We discussed the fact that
our platform is a living, breathing document which can be amended over the
years. A committee was constituted to work on changes to the
platform.
At the conclusion of the
platform discussion, we stated that the most basic elements of the platform, the
elements which were fundamental to all the others, are these
two:
• The protection of existing
affordable housing and the building of more affordable housing;
and
• The control of all
development in Venice by the
community.
We asked for a voice vote on
whether the assembly agreed in principle on these two elements. Two members had
objections, which were resolved in discussion, so that a consensus was achieved
on the platform in principle.
Campaigning: We discussed which
organizations and individuals could be counted upon to campaign and vote for our
slate on June 28th. We discussed a Venice-wide campaigning effort. We agreed to
meet at the Vera Davis Center next Saturday morning to distribute canvassing
materials to those who agreed to go door to door on their streets or in their
neighborhoods.
Nominating: Nominations
were taken from the floor. Each nominee gave a one-minute speech and was allowed
to answer three questions from the floor in a minute or less. In some cases,
candidates received endorsements rather than questions from the floor.
Voting: Voting for the three executive
committee seats (secretary, treasurer, and communications officer) were
conducted in the conventional manner, because two of the offices had candidates
running unopposed, and the third had only two candidates running. (If any of
these seats had more than two candidates running, we were planning to use
instant runoff voting, which would have allowed each voter to choose a first
choice, a second choice, and a third choice, etc.)
However, for the at-large seats, there
were fourteen people running for seven seats. We used cumulative voting. This
means that every voter was allowed to cast seven votes any way he or she wanted.
For example, the voter could cast one vote for each of seven candidates. Or, the
voter could cast all seven of his or her votes for one candidate. Or, the voter
could cast three votes for one candidate and four for another,
etc.
The votes were counted twice while
meeting participants watched the counting or chatted in other parts of the room.
Our nominees for the executive committee are Elena Popp for secretary, Jim Smith
for treasurer, and Tom O’Meara for communications officer. Our at-large
candidates are Lydia Ponce, Sheila Bernard, Suzanne Thompson, Sabrina Venskus,
Laddie Williams, Peggy Lee Kennedy, and Elinor
Aurthur.
Separation of Church and
State: We have become aware that the observant Jewish community will not be able
to participate in GRVNC voting, since observant Jews are not permitted to engage
in commercial or political activity on Saturday, which is the Jewish sabbath.
Neither GRVNC nor Grassroots Progressive Candidates have made provisions for
absentee ballots. Many of us feel that in the interest of fairness to all
Venetians, we must schedule future GRVNC events and Grassroots Progressive
Candidates events on secular days only, or provide another way to see that no
one is excluded from our process.
Highly conscious behavior: I came away
from the experience with great hope for our slate, our neighborhood council, and
for Venice. I had seen examples all day of very open and loving behavior, but
one incident topped it off. In one contested race, the losing candidate
immediately approached the winning candidate with an offer of cooperation,
support, and sharing of knowledge. I view this as the noble act of a selfless
individual who practices his democratic values, and I congratulate him. (You
know who you are!)
And congratulations to all
participants, on a highly educational and successful experiment in local
politics. If we can spread the spirit of Saturday’s meeting to large
numbers of Venetians, we can increase local participation and contribute to the
revitalization of our democracy.
Posted: Sun - June 1, 2003 at 02:49 PM