CA Dems: Important deadline TOMORROW

CA Dems: Important deadline TOMORROW

If you are a reform-minded Dem in California, there is an important deadline tomorrow. Tomorrow is the last day in many assembly districts (though not all) to qualify for voting at the CA Democratic Party's Assembly District Committees' re-organizational meetings in January. Why should you care about voting at these meetings? Well, I'm glad you asked...

If you want to revitalize the Democratic party, this is the first step. This is where you can start walking the walk instead of just chattering and sitting on your ass. The Assembly District Committees, based on the state assembly districts, are the California Democratic Party's basic unit of organization. The state assembly districts send officers and delegates to the state party's convention in April. You can find out which state assembly district you're in at the CA State Assembly webpage, by clicking on "Find my district".

During the weekend of January 8-9, each Assembly District Committee will hold re-organization meetings. You can vote for the committee officers at one of these meetings if you qualify; commonly they require a small dues fee (around $10-$25) and certification that you volunteered at least ten hours of campaign activity. You should ask for a letter of certification from whomever you reported to during your volunteering stint.

Democracy for America (DFA), Howard Dean's organization, has put together a marvelous tool for finding out more about these meetings on their Local page. Click on the state then click on the zoom-in tool to find your assembly district meeting. You shouldn't be surprised to hear that many DFA local groups are running DFA activists for seats on these local committees.

DFA is still gathering information about these meetings; I'm shocked, shocked, to hear that information on these meetings is hard to find. In the face of obstacles set up by our own &*@# party, DFA is doing a good job of keeping the local groups informed. I've attached a letter sent by a DFA volunteer to the DFA-NorCal Yahoo Group.

Hi All,

As you probably know,  the Democratic Assembly District Reorganizing meetings at which officers and delegates to the state-wide convention in Los Angeles (April 15-17) are happening state-wide on January 8th and 9th.  What you might not know is that each Assembly District gets to set its own rules about pre-registration requirements and some districts have a deadline coming up in a few days (eg: December 14th).

DFA has a new feature which helps the public find out about these meetings.  If you go to:  Democract for America and click on "local tools" you can input your zip code at the bottom of the page (under "Democratic Party meetings") to find out where your AD meeting is being held.  Correction: you can do that if the information is available, but for many Assembly Districts finding out such basic information has been either difficult or impossible. It's clear to me that, as one Assembly District regional director told me, the AD meetings are an "insider's
game."  But we must change this, and the first step is to become informed.

Even if you think you know the details of your own meeting, please check out the website and look at the postings for your area. I have written to all Assembly Districts from 1 to 40, and posted whatever information I've gotten to date.  Others have done postings as well,  but there is still a lot of missing or incomplete information.

So, please check out the system and if you find your AD meeting, but there are mistakes or omissions, let me know and I will make the corrections. Alternatively, if you do not find a meeting that you know about, please go ahead right now and add that meeting to the website by going to:

http://democracyforamerica.com/local/dem_meeting.php?id=873

Thanks for your help,

Tom Brown