This plan was introduced at our January 2007 meeting for discussion at our February 22nd Thursday night 2007 meeting.
Please share some feedback with us, and if at all possible, please come to this meeting and help us hash this idea out.

thanks
don


Option Green for Oakland 2008.

A 2 year plan for the 2008 elections in Oakland for the Oakland Green Party based on a voter registration drive, candidate recruitment, and a grass roots campaign.

The goal of this plan is to present a full slate of Green Party Candidates in 2008 to all the offices up for a vote in a manner that shows the Green Party as a viable alternative to the Oakland Democrats. The methods of the campaign will be consistent with advancing Green Party values of participant democracy and a more inclusive electoral political system. The other object of this plan is to expand the Oakland Greens with a combination of recruitment and new activities.

Voter Registration.

We should start getting as many people as possible to register to vote right now. We should do it openly as the local Green Party, but we should encourage voter registration of all Oaklanders of all political points of view, including Democrats and Republicans. The voter registration drive will give us a vehicle for public contact and help us with the other elements of this plan, especially candidate recruitment. This will need to be a partly negative campaign in as much as we need to point out to local non-voters how badly Oakland is suffering from its low voter turn out. We will need to point out that the official political parties may not help those who do vote very often, but will almost always ignore those who do not vote. Voter turn out is especially low in the lowlands where most of the people of color and working people live and those communities are getting cut short in part because they do not vote in large numbers. All kinds of methods can be used for this voter drive and we can hand out voter registration cards along with inexpensive photocopies with our message of participation. We may want to point out that the next election will be based on IRV. We will also want to let people know that we would be honored to have them register Green. The fact that we are recruiting for candidates for 2008 and will plan to run ourselves in 2008 should be made clear. The voter registration drive will carry on for the entire two years before the next election and continue on as a regular piece of what the local Green Party prioritizes day in and day out until such a point that our local turnout is significantly above the national average.

Candidate recruitment.

We need to find people willing to run in each of the districts up for a vote. We have some good past candidates and they all should be encouraged to run for an office that they could do well in. I’ll say it right now that there is a former council member who could do us a lot of good by trying to take his old seat back from Ignacio. The recent district and the last at large candidates did extremely well. I suggest that the both stay involved. We have to find a way for people to be viable candidates and avoid burn out as well. This is half of the council and school board. There are transit districts, special districts of all kinds (utilities, trustee, housing, park, etc.) Most of these district elections are never contested and most people have no idea of what they are voting about. It will take some work just to get a full list of them all for our area.

We should not forget state assembly district 16, that is mostly Oakland, Piedmont and Alameda and federal house district 9 that is Berkeley, Oakland and goes down to Hayward-San Leandro. This may be something more for the State Green Party, but the Oakland Greens would have much to do around those two larger districts.

We need to develop a list of elections we want to contest and recruit candidates for each of them. We will also need to develop a clear idea of what we think we want in a candidate. (Expertise and interest in the job, connection to the local community, other background items, ability to write and speak well, etc.)

Certain politically active people, including an elected official or two, should be approached and asked if they will be willing to run for re-election as a Green or as an independent allied with us Greens.


Grass Root Campaign.

We should play to win, but on our own terms. We should also know what reasonable goals are. If we came in second place in all races and won one, we will have become the second political party in Oakland. If we get 10,000 more voters on the rolls in 2 years, we will have turned Oakland politics into something new. If we get most of Oakland who does vote thinking of us as the other guys who are on the ballot, we have made a major step forward in our public image. Any of these things will give us a better local Oakland Green Party.

Start early, we should have our candidates recruited by the first of the year 2008.
As we will not be getting any corporate sponsorship, we will need the extra time to do outreach and get our candidates out there. While the official party has its internal squabble over who gets which promotion we should be already taking our alternative to the voters.

Use low cost, grass roots outreach. We should pay very close attention to how other groups have run what are called “stealth” campaign. Frankly, if we do not have the media dollars, we are a stealth campaign, so how can one win?

Our campaign should not only be about asking people for money, in fact we need to use as many low cost or cost free methods we can to reach as many VOTERS as we can. We might be better of not asking for any money and asking people to come in and DO THINGS as members of this movement. We need to use our registered voters list and we need to make new contacts as we register new voters. We also need to ask to be invited to speak in places where we usually do not deliver our message, such as religious institutions, neighborhood watch, etc.

Get our campaign on the internet in a concerted format. There is a lot we can do here. The tools of the internet can be leveraged in a big way. We can go as far as shooting short videos on local issues and passing them around the net. Each campaign will need to have an internet promoter and the local Greens will have to have an internet promoter. We need to reach out to youth, look at what other grass roots groups are doing and make the most of this medium.

Be involved in the arts and music. There is quite an art and cultural counter culture here in Oakland, and most of them are supportive of our message and not afraid to flaunt it. Music groups can often be recruited for public shows. There are lots of art events and other events where we could have some fun and do great outreach.

Develop a local Green Party image for all our candidates. We have some very good people on board, so we need to develop the brand name. Our goal should be that candidates who are not so well known should have a positive image because they are an Oakland Green. It would not kill us to have some kind of a marketing plan.


An active Green Party, develop our expertise.

I have heard it said that too many of us are too busy doing grass roots work to put much time into the green party. What? Our grass roots work is the equivalent to getting out of the office and out into the field to make sales. Better an informal gathering of Greens after a council meeting than lots of us talking to each other at our monthly meetings.

Participate in public forums, town meetings, public consultations, public audience to boards, etc.

Our candidates should all become as well informed in the function of the job that they are running for as they can. They may become our elected official, the should absolutely become our Oakland Green expert in that issue. They should write to newspapers, put up on line blogs, help us with our voter guide and basically participate in the public discussion as experts. We need to develop ideas, and to participate in the political discussion. As a whole we should also use internet tools to develop a place for Oakland Greens and those close to our views to exchange views and hash out advanced proposals. If we do get elected to a majority of the council or school board some day, we should come ready to take the responsibilities of governance.

We should always continue the voter registration drive.
Our message to the people has to be consistently PARTICPATE.

We need to keep thinking long term. The 2008 race should be building a stronger Oakland Green party and looking at a 2010 race. Candidates who run in 08 should be more able to run, or help others run in 10. The building of expertise should continue and help us with our grass roots campaigns.

We always need to be a party that people can join. There are a lot of progressive people who are receptive to our message, but think of us as a fixed, known quantity. We need to extend the invitation to these candidates we recruit and other we open our doors for, to come in and do more than join, to help lead. We need more people of color in this movement and more youth for example. The Greens are very open to growing and sharing the leadership of our movement with our grass roots. Does the public know that? Or are we identified by our known leaders? We need to change that perception so that when someone says that we lack people of color our answer is, “come on in and help change that”.