Report from the County Convention

I spent seven hours at our party convention in Clark County WA (suburb of Portland OR) yesterday as a precinct officer and precinct delegate. It was the best in memory for a lot of reasons, described below.

As Democratic ACTIVISTS (we DO get out of our pajamas, don’t we???) we should realize that what happened at County Conventions around the country is what feeds delegates and resolutions to the state and national conventions.

What worked so well at Clark County:

1. We have a new hip chair (a Kossack) who understands technology, knows how to run a meeting, can speak (thank you Toastmasters), and has tremendous organizational skills.
   
   
2. As folks were gathering, a looped slideshow was running on a big screen to set the mood. Images alternated among local candidates and elected officials; inspiring quotes on democracy, courage, peace, etc; party gatherings; local scenes.
   
   
3. Our keynote speaker (State Senator Craig Pridemore) did a great job laying out the issues before us on just a few hours notice because our scheduled speaker, Congressman Brian Baird had gotten stranded on the tarmac in DC with a lame plane. [Note to meeting planners: always have a skilled understudy in the wings!]
   
   
4. Candidate and current officeholder speakers were limited to 3 minutes and we had a timer.
   
   
5. The two most frequent resolutions that came up from the caucuses: Get out of Iraq now, and Impeach Bush. (Lots of cheers when these results were announced!) I thought, WOW, we’re more progressive here than I thought. But then I realized that we were a self-selected group of extremely devoted Dems and it wasn’t that surprising.
   
   
6. Resolutions from the caucuses had been sorted by topic, cleaned up, organized and printed by the Resolutions committee in the convention handbook and posted on the party website ahead of time so folks could review them. Similar ones had been combined so we only had ONE HUNDRED FIFTY to review (daunting in itself!).
   
   
7. We were surprisingly agreeable. I know getting Dems to agree is like herding cats, but when it came time to fine-tune some of the resolutions, the word-smithing went really fast. Only two people were allowed to speak to a change and were limited to one minute. Sometimes a change was a little off and someone would offer a friendly amendment to improve it. Some were just struck wholesale. There were no shouting matches, no hard feelings if a pet resolution went down. Amazing.

I left feeling more hopeful for our local party than I have in years.