December 8th, 2005 8:01 PM
From: Nicole Rivera
To: contributions@michaelmoore.com
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 5:44 PM
Subject: Founding the Action Caucus and Running for Congress by 2010
Hi Michael,
I too am a big believer in standing up and taking a stand. Enough with the
complaining! If "we" (progressives) want to change the Democratic party then
we will have to do it ourselves. Politics is not a spectator sport.
The Action Caucus:
1. We recruit a committee of YDA (Young Democrats of America) leaders
throughout California who are willing to make moving the Action Caucus
program forward their number
one political priority for '06. We have representation on that committee
from every chapter in the state (we're already well on our way to this
goal).
2. We work with partners (eg. Democracy For America and Latinos For
America, both of whom have agreed to work with us) to get activists
from each of those chapters well-trained in running electoral
volunteer mobilizations (running precinct walks, phone banks, etc.).
3. We equip each of these chapters with the tools to thoroughly screen
candidates for endorsements. This includes a standard candidate
questionnaire (which we've already created and used to vet Phil Angelides &
Steve Westly for CA Gov.), and a common set of practices (choose key
principles from the YDA platform
to use as a litmus test for each candidate, devote one full meeting to
hearing candidate testimonies, one E Board meeting to making recommendations
for the next general meeting, one more full meeting having open discussion
about who to endorse and then a secret ballot
vote, perhaps accompanied by an online voting procedure -- I know
someone who can provide this technology).
4. We supply each chapter with tech tools to facilitate volunteer
mobilizations, such as a sophisticated open source member database
system (called CiviCRM; we have it on our site) and mass emailer.
5. We compile a list of endorsed candidates from each chapter along
with specific volunteer goals (eg. x number of volunteers walking
precincts for y number of weekends in a row), and use our committee to
push for accountability to those goals.
Best,
Nicole Rivera
http://actioncaucus.org/about
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