Today’s membership meeting: postpone

[Susan Hogarth]

We are not ready for the membership meeting. I am sorry. My phone/internet service is sorry (on and off), my computers (both!) are broken in different ways, and frankly I’m not prepared to have a general membership meeting. I would like to move it to next month.

To be honest, I also need more help getting organized for it. This is my fault for not asking more, but I will need the help.

We can convene at noon eastern and have the board move the meeting to next month if that’s okay.

CRAP. I just realized the convening time is 2pm eastern according to zoom (I had noon on my personal calendar, and this is another instance of what I mean by ‘not ready’). I will be there at noon and 2pm to see who shows.

I propose August 11.

Susan Hogarth
919-906-2106

[Susan Hogarth]

James is sending a cancellation notice through nationbuilder (thanks, James; doing that on a phone is excruciating).

He made a good point about pushing out till fall, which I understand in terms of notice. But there are two considerations I have.

(1) We have doubled (which sadly) is not a very big brag) our membership numbers in the last few weeks before and during the convention, and this will allow us to integrate those people and have them participate in the meeting.

(2) We have not been pulling together very well as a board, and I understand it’s largely my fault, but we are going to need board members to step up. We need help with record-keeping (money and membership), with communications, and with strategy development.

The irony here is that as many of us on the Board have experienced some sort of demotivation, interest in and looking toward the Radical Caucus has increased (and probably for many of the same reasons, internal LP strife). We’re in a decent position to help the LP come through this rough patch in a way that makes the party BOTH eschew the culture war AND support strong radical libertarian positioning.

I would appreciate some replies to this email so I know it has been seen and *seen*. We need the board to meet for a serious discussion, and soon. My leadership has been lacking, I freely admit, but that hasn’t been the only weakness. We all need to step up and contribute. We don’t need to be martyrs for the RC or the LP, but we need to dedicate some time and thought.

Scattered communications modes has not helped, so let’s try to make this discussion mostly here (which reminds me that we need to update this email list).

Susan Hogarth
919-906-2106

> On Jul 21, 2024, at 10:25 AM, Susan Hogarth <hog...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> We are not ready for the membership meeting. I am sorry. My phone/internet service is sorry (on and off), my computers (both!) are broken in different ways, and frankly I’m not prepared to have a general membership meeting. I would like to move it to next month.

[Mary Gingell]

Susan,

Thank you for trying to consolidate our discussion in one place and I
agree that as a board we've got issues!

I'm definitely feeling demotivated and I appreciate your point about how
internal LP strife may be the cause both of board members' burnout AND
increased interest in the caucus.  I am feeling somewhat better  the in
the wake of the national convention but I think it's incredibly sad that
some state LPs won't put Chase and Mike on their state ballots.  We've
also been feeling for a long time a lack of energy in our local party.

While the whole thing with Biden dropping out makes the election as a
whole more interesting going forward I'm feeling like it's a net
negative for the Oliver campaign (even though he's still 20 years
younger than Harris) and that's depressing.  And JD Vance (whose
positions on various issues, taken as a package, sound like they are
worse from a libertarian point of view than Trump's or Biden's!) has his
authorized "campaign autobiography" running non-stop on Netflix. 
Choosing him was a brilliant move by Trump.

I guess what I'm thinking is that with the election potentially
tightening even more than it already was, while I'd like to think the
Lib pres ticket will be a spoiler, a part of me thinks that all this
excitement is just crowding us out -- and I thought it was bad that RFK
Jr was out there getting all the attention, just like Perot, etc., in
past elections.  Looks like he's going to be irrelevant right along with us.

I could definitely use some positive thinking - any out there??

Mary

> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to board_disc+...@lpradicalcaucus.org.
>

[Susan Hogarth]

I have some positive thoughts!

The worst of the internal shit-stirring around Chase has died down, he’s getting some great press, and though Harris is younger than Biden (and interesting person) I think the whole shakeup is making people look at all the candidates in a new light. The campaign itself has a lot of great energy - if you want a dose of positivity, join us 🥰. Like most LP presidential campaigns, the idea is education and exposure, and while I feel like Chase has certain ’lines’ he uses over and over, they are solid lines and that level of repetition is exactly what is needed.

The direction of the LP leadership is … astonishingly bizarre. As a caucus, I think we will need to address McArdle’s extreme malfeasance at some point, and the sooner the better. The goal will be to make the point that she is not just passively but actively damaging the Party, while at the same time being very clear that we welcome new people, new ideas, and offer a place for plumbline libertarians who don’t agree with leadership decisions to remain active in the LP.

Susan Hogarth
919-906-2106

> On Jul 22, 2024, at 3:33 AM, Mary Gingell <m...@dehnbase.org> wrote:
>
> Susan,