Year 7, Week 24
Orville found four more neighborhood representatives to work on his committee for the rules of the mail-in ballots. I attended this first meeting and it seemed these people were in a consultative frame of mind to draft up some good rules. I left half-way through, knowing things were in good hands.
I started to reminisce about my time writing all these TDG rules. I played a minor role in the first constitution of Northwest Riverbend and the merger between Northwest and Northeast. I played a major role in the constitution of Southwest Riverbend and its merger with North Riverbend to make Angle Riverbend. When bringing in Central and Southeast Riverbend into our fold, I was only on the executive committee to oversee and approve of the merger committee’s work. Part of me would like to be in the middle of this new committee. But I didn’t seem to be needed. …
Year 7, Week 23
Len shared an email response from Dave Volek, the inventor of Tiered Democratic Governance.
Len
Congrats on getting Riverbend under one TDG. This is indeed a milestone — and it’s great you had a party to celebrate.
I am not surprised that you people are in competition with another TDG. There will be various social and political forces — some good, some bad — that will bring up new TDGs within existing TDG areas.
Sitting from Canada, I’m not in a good position to determine which TDG actually employs the TDG principles better than the other. …
Year 7 Week 22
A little occurrence happened that necessitated an earlier meeting of the executive committee. We thought we should call Len in.
Ron Govelin was the first chair of the Southeast Riverbend TDG. He stormed out of the Southeast election meeting when he wasn’t elected, promising never to return. Following our exposure in the Riverbend Times, he and some friends bought a half page ad in the Times, claiming that his group was “The Real TDG.” They implied that our TDG was not doing things right, and citizens of Riverbend should join their group to transform American democracy. …
Year 7: Week 17
Consensus at the executive committee was that the letter to the editor was well presented in the Riverbend Times. The newspaper seemed to have acknowledged their mistake in reporting.
Pamela said that the website address in the paper did get five more subscribers to our promotional email list. But no new email inquiries or members.
Most of our communications was with our members, by mail and email. Whenever we had a public information meeting, we did maildrops in neighborhoods to invite people from the general public. Recently, we’ve been advertising our public meetings in the newspaper. …
I was a little bored watching my wife’s choice of TV. I grabbed my Kindle reader and found I didn’t have any outstanding ebooks on my queue. So I went to the recommended reads and saw “How Democracies Die” by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. It seemed to have been on a bestseller’s list and won a few awards. So I parted with $11.99.
This book was written one year into the Trump presidency. And the authors do not like Mr. Trump.
I got only a few Kindle pages into the book when the authors claimed that the reason for Mr. Trump’s presidency could be blamed on the upper echelons of the Republican Party. The authors thought this group should have done more to stop the rise of Mr. …
The first draft was passed to the executive committee by email. And by email, a few changes were made, and sent off to the newspaper. The final draft is below:
Year 7: Week 15
Politics is often about facing challenges one never plans for. The Riverbend TDG got such a challenge right after the party.
The Riverbend Times sent a reporter to cover the party. For the most part, she did a reasonable job, and we appreciated the free publicity. But she got one premise of the TDG totally wrong. She said that the TDG is going to turn into a new political party to contest future elections at the municipal, state, and federal levels.
None of the executive members talked to this reporter, so she must have got this information from another member. Looking at the paper, she had three events to cover that night, so it was understandable she couldn’t get the full story. …
Year 7: Week 13
We had about 600 people in Heritage Inn banquet hall. We were probably a little over fire code regulations. Members brought their kids and friends.
As Rich Ridell, Holger Peters, Stacey Mabrall, and Len Pash walked from the back to the front, the crowd stood in respect, and then applauded when they reach the stage.
The four agreed to let Rich speak to the crowd. As there were children present, we advised Rich to keep his speech on the short side. This is a party night after all. …
Year 7 Week 9
The seven of us met in Ed Broncher’s house for our first meeting of the new executive committee.
In the last amendment to our constitution, we put in a set of rules for electing our officers. The preamble to those rules was “If consensus is not reached . . . .”. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to get to those rules.
Ed had been around the TDG almost as long as I have. He is highly respected and served as membership chair for three years. He also chaired Northeast’s founding and its first executive committee. …
Year 7, Week 8
Holger Peters had the podium: “I think this is about the tenth or twelfth time I’ve had the privilege of giving this speech. When we built our first TDG constitution, the inventor of the TDG suggested that we put a clause about the importance of voting for good character and capacity for governance before voting. So we took his suggestion, and we let the chair of our TDG give a little speech about voting in this way.
“When we put this clause into our constitution, we didn’t really understand why. …
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