Dear Libertarians,

Over the last year, the Libertarian Party of San Francisco has been kicking booty. Meetings are exciting and fun, with more and more participants and pizza.

As stated in last month’s newsletter, we have three goals for the year 2001. They are:

1. increasing membership from 210 to 300,
2. recruiting an Activities/Events Chair,
3. starting two or three more meeting locations

We have completed the second goal and part of third goal. Leilani Wright is our Activities Chair, and we have a new meeting location in the Financial District (see story).

Now comes the fun goal. Increasing our membership.

In this column, I will talk about facts. The numbers. Next month, I will outline some of the activities that we, as a group, can do to meet OUR goal of 300 members by December 2001.

There are two steps to calculating our membership. The first step deals with membership expirations. A total of 122 Libertarian memberships will expire in 2001 (with the largest number expiring this month–23). The second step deals with our goal of reaching a total of 300 members.

To meet our goal: If 100% of current membership renew, we need 90 new members, or 10 per month. If 0% (no one) renews, we need 212 new members, or 24 per month.

This new, convenient downtown meeting is located at the Mechanics Building at 57 Post Street (at Market and Montgomery, one block from the Montgomery Muni/BART stop).

During the last year, I spoke with hundreds of Libertarians. The single most common request is for an additional meeting time and location. Our current venue is on Saturday afternoon in the Richmond District. Many Libertarians find it difficult to give up a Saturday afternoon. Still others work in San Francisco, but live elsewhere. They will not come to San Francisco on the weekends.

In response to these requests, we scheduled monthly after-work meetings in the Financial District. Each meeting will be an hour long and will feature speakers that address Libertarian causes (or challenge Libertarian beliefs), discuss ways we can take actions to create change in San Francisco, and provide an opportunity to meet with other Libertarians.

Time: 6:30pm - 7:30pm

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See you soon at our next meeting!

Sincerely,

David Molony

Chair, Libertarian Party of San Francisco

It’s official. Our annual Tax Day Protest is an "event."

At our last meeting, our new Activities Chair, Ms. Leilani Wright, talked about a major Libertarian issue–TAXES. As Activities Director, Ms. Wright led discussions about the "who, what, where, why and how" of our Tax Day Protest activities. The discussion was exciting, scintillating, intoxicating. Every single person in attendance signed up.

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Are you seeking a fun-filled night out on the town? Looking for great companionship and conversation? Look no further than our SF Libertarian Semi-Annual Dinner.

Every six months, Libertarians in San Francisco gather together to honor and acknowledge the hard work of an individual. This year’s honoree is Mr. Michael Acree. Mr. Acree is our Treasurer and newsletter chair. His rock-solid capabilities and talents are an inspiration to us all.

David Molony

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As reported in an article in the GOLDEN GATE LIBERTARIAN (February 2001, pp. 1-3), seven libertarians did a sterling job of giving their time and energy to prepare and serve dinner to the residents of Raphael House, a transitional homeless shelter for families.

To capitalize on this libertarian generosity, I'd like to describe a volunteer activity I coordinate in SF, and invite interested

libertarians to help out.

David Molony

chair@lpsf.org

(415) 820-3923

Leilani Wright

plantagenetregina@archaeologist.com (415) 786-5505

Vince Grubbs

vwg@sirius.com

(415) 682-9482

Mike Acree

macree@psg.ucsf.edu

(415) 668-5794

Jerry Cullen

gtcullen@slip.net

(415) 567-9642

Mike Denny

mfd@MichaelDenny.net

(415) 750-9340

Starchild

(temporarily without e-mail)

(415) 626-3036

Jerry Pico

picoman@mindspring.com

(415) 885-5350

Chris Maden

crism@shore.net

(415) 504-8677

Opinions expressed in unsigned columns of the Golden Gate Libertarian do not necessarily represent those of anyone but the Editor. Submissions are encouraged. The deadline (including agenda and calendar items) is the first Thursday of the month.

The announced theme of the convention was "The Freedom Train"–a reference to Gene Burns’ vehicle for outreach: Even if you’re not going all the way with us toward freedom, climb aboard if you want to go in the same general direction. The Freedom Train got derailed, however, when Burns, who was to have been the banquet speaker, realized he was going to be out of the country the weekend of the convention. Mary Ruwart was invited to replace him, and her message set a new implicit theme for the convention. A number of speakers addressed themselves to the difficulties commonly experienced by libertarians in communicating with nonlibertarians, emphasizing the benefits, to ourselves and to others, of sensitivity, tact, and respect. The reactions to these speakers demonstrated how badly this message is needed, and how effective is was. For those who have been following the recent discussion about how generous and compassionate libertarians are (see Michael Edelstein’s letter, p. 2), the convention also offered many interesting observations.

Fundraising at the Saturday banquet was conducted by Mark Tuniewicz, who flew out from Boston at his own expense. He announced a goal of $10,000–more than twice what was collected at last year’s convention, where the attendance, in an election year, was substantially larger. As few as three envelopes were collected from some tables of 10 people. Six or seven people who held up contribution envelopes were unaware that the light was bright enough that everyone could see that their envelopes were empty. We might conclude that for many libertarians it is important to appear generous.

The take was $3811. Tuniewicz then announced that, prior to flying out, he had telephoned major donors in California, and he received three pledges for matching contributions: one for $250; one, from a man who had just lost his job, for $50 a month for a year; and $1000 from San Francisco’s own Austin Hills. The two larger amounts were matched first, and Mike Acree matched the $250 to keep it from being forfeited. With additional contributions, the total for the evening was $8811. At lunch the next day, Tuniewicz noted that we were just $189 shy of $9000, and the people at his table produced $235 in cash, bring the total to $9046. At the Sunday banquet, finally, he got the total up to $10,007!

This amount will be just enough to cover the estimated legal expenses for a current lawsuit against the Party. In last year’s primary election, the LPC listed "everybody we could think of" on the ballot. Some obscure (and unnamed) person filed a $39,000,000 suit against the LPC, Mark Hinkle, the national LP, Steve Dasbach, and Harry Browne, for having been excluded from the ballot.

Mary Ruwart, in her banquet address, emphasized the importance of finding personal fulfillment and joy in working for liberty. The Founders were motivated by such a passion, she argued, and in that sense their efforts were not a sacrifice. If our own work feels like a burden and a sacrifice, we need to find another niche, another way to contribute. Most provocative was her contention that you have to be libertarian to be happy. Mistreating people requires that we distance ourselves from them, putting them down to justify the mistreatment ("They should have known better," "They had it coming," etc.). But happiness, for all of us, requires connection to people. Hence libertarianism, in the sense of treating people well, is necessary for happiness.

Gordon LaBedz gave one of the most interesting and challenging talks of the convention: "Organizing for Libertarian Social Change for the 21st Century: Reaching Out to Those Who Think Differently." LaBedz, a medical doctor, is chair of the largest Sierra Club chapter in the country, with 56,000 members, in L.A. He observed, echoing Ruwart, that the Greens have been more successful than the LP because they are passionate in their commitment; he argued that we need a similar passion. He urged us to emulate Irv Rubin and Russell Means in becoming social activists, and to work together with environmental and other groups, in common cause. Historically, he said, environmentalists can tell perfectly well that government is the problem, either through its own pollution or through its support of corporate pollution; yet their solution to every problem has been a new government agency or regulation. In recent years, however, he sees a change, partly just because people can see that the old solutions don’t work, and that politicians always have their hands out to polluting corporations. LaBedz reports a surprising amount of libertarianism in the environmental movement. He himself is writing the environmental plank for the Green Party platform, and he knows another libertarian who is writing the Greens’ tax plank!

In a vivid demonstration of the libertarian attitude of respect and tolerance for differences, LaBedz was greeted throughout his talk with loud–angry, not playful–boos, hisses, Bronx cheers, mumbling, and grumbling. Some of the ugliest vocalizations were in response to issues unrelated to libertarianism–as when LaBedz asserted that the most environmentally helpful thing individuals could do was to stop eating red meat, since 50% of land devoted to raising and feeding cattle. The prospects for libertarians "reaching out to others who think differently" thus appear rather dim.

The primary business of this year’s state convention was bylaws; the platform gets primary consideration in even-numbered years. There were two major changes to the bylaws, remarkably uncontroversial in view of their significance, but several other proposals generated considerable controversy.

1. Program. In addition to the platform, conventions will now adopt a Party Program, consisting of up to five planks of current interest to Californians. Energy and medical marijuana might be typical such planks in the current year. The idea is to give candidates a basis for their campaigns which would not directly invite questions about selling the national parks or carrying concealed atomic weapons. The proposal from the Bylaws Committee in fact specified that the Program planks be "interim, incremental, and practical." Starchild, not wanting to preclude advocacy of radical action if the opportunity arose, argued for deleting all three of these restrictions, but the convention deleted only the incremental criterion.

2. Instant run-off voting. Ed Teyssier, chair of the San Diego party, spearheaded an effort to have the LPC adopt instant run-off voting for its own internal elections. This would be the way, he figured, to educate LP members themselves about the process, to prepare them for advocating its use in public elections. Under IRV voters rank all the acceptable candidates rather than selecting only one. If only one candidate was acceptable, the remaining votes would go for None of the Above, always a candidate in the LP. If no one gets a majority of first-choice votes, the lowest-scoring candidate is eliminated, and people who voted for that candidate have their second choices counted. And so on. The old procedure differed primarily in requiring a separate, time-consuming ballot process each time there was no majority winner. The separate ballots also allowed "horse-trading" to go on in the interstices, and such maneuvers will now have to be done in advance. Normally the new voting system would have gone into effect for the 2002 convention, but the delegates voted to suspend the rules and inaugurate IRV at this year’s elections.

Other actions. The Executive Committee will now appoint an Audit Committee to review financial records and processes. Starchild tried to amend the proposal to stipulate that not more than one of the three members of the Audit Committee could be a member of the ExComm. The opposing view appealed to the difficulty of finding three people with the requisite expertise, and the amendment failed.

The Bylaws Committee had proposed that dues checks for small regions might be sent quarterly, retaining monthly distribution only for amounts over $50. This proposal was defeated.

Currently, of the portion of dues returned to the state by the national LP, 40% is retained by the state and 60% is disbursed to the regional parties. A proposal to make the split with regions 50-50 was excluded from consideration by a suspension of the rules to end debate on the bylaws.

A recent ExComm decision would have allowed the state to distribute the regional share in any way it chose, including giving all the money to a single region. The rationale for this

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SMART (Self Management And Recovery Training) consists of community self-help groups for individuals recovering from addictions. Our meetings are held at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in the Tenderloin. We do not rely on Higher Powers, 12 steps, or spirituality, but rather employ common-sense methods that prove quite effective. This approach prepares the recovering individual to live an independent life free from all addictions, while avoiding lifetime dependence on recovery meetings.

This is a wonderful and rewarding opportunity to help individuals with addictions. Prior experience with addictions or with addicted individuals is not required to assist with SMART. You will be trained by one of our volunteers.

For further information call me at (415) 673-2848, or email me at DrEdelstein@ThreeMinuteTherapy.com.

In a related note, the author of the GGL article referred to above characterized libertarians as weak in the compassion department. Perhaps he was referring to small-l libertarians. In my 20+ years as an activist, the overwhelming preponderance of individuals in the LP that I've gotten to know well have seemed noticeably generous and unselfish.

In the LPSF, most recently, I've been quite impressed with the caring demonstrated by my fellow members. Their selfless, sometimes thankless, expenditure of time and money to an ideal that would benefit all of humanity has been touching and heart-warming, to say the least.

Michael R. Edelstein

procedure, proposed by Aaron Starr, was to put the money where it would do most good, for instance in the most active regions. This redistributionist approach was decried as socialism, and Mark Hinkle, the outgoing chair, did not help the case by describing payments to regions as "welfare." The bylaws were amended to specify that "each region shall receive the portion of the 60% attributable to the people in that region."

Chair. The IRV procedure yielded very interesting results in the election of state chair. Jeffrey Sommer was eliminated on the first ballot with 29 votes (despite Linda Grau’s having compared him to Mahatma Gandhi and Teddy Roosevelt, among many others, in her seconding speech); Brian Lee Cross got 46 votes, and Aaron Starr 53, short of a majority. Seven of Sommer’s supporters listed no one else, so their votes went to NOTA. The rest were evenly split, bringing Cross to 57 and Starr to 63–still not a majority. Since NOTA can never be eliminated from an LP ballot, Cross was crossed off. Starr’s victory occasioned some surprise, since the abundance of Cross buttons had made him look like the front-runner. Starr had clearly alienated many Libertarians with his redistributionist scheme for regional dues, but he said during the nominating process that he had no "emotional investment" in the plan, it was merely an idea to try out; and many of the delegates were also impressed with his achievements as an activist, which threw those of his competitors completely into the shade.

Vice chair. There was no opposition to Rodney Austin for Northern Vice chair, and a suspension of the rules allowed him to be reelected by acclamation. Mark Selzer was also unopposed for Southern Vice chair, since Ted Brown (attending his 22nd consecutive state convention) was not seeking reelection; but several delegates wanted to cast a ballot for NOTA, so Selzer won 62-3.

Executive Committee. Fourteen people were running for the five seats on the Executive Committee. Top vote-getter, with 38 votes, was Ted Brown. Just two votes behind him, however, was Starchild. Elizabeth Brierly, Doug Scribner, and Dan Wiener are the other members, with Al Carlin and Bruce Dovner as alternates

Judicial Committee. Nine people were nominated for the Judicial Committee. Gail Lightfoot came in first with 66 votes; John Ballard was second with 63; Bob Weber was third with 60; Mark Dierlof had 46, and Bill White had 39.

There was time to consider only about half the proposed platform changes, which were taken up in order of decreasing consensus within the Platform Committee. The energy plank was showing its age, and was revised to make it less specifically tied to oil and more relevant to electricity. A plank was added deploring the state’s campaign against tobacco, and another insisting that forcible rape be distingished from psychological pressure or persuasion. Other planks called for the repeal of the Americans With Disabilities Act and hate crime legislation. Not addressed were proposed planks opposing capital punishment, advocating alternative voting systems like PR and IRV, and requiring losers in private lawsuits to pay litigation costs.

With time having been exhausted for platform debate, three resolutions were passed very quickly before adjournment. One endorsed Marty Swinney in a special election for 24th State Senate District. It was an emotional convention for Swinney. He got word on Saturday that one of his son’s friends–Gabriel Flores, 16–had been killed, evidently in gang warfare. Flores, he said, had never done anything worse than smoke pot. Swinney’s own brother had also been murdered when he was young, also evidently a victim of the drug war. A second resolution endorsed Steve Watanabe for City Council of Sacramento, and the third called for an end to the taking of political prisoners, like Steve and Michelle Kubby.

In his last official act as State Chair, Mark Hinkle asked if anyone would like to purchase a pardon.

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The City Attorney, City Treasurer, and a BART Director are up for election this year, as well as two Judgeships. The races provide a great opportunity to enter the political arena in San Francisco at a low cost, keeping in mind that 2002 will be a big year and any publicity generated this year will help launch Libertarian candidates into that active period. Besides, who could handle the Treasurer job better than a frugal, tax-hating Libertarian?

Jerry Cullen

LPSF Campaigns Chair

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Tuesday, March 6: Downtown Libertarian social meeting, 57 Post Street, 6:30-7:30 p.m.

Saturday, March 10: Regular LPSF meeting.

Monday, April 16: Tax Day protest, 5 p.m. Contact Leilani Wright for further info.

Saturday, May 5: Million Marijuana March. Contact Leilani Wright for more info.