If you’re not joining us at this weekend’s Democratic State Convention, I’d like to invite you to participate by viewing our live webcast of our general sessions, which begins at 9 AM on Saturday, March 29th. We will also have video available of other events and workshops. The convention agenda and the web stream is available at our website.
Highlights will include speeches by former President Bill Clinton, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and a dinner presentation from Phil Donahue. We also look forward to hearing from our constitutional officers and state officials throughout the weekend.
We’ve worked hard to create an exciting convention weekend – we hope you’ll join us online as we start making our preparations to win back the White House in 2008!
Sincerely,
Sen. Art Torres (Ret.)
Chairman
Hooray for the Democratic State Convention. Sincerely.
On the one hand, this is rather cool. On the other, it really annoys me. This is a one-off deal, this convention. It’s somewhat, but not entirely, difficult to set up and run. But that’s not what annoys me. If the Democrats can manage to pull this off for a weekend of hustle and bustle, it begs the question: Why can’t the City of Santa Ana do the same for its regular Council meetings?
Borrowing from a comment I made on another blog some months ago, Santa Ana has only lame excuses for not doing this, either by webcast or cablecast.
In November of 1984 — more than two decades ago — I served on the Executive Board of the West Hollywood Incorporation Committee. We took an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County and created a city. Immediately after cityhood, the brand new city council, amateurs all, felt it important to cable cast their meetings — all of them.
At the time, there was no city hall, not even rented space. The interim city manager was operating from the trunk of his car. One needed to know someone personally in order to get ahold of anyone. Cell phones? In 1984? Internet? Email? And remember, they were all amateurs, an attorney, a former executive director of a non-profit, a retired school teacher, but they knew what was good for the 38,000 people of their new city.
So with the best 1984 technology they could muster and with limited lead time, they began airing every city council meeting. Now here we are in 2008; Santa Ana is nearly 10 times larger than West Hollywood. There’s a permanent city manager, established council chambers, better technology, and the city council says that for whatever chickenshit reason they can’t air their meetings. Absolutely, inexcusably, shamefully, embarrassingly pitiful.
Maybe Charlotte and I can watch from home 🙂 Gary is on his way to Fresno to stay with a childhood friend and then drive up to San Jose in the morning. So it’s just me and my girls.
Tomorrow, we’re going to a picnic! If you have nothing to do Bill you are welcome to join us 😛