Progressive Democrats of America (PDA)

OR 02

Following is the initial response to Wade Hudson's 3/21/08 email:

I will be happy to respond to your questionnaire, although I don't think my answers would be very meaningful at this embryonic stage of the development of our organization in Oregon. There are also some peculiarities to Oregon's situation due to geography and gerrymandering, and very strict state political campaign finance laws, which have required us to formulate unique strategies. The CD Point people are key to this approach, as we on the state coordination team provide direction to the truly autonomous local chapters that are being formed by PDA members throughout our state.

So far, we have only three CD point persons recruited and actively working, of five Congressional Districts in Oregon. I expect the fourth to emerge soon from the Lane County chapter (a progressive stronghold, with Eugene, home of the University of Oregon, being its anchor). The Lane chapter has not yet even held its first meeting, although its prospects for hitting the ground running are very high, as it has as its principal organizer a very popular, thoroughly progressive sitting Democratic officeholder, himself unchallenged this election cycle.

A fifth individual is considering taking on CD Point duties for our District 3, but has not yet committed.

Our local chapters are at the earliest stage of their development. Portland Metro has only had two monthly meetings, and its activities to date have centered on the Healthcare Not Warfare petition drive. (That, in fact, is the focus of all of our chapters, as they organize themselves and prepare to mobilize for the general election.) Portland Metro's territory includes portions of three of our five CD's, complicating things immensely. The Mid-Valley chapter, encompassing Linn and Benton Counties and the Corvallis and Albany metro areas, has the dividing line between two CD's running through it -- which line actually bisects the City of Corvallis so that across-the-street neighbors may actually have two separate congressmen. Oregon's Second District is precisely the opposite situation. It is geographically huge, covering nearly two-thirds of the state's area, including the Bend, Pendleton, Medford and Ashland metro areas pretty much in their totality.

So, the current plan is for the local chapters to take the lead on developing political infrastructure and holding issue-oriented events within distinct metro areas or identifiable regions (e.g. the Columbia River Gorge region), and, of course, tending to local political campaigns and issues. The CD Point persons will work to develop new chapters within their CD's as expeditiously as possible, assisting them through the formation and preparation for mobilization processes, and coordinate their participation in district-wide campaigns. Our existing CD Points are already in contact with the offices of the Representatives to Congress from their respective districts (and in my case, the Democratic candidates seeking to unseat the Republican incumbent), and that role of maintaining a communication channel open between the membership and the congressional offices will be a larger part of the job after the chapters are more firmly established and the current election cycle completed.

The CD Points will, by virtue of their roles, be on our "state coordination team," which acts essentially as a statewide steering committee. The other members of the coordinating team are: Political Coordinator, Communications Coordinator, and Events and Outside Group Liaison Coordinator (God, I wish we could come up with a better name for that one -- essentially the "Political" position is our policy & framing wonk and "inside the party" guy, and the "Liaison" position relates more to outside groups and networking.

We are keeping close touch with each other, and coordinating our activities very closely. This is also essential to our fulfilling our commitment to consensus group process. Right now, we are relying on conference calls and a Google group for that purpose, but we have our own webserver, and are considering implementing a listserv and perhaps even video conferencing through it. (The cost of long distance conference calling, as you know, can become burdensome even for the more well heeled among us, and we do not want it to become a barrier to low income people taking on leadership roles.)

I would be happy to answer any questions you might have, and discuss any of this at greater length if you wish -- with the caveat that I am not yet in a position to report on successes as we are simply too young an organization at the state level. The fact that our membership has grown by 500 in the last two weeks, and that the response to our efforts at chapter development (and signature collection for Healthcare Not Warfare), are exceeding expectations gives us some indication we are on the right track (after some colossal glitches and a near fatal gaffe involving a premature and poorly handled endorsement process), but quantifiable results are still a bit down the pike.

In Peace and Solidarity,

--Fr. John-Mark Gilhousen