Every-other year, the Bus Project holds an Engage Oregon Conference. (The Bus Project is the parent organization of Onward Oregon.) This year it was called Rebooting Democracy and was held January 6-8, 2006, at Resort at the Mountain in Welches, Oregon. Here’s a report from Onward Oregon volunteer Howard Cutler:

I was very pleased with the Rebooting Democracy conference. I found it full of heady ideas, articulate people, and opportunities to exchange positions with elected officials and strategists in a friendly setting.

First some personal background that may influence my views. Though I’ve spent lots of time reading leftist journals and doing community development work in low-income communities, my knowledge is limited on how to forge a successful electoral campaign or craft an effective progressive agenda. I left the conference with my head buzzing and full of strands of knowledge. Part of my reason for this post is to help my brain sort out the stimulating, and sometime seemingly contradictory, ideas that I heard.

In addition to a service project, the conference consisted of four components: plenary speakers, small group lunches with State leaders, workshops on both policy issues and political strategy, and a plenary caucus to determine which one of 11 proposed ballot initiatives to support.

The speakers were uniformly absorbing and inspiring. At most conferences my mind wanders a great deal, not here. Some snippets:

• Both former US Rep. Les AuCoin and David Sirota (writer and campaign staffer for the populist Dem governor in red Montana) urged progressives to stop compromising principles, and to run against big money and robber baron capitalists.
• Former Gore + Kerry speechwriter Andrei Cherny spoke on not going backwards and opposing globalization, but using it to get millions of the world’s poor out of poverty.
• John Kitzhaber talked about the toxic partisanship that paralyzes Salem, and on the need to radically alter public systems created 40+ years ago (education+ environment as well as health) to address current realities.
• State Rep. Ben Westlund and Sen. Rick Metsger took different stances on how much we should rely on the initiative vs. legislative process.
• Sec. of State Bill Bradbury focused on protecting everyone’s right to vote easily, which is under attack.
• Bus founder Jefferson Smith explained the State’s dire need for a rebirth of civic engagement in order to better represent the public interest. (I had to leave before Jim Hightower’s closing remarks.)

For Friday’s leadership lunch, I and 7 other attendees joined a lobbyist and elected official from Clackamas County for an informative informal Q and A session. In terms of what’s most important to the majority of voters I heard them say it’s 1) being well-liked, 2) being perceived as effective, and then 3) issues. I was dispirited to hear where “issues” fell in the list, and even more disappointed to hear that economic justice was not even an issue that many voters cared about.

The 90 minute workshops were generally informative though a few fell flat. Some of the nuggets that I came away with include:

• Steve Novick: The % of gross state product that OR businesses pay has been reduced by half, and is much less than in Wash State, but the drop is not due to greedy corporate lobbying but rather adopted public policy that needs to be updated.
• Lynn Lundquist: Oregon’s taxation system is antiquated and in need of a radical make-over.
• Ron Buel: Oregon progressives have been ill-served by current State Senate leadership (too involved in retaining power), last 4 governors (no coherent vision/leadership), and major stakeholders (trial lawyers and unions who haven’t walked their progressive talk). Re. elections, discover where the middle ground is and target your campaign to what they think is important in their lives. Other speakers in different sessions gave similar advice on winning elections.
• Cathy Shaw: You can overcome a significant registration handicap via undertaking a historic analysis of precinct voting patterns and strategically targeting your campaign. Also, McCall Republicans are willing to vote on behalf of integrity/open government, healthcare, and alternative energy.

The initiative component was given a big chunk of time but was the least compelling for me. More than 6 hours were allotted to which one of the 11 ballot measures the Bus Project should support, and the conference attendees were each given 10 votes and blackballs in order to come to that determination. My issue is how do you compare healthcare against energy independence or schools or the corporate kicker as if they were mutually exclusive? The rules were ingenious and the gaming was fun, but the amount of time spent on it didn’t work for me.

Finally, I need to note how impressed I was with the skills and poise of the Bus Project’s volunteers and staff.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 13th, 2006 at 3:33 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.