There's not exactly a ton of news to report right now. Maybe the City of Eugene decision will be released this week, maybe not. Justice Paul de Muniz, author of the majority opinion in Strunk is out of the country for 4 weeks, as reported last week in one of the newspapers I review. So either the decision is already written, is being written by someone else, or is on the back burner until Justice de Muniz returns. We'll know when we'll know. That's about all any of us can say.
In the meantime, I'm going to introduce a new feature today: Get on the Natch, which allows me to publish (with permission) letters and emails I get from PERS friends and occasionally non-friends. These letters usually speak for themselves and so I won't offer any commentary other than to introduce them. I won't identify the authors of these letters; people can feel free to email me in full knowledge that I won't reveal their writings to anyone. I would NEVER put your words from a private letter to me up here without first getting your permission. Look for the first letter posted in the space below this afternoon.
Our first entry of Get On The Natch:
"Marc,
Disco Inferno - Friday, May 20, 2005, posted by mrfearless47
.........."And so my PERS friends (and those of you who I wouldn't exactly call 'friends'), there you have it. You understand now why I want to take all of that social, economic, and religious diversity of the PERS family and just turn it upside down, turn it inside out, and just shake the living daylights out of the apathy, enmity and animus that exists towards us in the halls of power. To do this, we have to set aside all our differences and unite in a common purpose.".......
I loved your last three "rants." I would like to help with that "common purpose" you mentioned above. I want "PERS people" to be mad as hell and stand up and say "I'm not going to take this any more!" I know I'm tired of having my PERS pocket picked and being called names like greedy and lazy.
I want to start doing something NOW to help change the climate in Salem in 2006! We need to have a planning phase and start it SOON. I've been thinking of how we might best reach a good portion of those 300,000 PERS members and get them motivated. We need their email addresses. The PERS-member readers of your blog and Dana's OPDG forum still know a lot of active PERS member back where they used to work. If several "someones" that they respect (you, Dana, Martha, RRobert) were to ask them to contact their old co-workers, explain to them why they should care about what is happening to their PERS, and then ask them for a staff directory or just a list of employee names and email addresses. From that we would be able to compile an email list that would at least get us started on our way. ... (an identifying line edited out -mrf47).
After we've gotten a good number of email addresses, we have the best writer in our group (you) confer with our other greats -- Dana, Martha, RRobert [Spake not always clear ;-) ] -- to craft the first email to be sent out. In addition to explaining to them why they should care about PERS and why we need to work together to elect new blood in Salem, we ask them to forward this email to all the PERS members they know and they, in turn, should ask these people to forward it to their PERS friends/co-workers, etc, and so on. Also, ask all of them to send you the email addresses of the people they forwarded your message to. We then add those addresses to our ever growing email list.
If enough people commit to working on something like this, we could go from a grass roots level to something really big. Have you had any experience in creating a political PAC? I wonder how difficult it would be. Maybe one of Dana's OPDG members would have experience with creating one. If something like that could be created and we are able to reach a good portion of our 300,000 PERS members, we could then ask them to contribute $5 or $10 to the PAC to help elect PERS friendly candidates to the Governor's Office and the Legislature.
What do you think? Am I being overly optimistic? Too simplistic? What? I just want us to START doing something to get the ball rolling in the right direction. I'd be willing to make a political time commitment....last year I worked on Kerry's campaign -- I know, I know, but he was better than Dubya Dufus -- as long as he could keep his foot out of his mouth and quit handing gems to Karl Rove to bash him over the head with.
Tell me what you think.....what can we start doing to help our cause? And keep ranting on your blog -- I really look forward to them!
A fired up PERS member,"
In the meantime, I'm going to introduce a new feature today: Get on the Natch, which allows me to publish (with permission) letters and emails I get from PERS friends and occasionally non-friends. These letters usually speak for themselves and so I won't offer any commentary other than to introduce them. I won't identify the authors of these letters; people can feel free to email me in full knowledge that I won't reveal their writings to anyone. I would NEVER put your words from a private letter to me up here without first getting your permission. Look for the first letter posted in the space below this afternoon.
Our first entry of Get On The Natch:
"Marc,
Disco Inferno - Friday, May 20, 2005, posted by mrfearless47
.........."And so my PERS friends (and those of you who I wouldn't exactly call 'friends'), there you have it. You understand now why I want to take all of that social, economic, and religious diversity of the PERS family and just turn it upside down, turn it inside out, and just shake the living daylights out of the apathy, enmity and animus that exists towards us in the halls of power. To do this, we have to set aside all our differences and unite in a common purpose.".......
I loved your last three "rants." I would like to help with that "common purpose" you mentioned above. I want "PERS people" to be mad as hell and stand up and say "I'm not going to take this any more!" I know I'm tired of having my PERS pocket picked and being called names like greedy and lazy.
I want to start doing something NOW to help change the climate in Salem in 2006! We need to have a planning phase and start it SOON. I've been thinking of how we might best reach a good portion of those 300,000 PERS members and get them motivated. We need their email addresses. The PERS-member readers of your blog and Dana's OPDG forum still know a lot of active PERS member back where they used to work. If several "someones" that they respect (you, Dana, Martha, RRobert) were to ask them to contact their old co-workers, explain to them why they should care about what is happening to their PERS, and then ask them for a staff directory or just a list of employee names and email addresses. From that we would be able to compile an email list that would at least get us started on our way. ... (an identifying line edited out -mrf47).
After we've gotten a good number of email addresses, we have the best writer in our group (you) confer with our other greats -- Dana, Martha, RRobert [Spake not always clear ;-) ] -- to craft the first email to be sent out. In addition to explaining to them why they should care about PERS and why we need to work together to elect new blood in Salem, we ask them to forward this email to all the PERS members they know and they, in turn, should ask these people to forward it to their PERS friends/co-workers, etc, and so on. Also, ask all of them to send you the email addresses of the people they forwarded your message to. We then add those addresses to our ever growing email list.
If enough people commit to working on something like this, we could go from a grass roots level to something really big. Have you had any experience in creating a political PAC? I wonder how difficult it would be. Maybe one of Dana's OPDG members would have experience with creating one. If something like that could be created and we are able to reach a good portion of our 300,000 PERS members, we could then ask them to contribute $5 or $10 to the PAC to help elect PERS friendly candidates to the Governor's Office and the Legislature.
What do you think? Am I being overly optimistic? Too simplistic? What? I just want us to START doing something to get the ball rolling in the right direction. I'd be willing to make a political time commitment....last year I worked on Kerry's campaign -- I know, I know, but he was better than Dubya Dufus -- as long as he could keep his foot out of his mouth and quit handing gems to Karl Rove to bash him over the head with.
Tell me what you think.....what can we start doing to help our cause? And keep ranting on your blog -- I really look forward to them!
A fired up PERS member,"
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