Sometime in late 2010 or early 2011 we’ll begin circulating petitions!  Until then we’ll be focusing on crafting the proposed amendments (input welcome).

In the meantime, sign up on the bottom right, and think of three NYC voters you can get a signature from, each solid enough to go on to collect three of their own the following week.

If term limit extensions stands, it makes a mayoral charter revision likely in 2010, whether Bloomberg stays or gets booted. This delays our plans, since that would knock us off the ballot.

The state law that lets the mayor knock off other ballot amendments with his own (section 36 (5) (e) of the Municipal Home Rule Law) has got to be changed!  Nonetheless, it’s hard to imagine a way in which New Yorkers could have been better prepped to join this effort than the way term limits went down.

Since the last update, we’ve gone official, forming the Committee for the Democratic Rights of New Yorkers, a ballot issue political committee at the local and state levels and a 527 for federal tax purposes. This means we can raise and spend money in elections, don’t have to pay taxes on the donations we receive, and that it’s all publicly transparent via regular financial reports to the Board of Elections.

We’d been waiting on someone to step up and act as our official treasurer for filing purposes, and David Ruan has done just that with great aplomb. Our first filing, which accounted for all of the money and in-kind donations we’ve gotten, not including volunteer hours, came to just under two grand, which, frankly, blew my mind. Now a big chunk of that was expenses yours truly covered, like web hosting through 2011, but the overwhelming majority came from other sources. Who knew? Hopefully this is a good omen for how things will go when we actually ask people for stuff. For now, visitors to the website inclined to do so can donate by sending a check or via Paypal, which was a little saga in itself to set up (somehow Paypal really didn’t trust us).

We’ve also been working with our first legal interns, two students from New York Law School. That’s been a learning experience for all parties, and we’ll see how productive it turns out to be in the coming months.

Probably the biggest thing on the agenda for September’s strategy meeting, which an invite will go out for (sign-up bottom right) when we have a date, will be how best to make our amendment drafting process, which is now aiming for a November 2009 completion, as inclusive as possible. This is a question on many levels: of outreach on a limited budget, of legitimacy, etc. Among our many options, the 2009 City Council elections, with their term limits induced free-for-all aspect, offer interesting opportunities for us. All ideas and insights welcome, at the meeting or however else is convenient, and of course particularly if accompanied by a willingness to act.

Thanks to our new treasurer David stepping up, we will be opening our account as a political committee on this day. Join us for lunch if you like.

After long consideration and several discussions with the more actively involved, it looks like it would be best if we called off this year’s attempt to get on the ballot. I’d like to especially thank the can doers, who may feel it’s too early to make such a decision, as well as everybody else who has given some time to our effort thus far. You guys all rock!

Here are the reasons I see to wait:

• Currently, though we have some dedicated and willing people, we do not have sufficient petitioners to gather the needed signatures before June 3rd.
• If we submitted after June 3rd, we would be knocked off next year’s ballot by Bloomberg’s anticipated 2009 charter revisions. While this could all ultimately place us on the ballot in 2010, if getting on the ballot in 2010 is our goal, it would be far easier to act accordingly.
• If through concentrated effort by relatively few people we did manage to gather the signatures in time this year, but were kept off the ballot by a judge on other grounds, we would have failed to start a public conversation, which we have a better chance of doing aiming for 2010.
• It looks like we may have more time than we thought to gather petitions, possibly up to eight months, more than three times as much time as previously thought and left to us this year. Much better!
• By waiting we give ourselves more time to improve the text of the proposed amendments, get more input, find more allies and cohorts, and further master the relevant law.
• This year the media landscape is dominated by the presidential race, which has largely captured people’s political attention and aspirations. National media and people’s hopes will be less interested in the gubernatorial race of 2010, and it’s possible that there will have been some maturation among voters on how much change to hope for from purely representative government.
• The digital divide will hopefully continue to narrow (albeit more slowly than it might, had we succeeded this year).  Every passing year increases people’s familiarity with current technology and expectation of its application.
• The documentary on direct democracy that I (and a few others) have been working on will (finally!) be complete and can be employed in our education and outreach efforts.
• We can employ our media and give it time to be effective.
• Our organizational capacity is only getting stronger. Comparing where we are this year with where we were last year is cause for real optimism, as is the positive reception we’ve gotten from individuals (if not from organizations claiming a mission of popular empowerment). We might even have some money by 2010! (We are currently receiving applications for treasurer and intend to file as a 527 political committee, allowing us to take donations without paying taxes on them.)
• 2017, by which time we will want to have built a statewide lowercase democratic consciousness to vote yes on calling a constitutional convention, isn’t quite so far from 2010.
• I will *hopefully* not have a crippling injury.
• In preparing for this year, we have positioned ourselves well for more.

Speak up if you think this a miscalculation. Here are some downsides I see, other than a short term hit to our credibility among some less involved observers:

• Pretty much all remaining surprise is lost. Who knows, maybe Bloomberg would go for this, or co-opting it, but we’ll have to stay on top of the ‘09 charter revisions and relevant state legislation.
• Potential synergy with Mike Gravel’s attempt to promote direct democracy through his presidential campaign is largely lost. However, his national initiative effort will surely continue and both it and the broader idea’s public life will benefit from an NYC effort in ‘10.
• Two more years without the democratic rights we’re after is probably not a good thing for the city. Some bad things might have been prevented, some good perhaps accomplished.

We have gathered our first signatures and are learning quite a few things. The table method is clearly more efficient than clipboards, though we are already discovering some ways in which to customize it for NYC today.

We are, however, short on signature gatherers, and as our accelerated petitioning schedule kept us from completing the second portion of our amendments, pushing that signature drive back to 2010 in any case (it looks like the mayor will be knocking everything else off the ballot next year), it is looking likely that we will wait a couple more years before New Yorkers get the right of initiative, which is a pity, given the urgency of many of the issues we face, and that some of us, and some of our communities will be gone by then.

Decision on whether to scrap this year’s petitioning coming soon; input welcome.

Recent good news:
Ecoprint is giving us free printing.
Promising signs that the Pedicab Workers Association might provide delivery support for the petitioning.
We fielded our first google search: “lowercase d new york”. I swear it wasn’t me.
The number of visits the site receives has increased every day.
Our first four days in the open have been catastrophe free!
Just a touch of tweaking on the web content, (thanks to everyone who gave critical feedback - it is always welcome) and the real outreach can begin…