Re: [sudo-discuss] Agenda Item for next week's meeting: ONL is not a member collective.

On Sun, Sep 7, 2014 at 9:24 PM, Charley Sheets <rcsheets(a)acm.org> wrote: They had 3 mayoral candidates in the room (parker, tuman, siegel), but chose to interview one candidate at a time. Each candidate got an uninterrupted stump speech, pandering questions from the hosts, then 2 ad-hoc audience questions, and that was it. One even screened a commercial. I was disappointed and insulted because I'd heard it was going to be a "debate." Maybe it got distorted in the rumor-mill. But either way, this candidate-showcasing style of engagement is something people have fought against for ages. It's passive, undemocratic, and pointless. If we're going to engage with electoral politics we should know this history. Here's the League of Women Voters explaining why they stopped hosting presidential "debates" in 1988: http://www.lwv.org/press-releases/league-refuses-help-perpetrate-fraud Some more history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_debates#D… I think at minimum, a debate needs to: * force candidates to interact with each other * invite all candidates at the same time * prioritize audience participation and engagement We missed an opportunity - we had them on our turf and did nothing new with them - but it's not too late. On October 11 they're hosting 3 more (schaaf, kaplan, quan). Maybe ONL will be open to input on how they conduct next month's event! Any Sudoers who want to ask tough questions on the record of present and future mayors on our turf, now's your chance to get involved. :)