You, the DFLEC, and the Caucus-Convention Opportunity
Hi folks!
We have an opportunity to change the world in three or four easy steps. I’m talking about our role as a community caucus* in the upcoming Caucus-Convention season.
But before we get to resolutions, please take heed of this urgent and important announcement:
Calling all 2024 DFL candidates for state and federal offices
The DFL Environmental Caucus is ready to screen candidates for potential caucus endorsement. Please seek our endorsement if you share our vision of a state where everyone has clean air, clean water, healthy food, a living wage, access to clean, reliable energy, and vibrant natural areas, and are committed to working to make this a reality.
DFL Environmental Caucus endorsed candidates will be offered campaign, financial, social media, and volunteer support depending on the level of endorsement with the highest level of support given to Environmental Challengers who have the potential to flip or hold a district. Please fill out this form and we will send you our written questionnaire. Our first round of interviews are underway, so we urge candidates who are environmental stewards to request our endorsement, today!
Thank you for running for office and working to protect what we love!
Veda Kanitz and Steven Frich, Endorsement Committee Cochairs.
Megan Bond, Chair
And now: The Resolutions
The DFLEC has produced 20 amazing resolutions. You can review them all HERE, where you will also find handy PDF files to download and bring to your caucus.
A good strategy is to figure out which resolutions you want to bring to caucus and make a modest number of copies, to pass out when you arrive at your precinct caucus site on the evening of February 27th. Get people looking at them, and hopefully liking them, even before you present the resolution formally as part of the meeting. That will save time, and increase happiness in your meeting, which does the environmental movement good.
The fact that the DFLEC has 20 resolutions presents a problem. They are all important and we’d love to see all of them on the State Convention’s ballot. But in order for that to happen, each one has to show up in several precincts across multiple Congressional Districts.
This problem is compounded by the fact that most people will not feel comfortable bringing all 20 to a Precinct Caucus Meeting, and even if one does this, it may not be possible to get through all of them, to have them approved.
For this reason we have devised a strategy that you can help us with!
Naturally, you will have a strong preference for a small subset of our resolutions, and we assume that across our one thousand plus membership, any one resolution may well be on or near the top of the list for somebody. But, to ensure that all 20 get introduced at several meetings, we've asked you as a member to bring a specific resolution to caucus, in addition to any other resolutions you prefer.
We recently sent an email to each member with a specific resolution attached to that email. We divided the membership into 20 groups of members from across the state, and sent each group a different ONE of our 20 resolutions. If you got that email, that is the resolution we would like YOU to bring along with the other resolutions that you like, to introduce at your Precinct Caucus. Note that due to vagaries and errors in our email list, some people may not have received this email. If you didn’t, don’t worry, lots of other people did, and they can carry this project forward.
Next: Be an environmental champion at your organizing unit convention!
Please consider becoming a delegate to advance to the next level in the game of “Be a DFLER.” If you go to your organizing unit’s convention, you can wear a DFLEC pin, a home-made sign for the walking sub-caucus with an environmental message on it, ask environmental policy questions of those seeking endorsement, and speak in favor of the environmental resolutions that appear on that organizing unit’s ballot.
And finally: Go to State and CD!
And if your schedule allows and you are really revved up about the enviornment, you can run to be a delegate to the State Convention and your Congressional District Convention. There, you can carry on the environmental lobbying, attend the DFLEC party (at the State Convention, assuming we have one, and we probably will), etc.
Resolutions are not passed to the CD Convention, but they will be voted on at the State Convention. If you are going to the State Convention, please contact someone in the DFLEC leadership to see if there are specific volunteer opportunities for you there. We may have a table, or we may need help with an event, and we will certainly need you to stand by to support our resolutions.
Can you be an election judge?
This is a note from DFL Headquarters that we thought we’d pass on:
We will be delighted to take any names of election judge volunteers before or after Caucus Night… Please email [your] first & last name and … address to partyaffairs@dfl.org and let us know that you are an election judge volunteer. [L]earn more about becoming an election judge at the Secretary of State’s website. Please help us spread the word and make sure every precinct in Minnesota has plenty of DFL election judges in 2024!
* Why do we use the word “caucus” for so many things? To meet, as a verb. As a noun, we have community caucuses, a party caucus (some call it a “conference”) with in a legislative body, and a party function that happens instead of a primary.