Sigh. I figured I'd give them a few days to straighten it out before officially bitching about it here. It's been a week now.
The Harris County Green Party's website is currently offline.
There's placeholder/squatter content on both hcgp.org and harriscountygreenparty.org. The former is listed as for sale; the latter, pending renewal through Network Solutions.
The Harris County Green Party's website is currently offline.
There's placeholder/squatter content on both hcgp.org and harriscountygreenparty.org. The former is listed as for sale; the latter, pending renewal through Network Solutions.
Maybe I was confused, but I thought that Network Solutions was no longer hosting those domains after the switch from the old Dreamweaver 3 site to the NationBuilder platform. Art Browning, HCGP's former multimedia wizard, for quite a while paid for domain renewals out of his own pocket. Art has moved to Arkansas and passed the responsibility on HCGP's the current leadership.
For a time, before my bitter cessation of activities with HCGP in February 2018, I took over custodianship of the domains, However, NS did not send me anything like a renewal notification. And as much as I would like to rescue the domains myself, I am currently collecting unemployment compensation and don't have the necessary funds handy.
I don't know who is in charge of such logistical duties now—only that treasurer Alfred Molison contacted co-chair Bernadine Williams to inquire about spending some Green Party funds to re-establish HCGP's web presence. I haven't heard back from Alfred on whether he has heard back from Bernadine.
Please don't infer that the purpose of this post is to cast blame on any individual, or that this is a disaster from which HCGP cannot recover. Although it's bad form for a blogger to say "I don't know" as in the preceding paragraph, I readily admit that I don't know enough about the situation to say who's at fault. Also, I urge anyone reading this not to jump to the conclusion that any individual or group has done this deliberately to sabotage the party.
The conclusion at which I've arrived is more like this:
You know how people commonly misuse the acronym SNAFU to refer to unexpected or uncharacteristic things-going-wrong? This is a reminder that the first two letters in SNAFU stand for "Situation Normal." This has been HCGP's standard mode of operation for quite a few years. My county's Greens have long been a collection of very smart, very dedicated people who too often are sadly clueless about running a political organization. There's plenty of that cluelessness at the state level too.
And before anyone asks, "Well, could you do any better?" I am not exempt from the criticism leveled above. I was not an effective co-chair, partly or mostly because I could not convince other decision-makers and stakeholders within that intensely democratic organization to refine our operations in ways I envisioned being more effective. During the last ten years in particular, we were
Through the last 15 months, I have never harbored any wish or hope that HCGP under Bernadine and company would collapse. My hope was that, after the Old Guard types (myself included) had taken enough abuse and fled, HCGP would thrive. I foresaw a younger, more ethnically and otherwise diverse HCGP as potentially beneficial to Greendom in Greater Houston.
From what I've heard from insider reports...not so much with the whole thriving thing.
So my current hope is that, after HB 2504 becomes law and ballot access is guaranteed for a while, the state and county organizations can get their shit together, retool, and rebrand. With apologies to Emily Dickinson, hope is the thing with feathers that remains after faith is gone.
For a time, before my bitter cessation of activities with HCGP in February 2018, I took over custodianship of the domains, However, NS did not send me anything like a renewal notification. And as much as I would like to rescue the domains myself, I am currently collecting unemployment compensation and don't have the necessary funds handy.
I don't know who is in charge of such logistical duties now—only that treasurer Alfred Molison contacted co-chair Bernadine Williams to inquire about spending some Green Party funds to re-establish HCGP's web presence. I haven't heard back from Alfred on whether he has heard back from Bernadine.
Please don't infer that the purpose of this post is to cast blame on any individual, or that this is a disaster from which HCGP cannot recover. Although it's bad form for a blogger to say "I don't know" as in the preceding paragraph, I readily admit that I don't know enough about the situation to say who's at fault. Also, I urge anyone reading this not to jump to the conclusion that any individual or group has done this deliberately to sabotage the party.
The conclusion at which I've arrived is more like this:
You know how people commonly misuse the acronym SNAFU to refer to unexpected or uncharacteristic things-going-wrong? This is a reminder that the first two letters in SNAFU stand for "Situation Normal." This has been HCGP's standard mode of operation for quite a few years. My county's Greens have long been a collection of very smart, very dedicated people who too often are sadly clueless about running a political organization. There's plenty of that cluelessness at the state level too.
And before anyone asks, "Well, could you do any better?" I am not exempt from the criticism leveled above. I was not an effective co-chair, partly or mostly because I could not convince other decision-makers and stakeholders within that intensely democratic organization to refine our operations in ways I envisioned being more effective. During the last ten years in particular, we were
- too often reinventing multiple wheels;
- too often operating as if we did not already have standard procedures in place;
- too seldom learning from other GP groups about how they Got Things Done.
Through the last 15 months, I have never harbored any wish or hope that HCGP under Bernadine and company would collapse. My hope was that, after the Old Guard types (myself included) had taken enough abuse and fled, HCGP would thrive. I foresaw a younger, more ethnically and otherwise diverse HCGP as potentially beneficial to Greendom in Greater Houston.
From what I've heard from insider reports...not so much with the whole thriving thing.
So my current hope is that, after HB 2504 becomes law and ballot access is guaranteed for a while, the state and county organizations can get their shit together, retool, and rebrand. With apologies to Emily Dickinson, hope is the thing with feathers that remains after faith is gone.
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