I'm the chair of Filly Neighborhood Networks and have been for a long time.
And part of what we're trying to do is organize the city by neighborhoods, kind of modeled
on the political party system of words and divisions.
And what we would like is to get people who are organizers interested in educating their
neighbors as to the political process, especially the Philadelphia political process, which a
lot of people don't understand, and how to be advocates for change both by working on
issues and by working through the political process and getting involved in how to get
your elected officials to take notice of the issues that the community really feels are
important.
So the last election for committee people was in 2010, and it happens every four years.
So in 2006, we and other progressive organizations encouraged people, progressive people to run
for office, and we think that we got about 50 people elected.
When you say office, a committee person?
For committee person.
Because each ward, our city is divided into wards, and each ward is divided into divisions.
It varies by the geography, but approximately 30 divisions per ward, and each of those has
two elected Democratic and two elected Republican committee people.
Theoretically those people work through the party and help the party comes up with decisions
about who to support for office and that sort of thing, and also provide services to the
community.
And that determines who's on the ballot?
And that determines who's on the ballot.
And so we were pleased that we got about 50 people elected.
We didn't try to organize those people in any particular organized way.
So 2010 came, and we realized even more why it was important to have progressive people
be committee people and be actually working through the party, not just outside the party.
And so lots of people ran, and actually in my particular neighborhood, I realized back
early on about 2008 or so that no one was doing the job.
There was no elected committee person.
And so I convinced a friend in the neighborhood to do it with me.
And we went to the word leaders and asked, could we be appointed to be committee people
in our neighborhood?
And we got no response at all.
Which we took to mean that they knew who we were and that they didn't want us there.
And we started playing the role in any way and started talking to neighbors and lots
of people always come to me to get advice about who to vote for and that sort of thing.
When it came to 2010, we ran.
And being unopposed, we easily won.
And then we go to our first award meeting, which we didn't find out about until a day
or two before the actual award meeting.
And what happens at that first award meeting is the officers of the award are elected.
Well, nobody, we went to this meeting and no one educated us about the process or what
happens.
It turns out that in our award, there was opposition to the sitting word leader.
And so somebody wanted to run against him, which was causing a lot of dissension.
And so at the meeting, some of us asked if they could each make a statement about what
they're about.
And the word leader said, no, that we should already know.
And didn't let us find out anything more.
And then there was a big issue.
The person who was running against the incumbent had been told by numbers of the committee
people that if there were an open vote where everybody does a little show of hands, that
they would not be able to vote for her because they'd be afraid of, if she didn't win, of
retaliation.
And so they really wanted a closed vote.
Well, it seems fair to have a closed vote.
You shouldn't have to worry about retaliation anyway.
So there was a vote on whether it should be open or closed.
But the way that it was run, not everybody knew exactly what they were voting for.
And it was sort of shoved through, and guess what won, the open show of hands.
And so because it was clear that numbers of people in the room didn't know which way
they were voting, we asked to redo the vote.
And he went crazy and said, absolutely not and stuff.
And some, one of the committee people started sort of speaking loudly about why it was important
to redo it.
And people didn't know what they were voting for, and this wasn't democracy.
So the word leader went to the, appointed somebody to be a sergeant at arms and basically
escorted, forced the guy who's an elected official, elected committee person out of
the room, at which point total pandemonium broke out.
People were screaming, yelling, shouting, it was just nuts.
And so finally, the word leader felt obliged to let the guy back in.
And so he came back in.
And just, it's sort of, this is my introduction to the Democratic Party.
And it kind of went on through my time as a committee person, that's what I saw.
That there was very little democratic process, that there were things like, there was a treasurer's
report given, and it was given orally.
So we asked for copies of it, so we could really think it through.
And we were told the treasurer doesn't want it given out.
What do you mean the treasurer doesn't want it given out?
These are, you know, these are our funds that we're responsible for, and we should be able
to see this.
And so ultimately we were given one, and I don't know, I was only a committee person
until the end of January because just by coincidence I moved out of the area the next January.
And so, you know, I only saw so much, but what I saw was so much.
And so anytime there was an effort at anything democratic, it just didn't happen.
There was, at one point people said, somebody said, why don't we make a list of the committee
person, people who are in our ward, with the phone numbers and email addresses, so we can
contact each other and work together.
And people said, absolutely not, and there were people who had been long-term committee
people who said, I don't let anybody contact you, you don't let anyone contact you, you
were elected so that you can be contacted by your constituents.
What are you talking about?
And that's kind of how it is because it's really hard to get access to information about
who your committee people are and how to contact them.
And that's just crazy.
It's totally against what it's supposed to be about.
