MAY DAY DEMOCRATS CONVENTION

                                                MAY DAY DEMS CONVENTION

You could say I’ve been shirking my duties of participation in this democracy since arrival on this Island and compared to the standards of my former activist life that would be accurate.  But I do read the paper daily, have submitted four letters to the editor, of which two were printed, and we attended our Democratic caucus.  Myrna and I were one of two couples from our precinct at caucus and I accepted the duty to attend County Convention.

At the lightly attended convention I found that some electeds and our candidate for governor would not be attending due to the new owner of the hotel, a democrat, refused to recognize the union agreement of the failed past owner.  Since we are not in the congressional district that was vacant from Neil Abercrombie’s resignation we did not have any speakers from the campaign for that seat then underway.  The main business was consideration of resolutions.  The resolutions had been worked on at a “pre-convention” open to all delegates instead of just a “platform committee” as would have been done in Washington State and all 19 had survived a vote and were recommended for approval.  The whole package was offered for an up or down vote by the chair and just as in Washington that move was rejected and the chair then allowed those individual resolutions that anyone wanted to amend to be separated. 

While 8 resolutions were considered separately only three of them were hotly contested.  The one with the clearest division of the votes called for support of the Civil Unions bill which passed the legislature on the last day of its session.  This legislature has only 3 Republicans but the civil union bill passed by only one vote and although the Republican governor will probably veto it we had a very fierce discussion and I thought the vote might be close but in the end only about 12% voted against this resolution which none had opposed at the “pre-convention”.

Another pulled resolution would have required adherence to the platform and resolutions by those running for office.  Similar resolutions are often introduced in Washington and there they are diluted as they pass up the line or rejected outright because we all know delegates to conventions tend to be more radical than the average voter and it seems, under the theory that the candidate should know his own district best, counterproductive to winning elections.  In this overwhelmingly Democratic district that thinking can be challenged by the need to show leadership but the resolution was diluted before being passed.

The final hot debate was on a resolution to liberalize the terms of possession for medical marijuana.  As written and approved 18 to 4 by the preconvention, it would have aroused the pro drug war passions of some because it proposed increasing to 24 the number of plants allowed for medical use and provided for obtaining seeds.  The proposed amendment was to extend these terms to all adults.  This county already has an initiative passed ordinance that makes possession of less than 24 plants the police department’s lowest enforcement priority.  After a major debate the amended resolution passed 34 to 22!

In the meantime, yesterday I finished the 12’ tilapia pond so now I want rain to fill it.  My hope is to rarely use tap water in the fish pond and, in fact, I couldn’t use much because it is too chlorinated.  Naturally we now have an unnaturally dry weather forecast.

We’ve been snorkeling again and we are getting better at using the under water video camera.  The next thing that would do the most to improve our picture quality would be an underwater strobe to bring out the reds.   Our latest trip was to Two Step (Honounou) where there were several smallish green turtles.