Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Musings on the Green Mayors Forum

So last week I was in the news a bit for not inviting all the mayoral candidates to the "Sierra Club Green Mayoral Forum."  This was an interesting and unaccustomed role to be playing.  I'm usually not very public.  In fact I only joined the Sierra Club to go hiking and meet girls!!!  And I haven't exactly done a lot of either in the club, though I have certainly come to appreciate and respect what the club does (and that's why I spend so much volunteer time for them.)  Anyways, this little brouhaha was well publicized and, admittedly, self-created, since I sent out an unnecessary "sorry we're not inviting you" to the candidates, thus inviting recrimination right away, and in a very public way. Also, and this is probably the bigger error, I cc'd local blogger Zennie Abraham, who had been covering this previously, and then he promptly posted my entire email claiming I mistook him for a candidate!

There is always a silver lining, however. Zennie's blog and the attention it brought us I think drove up the interest among the public quite a bit and (I think) as a result, we were able to really pack the room last week at the Eastbay Community Foundation.   Also, partially as a result of the firestorm of attention Zennie and other local bloggers brought us, we decided to change the format of the forum to avoid nasty confrontations with the non-invited.  9 of the 10 registered candidates for mayor showed up, which I guess is a first, and the discussion that was had was interesting, though very limited by the time limits we had to impose (several candidates told us they had to leave at 7 p.m. so we kept the entire forum part to about 75 minutes and each candidate could only talk on any given issue for 2).  You can read more details about the event here (thanks to Oakland Local for covering it, by the way.)

In the end, I'm glad we did this (and big thanks to Andy Katz and Igor Tregub who were the primary event planners besides myself.)  The event generated more positive attention than negatives for the Sierra Club, and gave everyone a chance to hear the candidates talk about what their "green vision" might look like.  Next time, hopefully, we will be able to structure it so we can have more in-depth discussion.