I have decided that most of the time I spend on the Green Party will be aimed at local organizing.  That means pitching in with the EDA and CA, keeping in touch with members, pulling together events and preparing for the next campaign.  When I got engaged with the party one of the most repeated messages I received was that strong local organizations perform the best.  So for the foreseeable future I'll be sticking with my game plan: Ottawa Centre first, central parties second.

That said, having been active for a year now I'm going to start shedding my reluctance to be a pundit on the GPO and GPC.  This will be a stretch for me because I am much more comfortable working with hard numbers, goals, milestones and facts.  Typically I would prefer to get into a project, work on it, see it succeed (or fail - it happens), then let it fade into the rear-view mirror. 

So why make time to be a pundit? 

Unlike Fight Club, the first rule of being in the Green Party is talk about the Green Party.  To succeed we need to wear down the stereotype that we are tree hugging hippies who don't care about jobs (because we don't have any!); that we're a protest party; that we should just vote NDP instead; etc.

I learned recently that, without trying to, I convinced a few non-voters to vote Green in 2008.  It turns out that their decision to vote Green was based partly on my solid conviction that it was the right thing for me.  I never tried to sell them on the Green Party; but in the natural course of conversations (over months) I kept on bringing up a Green point-of-view and they found it compelling.

Enter the pundit.

I'm going to start opining more for a few reasons.  For one - I get to use 'opining' in a sentence and not get laughed at for it.  You may now stop snickering.  Publishing my opinions will also force me to articulate them clearly (something I may not be doing right now) as well as be more informed about what's going on in Government at any one moment.

After a year of local organizing I'm gaining confidence that I'm doing that job (mostly) right.  In another year I'll followup and let you know how I think I've done as a pundit*.

Practice makes perfect.

* Wikipedia defines pundit as "an expert or opinion-leader who analyzes events in an area of expertise in the popular media".  While I'm not an expert in politics or an opinion-leader by any means, I'm going to keep the title and take it to mean "expert of my own opinions".  This is a blog afterall. :)