I agree. Hammeroftruth.com is doing their part, and the LP did a blog post. It is up to members like you to reach out to members in your county and state to inform them.

I disagree that it is up to members to contact members when members can't know about it in the first place unless the party tells them, and a simple blog entry is not going to get very far if members aren't necessarily reading the blog on a regular basis. Let's face it, LP members have lives beyond politics, so they may not want to take time on a regular basis to check out what the LP has posted. The LP should *reach out* not just publish and hope someone sees it. Yes, members like me can help, but only if we know there is a way to do it, and that is currently being left to chance. The "how you can help" part of the LP site is classic -- classically bad. It's all the typical drivel that totally misses the viral boat, there's *nothing* on it that helps a person link their Web site to the LP. C'mon, that's something that should've been in place 5 to 10 years ago! As for Hammeroftruth.com, I've never heard of it -- and if it's relevant to the LP, you can blame the LP for my ignorance, and that of every other LP member who has never heard of it. What it boils down to is that the LP only "reaches out" with an open hand asking for donations, but rarely or never with information that can help build the party without spending money.

SnakeStu you bring up a lot of valid points that I completely agree with. However the Libertarian Party is not some entity put into place simply to cater to your needs. It is an organization made up of members. The members are the Libertarian Party. The members sitting around bitching about (i'm guilty of this) what the LP staff members do or do not do is what makes the Libertarian Party ineffective. The Libertarian Party will only be what it's members turn it into, without the help of some big brother.

Good topic.... I think I shall have to share this with others...

There's a Libertarian group on MySpace that has over 3000 members that I've notified a couple times. There's also a rather large contingent on MeetUp that should be migrating over here (since a lot of metros on MU aren't active because noone wants to pay).

I don't think "I didn't know about that" qualifies as bitching, nor would "there's no way I could have known this except by sheer luck, and others face the same obstacle." It's just a basic fact. And how is a member like myself going to *effectively* reach out to most of our fellow Libertarians, when the party itself seems incapable of doing so? Am I to magically divine a mailing list? I'm not asking the LP to "cater to my needs" -- I'm expecting the LP to cater to its own! And I'm willing to help, but let's be realistic -- who is in a better position to reach out to large numbers of Libertarians, sole members like myself or the party organization? Even prominent members of the party (which I certainly don't qualify as) would not be able to *personally* have the same reach that the party organization has (or at least should have by this point, after all the data and fund collection). I'm not expecting a "big brother" to take care of my political interests, but I'm certainly expecting an organization to which I have donated money to actually *be* an organization -- and that implies having the infrastructure in place to stay in touch with its membership. Grassroots is good -- and should be supported with tips on how to do it without necessarily spending money, such as how to link personal sites to the party site! -- but I never thought the LP was *only* a grassroots-driven "interested population" rather than an *organized* political party.

StephenV

MySpace and MeetUp.... keep prodding them along! ;-)