Heerlen 7 urges EGP & parties: Take up Supportership seriously

Better-moderated debates, gender balanced panels and a lot more participants are the main lesson drawn

from the 7th annual Heerlen conference in Brussels, 12-14 December 2008. The Heerlen Group will most probably not organize the conference, because it is to be integrated in an EGP Supporters’ Network by the end of March. If the EGP and its member parties want this integration to be an improvement however, the participants of the last ‘independent’ Heerlen conference felt, they should put individual participation and -supportership a lot higher on their agenda’s.
From report by Peter Alberts and coordinators’ evaluation

I Conference lessons

Logistics – Brussels may be a practical location, but a second target: to involve more Belgian Greens and thereby reinforce the grassroots character, wasn’t met: Écolo Ixelles only organized the Saturday evening meal. Because most felt that local participation is important, other locations will be considered where we can cooperate with groups eager to co-organize the event. Giving them a say in the contents part might help. An absolute must is an unforgettable night out. .

Participation - With only just over 30, participation was at a historic low. Mid-December, chosen to avoid the event to coincide with local party conferences, proved to be a bad time – and locals didn’t participate anyway. Due to party obligations only few people could help organising so the programme was finalized late and invitations were sent at too short notice. Future conferences will be planned independently of individual party events, around mid November, ad preparations started well before Summer Holidays. Hopefully parties & EGP will help advertising. But personal persuasion should not be left out. Challenged by Inti Suarez from GroenLinks, all participants promised to ‘bring at least two new people next time.’

Panels & debates – The choice of themes, half debate on hot issues, half practical campaigning, was appreciated, and so was the quality of the panellists. Some understood for the first time what had provoked the financial crisis; others got a clearer picture of the common campaign and their role in it. Points to improve:

• gender balance; all but one on the podium were male.
• debates should be different – both had a financial specialist and a generalist politician as key speakers.
• debates should be moderated more strictly, by identifying a limited number of questions and making sure they are answered. Ask a text from the panellists a week before. Use it only as a background and don’t let the panelists give lectures, and you’ll create more space for contributions from the audience. Prepare the debate with a small team that really cooperates. 

II Future Heerlen Group

This might be our last annual meeting as an independent initiative, because y the group is involved in the drafting of a proposal to integrate its work into the EGP. A proposal, drafted by Lin Tabak (Heerlen Group), Henk Nijhof (Party leader GroenLinks) and Johan Hamels (EGP committee) will be voted during the EGP congress in March. The hopes are high, because  ‘the current Committee has been very ambitious in boosting the EGP as a party in many other respects’ said Lin Tabak. ‘Which took considerable courage and persuasion, because parties have to compromise on decisions made back home with no other reason – European elections still are organized nationally – than a political ideal. ‘

As it is however, individual participation is not very high on the agenda. The EGP campaign team will launch an appeal to grassroots Greens to register as volunteers for the common campaign, become active through blogs and mailing lists and act as local ambassadors for the common campaign. But only afterwards they will be asked to register as Individual Supporters.

Take up Supportership more seriously

Several members of the Heerlen Group therefore urged the EGP to ‘take up the individual supportership more seriously – the European Socialist Party already has opened an online subscription for individual membership’ (Marianne Saenen) and to ‘give more support to the Heerlen Group’ (Michael Leibman). Other suggestions: harmonize fees – now the competence of the parties; improve Update Flash; persuade parties to advertise the subscription clearly (Beate Jeromin).

Team stays till June

The current team will stay on until after the EU elections, because the job of organizing the campaign activities has already started and the integration into the EGP might have consequences, which cannot yet be foreseen. Meanwhile others will be put on the coordinators’ list – and might become more involved in time: Liz Wakefield (GPEW), Robert Jarrett (GPEW), Enzo Muho (Albania Green Party), Nikolaus Schütte zur Wick (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, Grenzenlos grün und sozial) & Beate Jeromin.