Florida State News

Vol. 2, No. 2--March 19, 2005

After some setbacks with the state party, the Florida Progressive Democrats Caucus has re-filed caucus paperwork to conform to the idiosyncratic rules of the state party. Additionally, the caucus leadership and several members are working with their party contacts to speed up recognition of the FPDC as a full-fledged caucus. We now have 130 official caucus members and over 200 people registered for action, reading and general discussion mailing lists.

The FPDC has partnered with Florida Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) to encourage newly elected Republican Senator Mel Martinez to uphold the filibuster on the Energy Bill scheduled to go before the Senate in a few weeks.

In the coming months, we will be recruiting volunteers to work on a FPDC web site. Barry Sacharow, Chair of the South Florida region, shared his great ideas for tools and content for the site, so we're hoping to bring him into the effort to make a "virtual headquarters."

Several people have stepped forward to assume leadership roles in their regions and have held meetings to develop issues and responses to those issues, to grow their membership and essentially come back to the statewide leadership with what they want and need in their communities. Our organization is beginning to grow from the bottom up.

We will also be working on a way to gather and disseminate news around the state. Many people have attended or will attend their DEC meetings and other party functions, but we lack a clearinghouse for members to report on the outcome of their efforts. We are also looking for someone to handle a state calendar of events as the communication of this information is somewhat disorganized at this stage. Interested parties are encouraged to contact Loretta Cochran by email (best): lorettaecom@yahoo.com or by phone: 941-761-8144.

Loretta Cochran
Chair, FPDC

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