United States Pirate Party

Polls are now closed, and we have two new officers.

For Operations, Glenn Kerbein wins with 14 votes, against Jay Emerson's 5 votes, and 2 abstain/none of the above.

For Promotions, Travis McCrea wins with 11 votes, against Nate Blanchard's 9 votes, and 1 abstain/none of the above.

Congratulations to our new officers!

Congratulations to our two new officers, Bradley Hall for Records, and Shirley Runyon for Financial! Both were unopposed when the deadline for nominations passed last night, so now they join Marcus and myself as officers of the national party.

On February 16th, we will be holding the elections for the Operations and Promotions positions.

The candidates for Operations are:

The next meeting will be on February 9th, at 9 PM EST. All are welcome to attend. It will take place in http://tinyurl.com/piratepartyIRC (irc.name141.com #uspirateparty). The agenda for the meeting is http://memwiki.pirate-party.us/index.php?title=2010-02-09

Currently, we only have two officers at the national level--myself, and Marcus Kesler, head of the State Advisory Board. Besides the open positions on the SAB, we have openings for the Operations, Promotions, Records, Legal, and Financial officers, and at last count, four willing candidates to fill three of these positions. Jay Emerson is running for Operations, Bradley Rush is running for Records, and Travis McCrea and Nathaniel Blanchard are running for Promotions.

Am calling an open meeting on 11-28-09.  It's been too long!

 Resources for the Meeting

We are currently using skype and a shared google docs folder.  

 
My dear pirates,
 
It has now been quite some time since I left out across the country to tour communities in a quest to identify possible municipal level policies for the party.  I met with some success on this trip, speaking to and at a multitude of intentional communities about what legal barriers keep them from growing and evolving naturally.  Shared workspaces are now more common than they where when I travelled a half-decade ago.  Makerspaces are popping up everywhere.  I found that many groups feel that their local government does not support the desire to innovate and modernize their cultural makeup, of course; but very few had any idea what could be done to help. 
 

 I've been thinking a lot about what Piracy is.  Of course, I've also been trying to come up with a good context for what a Pirate political party really is.  
 
To me, today, piracy is the use of historical record and ideas in new ways regardless of what any established authority has to say about it.  For many, it's more of a 'take stuff for free' thing, but for me, it's right to access.
 

 We have created a subforum on the forum for the discussion of items that are being put up to public vote.  There are already some exciting things here and I urge each and every person to ring in productively on any of the topics proposed.  
 
Look forward to seeing many of you at the meeting monday night at 6pm EST where many of these items are going up for public vote!

The free flow of people is the free flow of information.  I've always thought this was true, and there is even really fun to study historical precedent.
 
Considering the Hackerspace Passport, which is something I've been on the edge of my seat to hear about, I would like to pledge, now, my willingness to purchase one.  This subscription would be a form of membership to all hackerspaces everywhere - spaces that opted in.