Information on this group can be found here.

It's spring again, and that means it's time once again for a grand New England tradition of direct Democracy, the town meeting.

Unfortunately, in the past, voter guides were often unlike the town meetings and subsequent town elections themselves, controlled by a small handful of people often with a set point of view designed to gear voters towards one outcome or another.

With the advent of technology, that time is over.

On Wikibooks, an offshoot of Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia and one of the world's largest websites, I've started a voter guide for the upcoming election season here in Merrimack.

If you've never seen a wiki before, let alone Wikibooks, let me give you a quick description. Imagine a website that anybody can edit in any way at any time from anywhere. That's a wiki, more or less.


I'm new to Wikibooks, but i'm an old hand on Wikipedia, so the rules seem to be fairly similiar, and that means really there are only three big ones.

#1. Be Objective: You can't say "Dick Hinch Sucks", but you can say "Dick Hinch is often criticized by the Anti-Tax grassroots group 'Merrimack Cares' ". And when there's any doubt, you need to verify your claims with outside sources. No opinions here, only the reporting of opinions.

Hey Everybody, due to the HAVA Meeting and a few other people saying they weren't going to be able to make it, Democracy for New Hampshire Souhegan Valley will postpone meeting until next Tuesday, June 14th. The time and location are still the same (6:30 pm at Nancy White's House, 12A Main Street, Amherst)

Other than catching up on what we've done recently, here's a few questions on the docket

-Moving Forward on the Tape Project: What Next?
-Yes or No on a July Meeting, and if we do meet, should we have a picnic/BBQ?
-How to/Who will respond to Mirski's defammatory comments in the Cabinet (I have something written already, but i'm unsure on sending it since i've had a pending job with the Cabinet's Bedford satellite paper for the past three weeks -- I need to call them again tomorrow)
-Anything anybody else wants to do that affects the Souhegan Valley
-DFNH/DFA matters as a whole
-Gear Towards Growing the Group or Keeping It Small?

And anything else anyone wants to bring up. The group decided to no longer actively use meetup.com last month, so that will not be updated to show this, but I will post this message on the DFNH Website

Hi all, I have some bad news.

Corporate juggernaut Chelsea Development has managed to delay the petition of abutters that would make a 2/3rd vote necessary for their outlet proposition to pass.

Chelsea has done everything in the book to be underhanded in passing this bill, from bribing private citizens under the table to vague threats of lawsuits if any deliberation occured at the town deliberative session.

As of right now, the machine count has only been completed, and The Warrant Article on the Outlets is winning 56% to 44%, enough to win if the petition is found to be invalid, but not enough to win if the petition is valid.

That's where we need your help. If you're a professional surveyor or lawyer in NH, please contact me at youngmanonthemountain@yahoo.com. Our time is limited, and we are outgunned.

DFNH-SV Meeting Notes 4/5/05

In Attendance:
Jan Borgia (Hollis), Suzanne Harvey (Nashua), Andy Sylvia (Merrimack), Nancy Tobi (Lyndeborough), Nancy White (Amherst)

-We all agree that Sid Hall did a great job on the letterhead

-Andy told the group about NHPR’s letter, and proposed a letter back to them to try and entice NHPR into putting Democracy Now on the air. We had a discussion on objectivity in the media, and we decided to invite Mike Arnold to come and listen to Amy Goodman in Portsmouth. Andy said he’d write an article and put it up as an event on the DFNH website.

-We decided not to watch the DFA DVD due to the large amount of video we had to watch

- We’ll continue at Nancy’s House while we do the video work, then we can go back to Library.

-Nancy White said she’d try to do something similar to her showing of “Unprecedented” in Wilton Town Hall Theatre last year.

-Jan talked about possible medical legislation regarding charging for emergency vehicles without the consent of the patient and unnecessary emergency vehicles.

Hello all,

Just here to remind you that the Democracy for Souhegan Valley Meetup is One Week from Today: Tuesday, April 5th at 6:30. This month we'll be meeting at Nancy White's house, right next to the Amherst Public Library on Main Street.

The March meetup was incredibly productive(you can see the notes at http://www.democracyfornewhampshire.com/node/view/1093) and we hope to do the same this month as the meeting will focus around beginning editing on a video on voting we'll be working on with DFNH's Fair Elections Committee and perhaps a special guest to be announced.

In addition, we'll be having an talk on Social Security and Medicare from Tom Deery of the Alliance of Retired Americans, an update on what we've accomplished on our own in the past month, and much more from Democracy for America and Democracy for New Hampshire.

I hope to see you all there!

Andy Sylvia
Organizer
Democracy for New Hampshire-Souhegan Valley

Hello Souheganites and Fellow DFNHers across the state.

One thing i've noticed is a lack of clear decisions on things so i'd like to propose a system for the Souhegan Group to gain concensuses(concensii?) in between meetups so we can get more done.

1. Write a post here on the DFNH site about something you want a concensus from the group on and put in the title action and a number within the brackets or resolution and a number within the brakcets, with the difference being an action requires something to be done afterwards by group members while a resolution is only the general opinion of the group or something that becomes official immediately after the vote on it is finalized.

2. The time period on gaining a concensus is a week or until a majority of the people at the last meeting have voted. In the case of the March Souhegan meeting, this would be 3. People would vote on it via the comment option on posts.

Please let me know what you think of this.

Meeting Notes from March 4, 2205 DFNH-Souhegan Valley by Nancy White and Andy Sylvia

-The meeting took place at 7pm at Nancy White's home as the Amherst Public Library was closed due to miscommunications.

-The people in attendance were Andy Sylvia from Merrimack, Jan Borgia from Hollis, Nancy White from Amherst, Betty Hall from Brookline, and Sid Hall from Brookline.

-We held a moment of silence, then remembrance to begin the meeting in honor of former Wilton State Rep. and fellow Souhegan Deaniac Hal Melcher, whose memorial was today.

-We feel that the geographical boundaries of our meetup unofficially look like: Brookline, Merrimack, Amherst, Hollis, Wilton, Greenville, Mason, Milford, Mont Vernon and Lyndeborough, with New Boston, New Ipswich and Temple being added later to the list. Any people that we know who are from these areas are encouraged to join us, as we seek others to expand our representation.

-The group wishes to make decisions by coming to consensus due to our small size and ease at the moment with conversation about ideas and action.

-The DFNH-Souhegan Valley group's affiliation to Nashua-DFNH (CASNH) remains nominal as we have stated before in the past. There continues to be a different set of issues with the small towns that we represent than does Nashua. The group believes our smaller size is an asset rather than a liability, and the smaller size contributes to getting our tasks accomplished.

-The group did want to focus on one big group project at a time to "make a name for the group," thinking this would draw in attenders, thus creating positive accomplishments while utilizing the energy that we have presently, and just getting started on things, since the energy of the 2004 election has passed. Others, who were not at this meeting, have helped in the past with similar tasks and with similar focus, i.e. it works for us.

-The project (now known as The Film Project) that we want to focus on is this: continuing to develop the film footage that was gathered on election day 2004 and get it into a usable, workable form beyond what was originally filmed as footage for possible inclusion in the documentary, "Votergate." We agreed that it needs to have professional consultation, (development of a story line, story boards, voices, additional interviews-possibly from Secretary of State's office and Bill Gardner.) It was also mentioned that DFNH-SV, National Ballot Integrity Project, and individuals helped to fund the initial filming, film crews, and transportation costs......we have a vested interest in seeing it through. We, along with others who were not present at this meeting, would like to develop this footage into a film that shows New Hampshire's exemplar voting process. This project could be used to educate voters in NH, students in schools, newcomers to the area, as well as toot our own horn about NH's emphasis on promoting voting with fair and open voting practices, rather than discouraging it. DFNH-Fair Elections Committee (FEC) is also interested in creating this film from the footage.

-A beginning of viewing of some of the raw footage will be the main focus of April's meeting, which will take place at 6:30pm, Tuesday, April 5th at Nancy White's (12 Main St. Amherst) since Nancy has available DVD and VHS machines. It will take a number of hours to complete this process, but felt we must begin, even though we will not finish it at this meeting. Discussion about the project continued: Jan said she would look into examples of video editing experts' costs so we have ballpark figures; Betty said she'd talk with Bill Gardner about the idea of a film for NH and possible additional use of archive materials from Secretary of State's office; with Sid's skills in writing/editing/printing he suggested we could all think about storylines and come prepared with some thoughts as well as be able to jot down ideas as we are viewing footage; Nancy said she would get in touch with Sharona Merel, who has the footage stored at her house, and notify DFNH-SV of our interest in working on this project.

-Tom Deery from the Alliance for Retired Americans will be added to the email list from Nancy Tobi; was unable to get to tonight's meeting, but will 
will tell us about ARA's fight for Social Security and Medicare at the next meeting, April 5th. 

-More Action Alerts: We voted to co-sponsor Amy Goodman's talk: Tuesday evening, May 3rd at 7pm at the UU Church (South Church) in Portsmouth. Nancy offered to get in touch with Dave Diamond who is in charge of arrangements. Co-sponsorship means that we mark our calendars now, encourage people to attend this talk, tell others about this award winning journalist, who is currently on tour promoting her book, "The Exception to the Rulers." Nancy has room for five in her van, if we want to car pool. Directions will be available later.

-We also agreed to give our enthusiastic encouragement from our organization to the board of trustees of NHPR to syndicate the program, "Democracy Now!"since Nancy said there will be a group of people talking with the board on March 22. However, we need to have a letterhead with written organizational endorsement to George Corrette of Marlow, NH by March 15. Sid agreed to make the letterhead; Andy agreed to write the letter of endorsement; Nancy said she would get letterhead with endorsement mailed to George. Nancy also said that she has had email correspondence with Michael Arnold, VP of programming at NHPR with some favorable response to the idea of having "Democracy Now!" considered. Now is the time to help NH promote the truth in the media.

-Andy also told the group about the possibility of starting an internet radio station since he has equipment and some knowledge. He will report about these possibilities at the next meeting. Each of us could have a great time being a host on our own talk show!

We were all amazed and energized by the amount of work that we accomplished tonight!

Ok, the Meetup.com description for our meetup has been updated. However, I'd like to know from you guys whether or not we should start an indepedent website and/or blog and/or Yahoo Group.

Also on the group communication front, I've made an impromptu e-radio snippet and uploaded it. If you have any media player that can read .wav files, please let me know if this link works

http://www.geocities.com/youngmanonthemountain/dfnhradio.wav

I don't have alot of voice experience at the stations I work at, so please excuse the poor voice quality from me, this is just a test that I made from a headset mic I got from Radio Shack for a few bucks, my laptop, and a sound editing program I have on here called Cool Edit.

There's an almost as good but free sound editor called "Audacity" that can be downloaded below

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

We could also go on Live365.com, the traditional source for internet radio stations, but that costs cash. As long as each of us had server space, a microphone jack on our computers, a sound editing program and a microphone of some sort, that'd be all we need to make "a radio station" in theory. However, we'd need someplace to put a link to those files (or "shows" depending on how you look at it), thus the question about a blog or a website

Minutes from 12/3 DFNH Souhegan Meeting

Agenda Items:

1. DFNH municipal election goals: 50 candidates for the March 2005 elections

We divided up tasks for representatives from each town in our region to find out what elections are being held so that we can determine whether or not to run candidates.

Amherst: Howard M. - has reported that there are no open seats in March
Hollis: Jan - report pending
Lyndeboro: Mary Alice - has reported the following seats are open (need to determine if/who is running already):
Selectman: 3 yr.
Trustee of Trust Fund: 3 year
Library Trustee: 3 year
Budget Committee: 2 3-yr. positions open
Treasurer
Mason: Sandy G. Nancy T. will contact and ask for his help in reporting
Milford: Nancy W. - report pending
New Boston: Brad Carr - Nancy W. will contact and ask for his help in reporting
Temple: Pete Von Snyder - Andy R. to contact and ask for his help in reporting
Wilton: Hal (Nancy T. will contact and ask for his help in reporting)


2. Ballot Integrity Update
Sharona and Nancy W. updated us on the NH recount results and other efforts around the country. We had an update of the overall ballot integrity efforts that our group is participating in, including the production of a documentary and an educational package that we want to create to share with other groups around the country. Sharona - please fill in your notes on this to share with the group.

3. Coordination with other Souhegan area grassroots groups:
We would like to identify other groups in the area, and other key individuals to share resources and information, to grow the overall network. We would like to reach out to other groups and encourage them to sign up with DFNH to grow the network.
General notes on regional organizational efforts:
* we need to bring in more people to help. Each of us should bring at least one more person to the next meeting. It would be good to get the New Boston, Temple, Milfor and Mason areas present to next meeting.
* we should start organizing potlucks, get togethers, etc. to get people to come out and meet
* we need to think of small steps - bite size chunks - that we can manage
* utimate goal is to be ready and organized for 2006 state elections - candidates need to get out there now and start making connections and publicity, machine needs to be built now.

Since Santos changed their hours, we need to change ours (try saying that three times fast!).

Let's meet at the Amherst Town Library (14 Main Street), downstairs meeting room.

12/1
6:30 - 8:30 PM

Agenda:

1. DFNH municipal election goals
2. ballot integrity update
3. coordination with other souhegan grassroots groups

All,

Please forward this to people who you think may be interested in working on Souhegan regional issues and, in the immediate term, election activities.

Key points from last night's meeting:

1. We agreed that we will meet weekly -every Wednesday at 7:30 at Santos Dumont through the election. If you can make it, just show up! If we have even a handful of people at each meeting we will prevail. Next week come prepared with information about your town candidates and what specifically needs to be done for them.
2. There are numerous activities we must work on immediately: GOTV, canvassing, signage, calls, letters to the editors, etc. We will spend each week targeting these activities - we should dedicate some meetings to doing these activities as well as organzing them.
3. Please remember to check the website (www.democracyfornewhampshire.com) to stay on top of upcoming events, and reference the Souhegan meetup group for notes specifically about our group. If you register on the site, you can post events and stories as well. Please advise all candidates you work with that they may use our website for this purpose as well.

Minutes:
Last night we met at Santos Dumont to strategize for the next 6 weeks before the elections. There were several new people in the group (YAY!) so we spent some time introducting ourselves. We then heard from Howard Morse of the Nashua group. He would like us to consider any overlap activities that we can collaborate on between now and the election.
This means that we may be able to coordinate electioneering activities for candidates such as:
Deb Pignatelli
Paul Hodes
John Lynch
Paul McEachern
John Kerry

We then addressed our local and regional needs with respect to the elections. Our group contains three districts, with the following volunteers attached to each group to help coordinate activities:
Amherst-Milford:Suzanne Ketteridge
Brookline-Hollis-Mason: Betty Hall
Wilton-Lyndeborough-Mont Vernon-Temple-New Boston: Hal Melcher, Linda Foster, ???(we need more volunteers to work for this district)

We have House candidates for each of these districts that we want to get elected, and some of us even have Senate candidates we want to help out!

Let's get rolling - we are almost there :-)

Nancy

The Souhegan group will meet on TUESDAY September 7th instead of the 1st. Meeting at Santos Dumont, Milford.

The Souhegan Valley Meetup group meets the first Wednesday of every month at Santos Dumont Coffee House on Route 101 in Milford. For additional information contact Nancy Tobi.