I found out about this yesterday and it took me about two seconds to decide to go. It is a meeting to discuss how to hold a Constitutional Convention for California.
I'm so transfixed by this notion. I think about it a fair amount. My favorite part of the fantasy comes before the actual constitution writing, but after I am magically part of the process. Surely the citizen delegates who have to write a constitution would go to Constitution School first, right? Surely Google would host that, since they are part of the group calling for the Constitutional Convention. Surely they would webcast it, too. And then, since we have such an important task in front of us, professors and civil servants would come lecture to us. They would teach us about forms of governments, histories of Constitutions, different voting methods, results of types of taxation. Kevin Starr would come talk to us and answer my questions as long as I asked them. Legislators would tell us what barriers they face and what guarantees they are grateful for. I took two semesters of Con Law, so I'm not looking to have the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution taught to me. I want a month of lectures on how founding documents shape societies and what the trade-offs are. I want experts to teach me about different Constitutions.
That's my secret dreamy-eyed part of thinking about a Constitutional Convention, getting to go to Constitution School first. I also think about different California policies that have messed things up (the list is so long once you start), but I'm trying not to make any final internal decisions about those until someone more expert than me explains the purposes and results of each. You know, at Constitution School. I haven't fantasized about the process of writing the Constitution with my other delegate buddies. Seems like I’d have to know more about them first.*
Here's the part I don't know. I don't know how to be sure I get to be part of this. Having citizen delegates is one model for a Constitutional Convention, but the method of choosing them is still undetermined. You have to have geographically distributed people representing even chunks of the population. It might be lottery, and that offers terrible chances for me (and, everyone else equally). Maybe legislators appoint delegates? No one has said that, but it would make sense. That's terrible for me; I'm not important to any legislators, so why would they pick me? I suppose I should write to my assemblyperson now, calling dibs on the position, but I'm not sure that's how it works.
Rather horrifyingly, it might be that the option that gives me any longshot at all is if citizen delegates are elected. In which case I would campaign? I would do it, if that were the only path. I would care about looking nice and I would go anywhere where three or four people gathered and explain once more what a Constitutional Convention is. If it came to that, I might even learn to say nice things about myself without joking countercommentary. It would be worth it, to be part of a writing a new California Constitution. But that's not what I'm hoping for. I'm hoping I go to this meeting about a Constitutional Convention and say such incisive witty things that everyone realizes that obviously I should be a delegate and promises me a spot. Then I wouldn't have to worry about a group of people writing the Constitution without me and I can get back to designing a monthlong comprehensive curriculum for Constitution School.
*I don't know what to think of the notion that we were so extraordinarily lucky when citizens wrote the U.S. Constitution. People keep warning that they were a fluke-y assortment of geniuses and we should necessarily assume that any group of citizens this time will regress to the mean.
Really? Is that inevitable? There are very bright people all over the place now. They aren't all in civics; they have focused careers in specialties. But perhaps civics can be learned. We don't write in such a formal style anymore, but can it be that a selection of people now is necessarily that much dumber than the Founders? Besides, we have the benefit of the Founders' work, and work on other Constitutions, now. Surely accumulated work on Constitutions plus bright people now brings us up to the threshold of the Founders.