California Democratic Council: CDC Archives

CDC Archives

Since CDC has been around since the early 1950s, we obviously have a lot of memorabilia.

To properly catalog it all and make sure it is safely preserved, CDC Controller (Steve Cummings) has taken on this task.

We want to thank Steve for this important role he's playing in making sense of the 50+ years of CDC memorabilia we've accumulated!

On my visit to the office just before the CDP convention, I found out that the legal status of the building had completely changed. On December 31, 2007, the building, known as the Peace Center, officially became part of the 501c3 corporation, the Aris and Carolyn Anagnos Peace Center Foundation. This meant that since Anagnos had been giving us free office in the building, continuing the arrangement would mean that the 501c3 would be making a nonmonetary contribution to a political party or partisan political organization, which would void their tax-exempt status.

Therefore, it became obvious that the Green Party and we would have to vacate the building. At first, Aris was going to allow us to keep our P.O. Box, but when Henry Vandemeir and I discussed it, operationally it just didnâ€™t make any sense. So we decided to vacate the office and get a new P.O. Box. With Heather Lacayo and I both living in Ventura, we decided to rent the box there.

Most of the documents had been moved earlier, and have been part of my reports on the CDC Archives. But the furniture remained. So on April 22 and 23, we pulled out all the important furniture, including two storage cabinets, two four-drawer file cabinets, a desk, a swivel chair, a couple of carriers with wheel, an Igloo Ice chest, and an ungodly amount of supplies, including several lifetime supplies of pencils. Most of the stuff, particularly the cabinets, ended up in my garage with the archives. Heather took the table, chair, the wheeled cartons, and paper supplies. She set this stuff as an office in her house. As it turned out the supplies, the ice chests, and the wheeled cartons came in handy, because all of that stuff was taken to Fresno and used for the convention, saving a substantial amount in office supply costs.

So, as it stands now we have a new office and P.O. Box in Ventura. The new P.O. address is:

P.O. Box 6591, Ventura CA 93006-6591.

Please send all your correspondence to the new P.O. Box. Also, we have printed new brochures with the new P.O. Box. Be sure to get a stack of the new brochures and discard the old ones with the obsolete mailing address. Henry should have a supply of those.

Also during this process, we changed long-distance phone servicers, moving from AT&T to an internet-based service. However, we have NOT changed the phone number. The end result is that our phone bill, which had been running approximately $100 a month and was getting all screwed up, will now be approximately $12 a month. This change along with the bank change, the credit card change, and the moving of the archive from storage to my garage have reduced our monthly operational cost from $250 to about $25, which means that the members of our 22,000 Club are now covering most of our monthly bills (thank you 22,000 Club members). This, plus the profit made from the CDC convention has finally put our finances on a sound footing.

Finally, as a follow-up regarding the Peace Center: Just before the CDC Convention, we found out that not only was the building where CDC had been for 19 year was part of a 501c3, but the building is in the process of being sold and all of the remaining tenants were going to have to move anyway. In three to four months they will be moving into a new building in Culver City, on Sepulveda near Venice. It will have great access off the 405 Freeway, but aside from that, nowhere near the convenience and attractions of the current building.

So for those of us who worked on our move, things have worked out just as well. The move is behind us, while everyone else in the building will have to plan theirs, and our access to office materials and the P.O. Box is going to be much cheaper and easier than the old situation. Our address may change more frequently than it did in the past, but that is the nature of our mobile society. In any event, CDC is better positioned to respond to its affiliated members than it has been in a number of years, and we hope that these changes will make CDC a more effective organization in Democratic Party politics.

Steve Cummings
Controller, CDC

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