GA Minutes Tue Apr 10 2012

= Minutes for 10 April 2012 =

Details
Location: Camp Charlie Time: 7pm - ? Note taker: Steve

Working Group Announcements
Facilitation. As an organization, we need to make a decision regarding the churches we've been renting meeting space from. There are three spaces in question: Emmanuel Church, the Arlington Street Church, and the Community Church of Boston (we've already taken care of St. Paul's). Now that the weather is warm, do we want to have GAs outside? (until the weather turns cold again) If we have GAs outside, should we hold them at one place? In several places? Should we rotate places?

Should we hold SAA outdoors, or continue to use the Community Church of Boston?

Starting on May 4th, community gatherings will be held at the Community Church of Boston. Community gatherings will stay indoors.

If we move GA outdoors, we should decide on a date, and let the churches know. We want to maintain a good relationship with the churches. Eventually, the weather will get cold and we'll want to move back inside.

Please think about these questions between now and Saturday.

Decolonizing Boston. Two people spoke on behalf of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. The coalition of Immokalee workers is a coalition of farm workers. Workers have experienced wage theft, physical violence, and more extreme abuses. Both men and women have experienced these abuses. Women have also been subject to sexual abuse.

The workers want a better future. They are asking corporations that buy tomatoes to make some changes. Ten corporations have agreed to these demands, including paying $0.01 more per pound, and signing on to an agreement that respects workers rights.

Stop and Shop refuses to sign on to this agreement; we will have an action in protest of Stop and Shop's position. The protest is Thursday, April 12th at noon, at Stop and Shop headquarters in Quincy.

See also: http://www.ciw-online.org

MBTA. The MBTA has proposed a 23% fare hike. This is a stop gap measure, and affects only the current year; we'll be back in the same budget crisis situation next year.

Our MA legislators have seen over six thousand people turn out for 31 hearings on the MBTA service changes. And they have done nothing. We're camping here until April 15th, to protest the legislature's lack of action.

There is a hearing tomorrow about a transit bill. Tomorrow, we'll also hold teach-ins, and ride the rails to spread awareness. We'd love to have your company. We'll also bring forward a proposal later tonight.

Safer Spaces. Safer spaces is the most fantastic working group in Occupy Boston. We'll be meeting at Camp Charlie every night at 10:30 pm.

Anti-Oppression. Tonight, we'll make a proposal on behalf of three working groups: Anti-Oppression, People of Color, and Decolonize to Liberate. We've been doing a lot of education. We've had difficulty borrowing overhead projectors; we'll make a proposal to purchase and overhead projector, a screen, and a video camera.

Ideas. We're meeting tomorrow night, 7pm, in room 505, 38 Ash Street, which is in Chinatown. We'll have another installment in our series of difficult conversations about difficult topics. This time, we'll be talking about values, autonomy, and consent. Please join us.

Radio. We're still around, and we need more people to produce and host shows. We meet Monday and Friday (?) at 7:00pm, at E5. We'll also host two training sessions, where we'll show people how to produce their own shows. These training sessions are tomorrow at 6pm, and Saturday from 10:00 - noon.

Our schedule is online. You can find it at http://obr.fm.

Boston Occupier. The next issue of the Boston Occupier will come out on April 18th. We're printing 10,000 copies, in color.

We're going to try a new distribution strategy. We've made up a bunch of Boston Occupier bumper stickers, and we'll try to reclaim abandoned newspaper distribution boxes around town. These abandoned boxes should be more than just an eyesore; we can use them to distribute the Occupier.

If you'd like to submit an article, the print deadline is Thursday. Try to submit before then, to allow time for editing.

Media. Our web submission forms died over the weekend, but they're working now. We have a backlog of calendar postings and such to work through, and we're going through that backlog now.

Legal. The NLG would like us to participate in their gala on the 12th. The details are on the Occupy Boston calendar.

Local Currency. We're printing "dollars", whose value is associated with a time bank. These are modeled after the Berkshire's local currency, which has been around for years. Have a look at our wiki page if you'd like to find out more, or if you're interested in participating.

Facilitation. We meet three times a week. Tomorrow, we're meeting at 5:45 - 6:30. We also meet Thursday at 5pm and Saturday at 3pm. All meetings are at city place.

On Thursday, we'll have a proposal regarding churches and indoor meetings.

Food. We're rolling out food 3.0, and we'd like you to be involved. Contact me at amberpaw-AT-gmail.com. You can help by cooking things at home. Thanks to all the food people. We have a limited ability to store leftovers, so please eat.

Individual Stack
Aria. Occupy JP is working on a tax day rally. The rally will be April 17th at Dewey Square, at 5pm. Please come. We may do some building projections after the event.

For May day, we'd like to occupy the airwaves. Call your favorite radio station, and request your favorite radical song.

Tess. We're working on a priority process proposal, to make GA more about planning.

Bill. We had a memorial service for Andy.

Matt. A lot of anarchists are organizing for May Day. I'll post details on twitter. The organizing involves a lot of theatrics and street theater.

Rich. On April 24th there will be a full day teach-in at Brandeis University -- 10am to 8pm. There's details on the Brandeis college website.

Daniel. I'm building another giant puppet. Come help build it.

FAWG Discussion
We spent the next two hours having a discussion about FAWG, how Occupy Boston spends (or could spend) money, etc. FAWG will make details of this discussion available.

Proposals
There are four proposals tonight. (The note-taker had to leave; hopefully someone can add notes about the proposals.)