GA Minutes Sun Jan 6 2013

= Minutes for 6 Jan 2013 =

Details
Location: Community Church Time: 4:00 - 5:30 pm Note takers: Steve, Dana

Summary
Around ten people attended tonight's GA. We had a round of announcements, and a discussion about our rental storage space.

Announcements
Storage space. When the camp was being evicted, we had a bunch of donated materials, so we took them away in several trucks. Since then, the material has been sitting in storage, and we're trying to figure out what to do with it. For example, we could donate some things to the Salvation army, or to Houseless persons.

We do a go-round of introductions.

Dana. Went to Portland, OR over the holiday and visited Occupy Portland. Their GAs are very small; they have more attendance at spokes coucil meetings. A lot of energy about housing issues. The have an office, about half the size of the CCB. The space is owned by a church, and several people stepped up to take responsiblity for paying the rent. It's $200-300 dollars/month. They've had a number of internal conflicts, and some people walked away. It's become distilled down to a hardcore group.

Joe. I went out to our storage space, took photos. There's a lot of camping gear in a stack about 6 x 5 x 10 feet. About a dozen boxes with clothes. There are some things from Dewey, like the sink, random collections of books and games. There's also the food tent. Rent for the storage space is $312/month.

FAWG (Steve). I've been going through our quickbooks ledgers, trying to get a handle on our accounting records, and I'm meeting with Greg Murphy tomorrow night for an overview. Greg has been a big help in explaining the accounting. In the next few weeks, I'll try to get us caught up on the recordkeeping.

FAWG (Linda). We chose to enter into a fiscal sponsorhip relationship with UFE. We've been trying to find boilerplate documents to use as a basis for crafting our agreement with them. Unfortunately, the boilerplate documents we found are very different than what we discussed with UFE. The ones we found presume that UFE would be setting policy, whereas our discussions assumed that we would be setting policy. I need to get back in touch with Brian (of UFE) to discuss next steps, and how to go about drafting the agreement.

Could we rewrite the boilerplate documents we have?

That might be like starting over. There are other resources available, which we could pursue first.

Linda. On Jan 26th, there's an action in Portland, ME. A convergence of 350 and other organizations, over the proposed tar sands pipline through New England. People are coordinating transportation. There's an anti-tar sands taking place in Texas right now.

Kendra. The POC group isn't active any more, MLK day is coming up soon. I'm wondering if we could do something for MLK day.

Perhaps there are already MLK events that we could participate in?

During last few MLK days, there have been talks in Faneuil hall, and lunches in city hall.

We can talk about this during SAA.

Dana. Next StrikeDebt meeting is Monday the 14th, pending a few specifics.

Bil. Several things are going on. The PAX Centurion has been writing more kind, generous things. (Bil reads excerpt from a recent PAX centurion article.) If you have any thoughts about a response, please let me know. I've always been focused on taxes, and I'm working on a spreadsheet that will help us understand where our tax money is coming from and where it is going.

On the taxes side, the Business Insider might have something like that.

Kendra. At some point, we should have a wider discussion on these documents and surveillance. I've had plenty of strange encounters since I've been involved with Occupy Boston.

Sebla. A young couple in NYC were arrested for terrorism, and possession of bomb-making equipment. Some media outlets have used this to try and prove that Occupy was a terrorist group.

Notice the timing - this happened right around the time that the FBIs FOIA documents came out.

Proposals
There are three suggestions for proposals:
 * Discuss Storage Space (Linda)
 * OBR and Occupier may ask for assistance in publishing expenses (Kendra)
 * Having more community discussions about political ideas (Carolyn)

(note takers switch).

Dana volunteered to bring a proposal to the next GA regarding the materials currently kept in a rented storage space costing OB $312 per month.

A group of volunteers agreed to go to the space and assess what is there so we can decide at the next GA what to do with it. Possibly we might want to redistribute Winter clothes and equipment to houseless people who need it now in the Boston area.