GA Minutes Sun Aug 26 2012

Minutes for 26 August 2012

Details

Location: Copley Square
Time: Approximately 4:00 - 5:30 pm
Note taker: Steve R

Around 17 people attended.

Announcements

(The note-taker came from the Sacco-Vanzetti march, and arrived a few minutes late; the first few announcements are missing from these notes.)

SAA. SAA starts right after GA. We're hoping to do planning for S17. Sep 8th will be the last S17 spokescouncil meeting.

OBIT (Dana). We've found a submission problem with the everyone list. We'll try to get it worked out.

Joan. Several of us came from a rally, put on the by Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration society and the IWW. Part of the rally focused on US political prisoners. Bradley Manning is one of today's most prominent political prisoners. The VFP is organizing a rally about this on Sep 6th. (FIXME: notes from flyer). Sep 6th is the start of the Democratic National Convention.

Steve. If anyone took pictures at the Sacco-Vanzetti action, please send me a few. I'd like to put something on our web site.

Dana. Following up on the last GA, did anyone ask the S17 organizers about T-shirts? (We'll talk about this in the proposal part of the GA.)

Discussion Topics

We have three topic to discuss.

• T-shirts
• Community Gatherings
• Finance and OB governance

Finance and OB Governance

(Kendra leads the discussion.)

In the few days, Greg Murphy will remove his name from the OB financial accounts. There are several ways we could handle finance going forward. One option is working with United for a Fair Economy (UFE).

Passed funding proposals would likely become UFE grants.

If we become a 501(c)3, then we'd have to use funds according to 501(c)3 rules. Lobbying and supporting political candidates are off-limits. Education and outreach are okay.

UFE would take a commission of funds they manage. We believe it's 7%. That's a low commission for this type of work.

UFE would also assume liability. They'd handle law suits, rather than individual occupiers being sued (which has happened).

OWS uses UFE. That's how we heard about them.

This discussion is really to give people an idea about what's going on. FAWG will bring a more comprehensive discussion to GA in the near future. This should really be a wider community discussion.

If there's nobody who personally wants to put their name on OBs financial accounts, then having a sponsor makes sense. There aren't many other choices.

Steve. What is OB's monthly burn rate?

As monthly expenses, we have storage, website hosting, hot spots. Not sure of the amounts.

We have about $5k that's not encumbered.

T-Shirts for S17

Matt. It was my understanding that S17 funds could be used for outreach.

(?) We still have a silk screen, so we can make T-shirts.

Carolyn. We kicked around $500 as an amount for T-shirts.

Aria. I think that $250 would be a more reasonable amount. Aria turns this into a proposal:

(Paraphrased) Ask the S17 working group to use $250 for S17 T-shirts, if they can spare that amount. If they can't spare $250, then we'll allocate $250 from the general fund.

POI: we may be able to get T-shirts cheap, from the dollar/pound bins at the Garment district.

Q: I've been out of the loop for a while. What is S17?

S17 (or September 17th) is the 1 year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. There's a call for people to come to NYC from Sep 15th - Sep 17th. There will be things happening all weekend.

POI: Rene told me that T-shirts would not be expensive.

Carolyn: Right now, this proposal is in the bucket. Would anyone like to take it out of the bucket.

The proposal stays in the bucket.

Proposals passes.

Community Gathering Working Group

Lach led this discussion.

I'd like to bring in the concept of community gatherings, as a way to build the movement. This would center around work for the environment; very different from the traditional workplace. For example, Green energy, Oceanography, and Agriculture.

We could bring in/involve community service organizations.

Working groups could also present what they're working on.

Non-profits could lobby for prisoners rights, etc.

I'd like to start a community gathering working group. I see this as a way to help the movement grow into its next phase.

Lach talks with Steve afterwards, re: OB web sites that he can make use of.