WG/Media/Minutes/04252012

Occupy Boston Media Restructuring Meeting

These are the notes from the Occupy Boston Media Restructuring Meeting which took place on Wednesday, April 25 2012, at 7PM in e5.

• Chris is timekeeper
• Brandon is taking notes
• Patty & Eli are facilitating

• Eli: This is a meeting to talk about the direction of media at Occupy Boston going forwards. This meeting came about from the so-called dissolution of the formal Media WG, which oversaw the various media 'bubbles' which managed specific media things. We'll talk more about that decision later.

Introductions

• Eli: from media, livestream
• Dan: media
• Patty: facil.
• Kendra: OBIT
• Brandon: OBIT, radio
• Bil: facil, tv
• Tracy: OBIT, Radio
• Sarah: Radio
• Jorge: facil
• Daniel: puppeteer
• David: puppeteer
• Jordan: new
• Ariel: media
• Anna: Safer Spaces
• Jeff: research
• Linda: FAWG
• Anna: Daily Digest, inreach
• Michael: facil.
• Ellen: Occupy The Burbs, Occupy The Farm
• Jen: Occupy MBTA
• Matt: facil.
• Rich: facil.
• Carolyn: facil, Occupy MBTA
• Angela: Anti-Oppression, facil.
• Glenn: Radio
• Rene: Logistics
• Joshua: media
• Patrick: whatever I can
• Stephanie: Occupy UMB
• Patrick: Radio
• Deborah: Just here
• Ross: OBIT
• Chris: formely of food, documentation
• Shane: machine
• Carlos: Chess
• Rachel
• Matt: facil.
• John: Dweyer

• There's a film crew, Andrew & Cory from Vancouver doing a documentary. They've been making Occupy short films since September. Tonight would be a great opportunity for what goes on behind the scenes with new media. We've heard that tonight might be contentious, but it's the truth. Our website is occupythemovie.com. Does anybody have an object to them filming the meeting?
• CC: I'm very concerned about a lot of the filming that's happened about the Occupy movement and how diverse that filming has been. How do you deal with that?
  • A: right now we've actually have more women than men as part of our interviewees, and this group here is a very diverse group.
• Nobody objects, so the filming can proceed.
• None of the film will be released for the next four or five months.

Proposed Agenda

1. Brief Introductions - 5 min
2. Agenda Review - 5 min
3. How we got here / Media WG Update - 15 min
4. Current Media Bubbles - 15 min
5. Discussion: How we will publicize OB stuff - 30 min
6. Discussion: How we receive press/external - 30 min
7. Visioning Brainstorm on future of media - 30 min
8. Next steps - 10 min

• CC: Is there going to be a inventory of tasks that media has been doing?
  • Dan: I can try to do that during the current media bubbles

How we got here

• Dan: back in the Dewey era there were a lot of occurrences of us chasing people down to find out what was happening and what we should cover. There was so much going on that there was no way we could cover everything. In the post-Dewey era we kind of started to move towards a point where we were receiving requests for media coverage. We couldn't figure out ourselves what was going on except for the big events. WGs came to us with requests. As that evolved we ended up with the forms we have on the website for media requests (blog posts, media coverage, on site coverage). What a lot of us ended up feeling after the past two or three months is that we were not in a position where we could be strategic and couldn't plan out a good media strategy, but instead were being reactive to what WGs were doing. We were publicizing what WGs were doing. We got a lot of requests that didn't make a whole lot of sense, but we still felt obligated to respond to those requests. As everybody knows, in the post-Dewey area we are operating at a decreased capacity. We were getting increased numbers of requests, but we had less and less time to deal with them. Over the last couple weeks we ended up at a point where we realized we couldn't keep working in a way that would be fair to the WGs, and we had become curators of all the media for OB. Because it seemed at times that we (and others) were unhappy with the work that the media wg was doing, we decided to dissolve the media working group. So, we decided to have this meeting to discuss how we can empower ourselves to create media, etc.
• The other thing is that some of us felt that media work has become separate from the rest of OB. That media strategy should be part of the plannings for actions, etc, rather than the process being separate and having another WG write up the media.
• Dana CC: Feeling like it might not be appropriate to the the curators of media and how media was in control of how OB was presented to the world, I was wondering if you had discussed alternatives, like WGs doing their own press released. WGs might not be good at copy editing and writing, those folks were in media.
  • Dan A: Yes we did. That's what were going to talk about tonight when we get to that part of the conversation.

• Liam: There was an event at the Democracy Center in Cambridge when the OWS bus trip came here. They said we've got this huge dynamic between DA and Media and all this other stuff. The OWS said that one way they dealt with that paradigm was by creating 'actions' and affinity groups including people from broad spectrums. Tonight is all about getting back to a group who likes to work together.

• Terra: The problem was that the scope of work was so broad that it became impossible to serve everybody well. Different people have different ideas about what Media is supposed to do. Unless there's a common understanding there are going to be misunderstanding. If we truly sit down and decide what this group means to everybody it's easier to achieve the mission.

• Carolyn: As somebody I'm confused as somebody who didn't criticize the WG, why did you decide to dissolve and not call for help?
  • Rachel A: Part of it as the sense that the work wasn't being done adequately. More than that was a sense from the people doing it that it wasn't a question of just having more people to do the work: there was something structurally wrong with that. So rather flood the group with more people, we'd open it up to a community discussion.

• Patrick: I'd like to know who feels it is that they can make decisions like this in a leaderless movement?
  • Dan A: We decided this, not by full consensus, but the vote was 7-1 to dissolve, with 3 abstentions.
  • Patrick: So that means there were still people who were willing to continue to work in media.
  • Joshua: I think that just as a matter of policy, I don't think it's good for us to be criticizing the consensus process when we weren't there and of a WG we weren't part of.
  • Rachel: The way that the dissolution of the media wg started was that a large group of people within media, who had been doing a large amount of work, decided that they were no longer going to do it. So rather than just leave and we're going to see what happens, that wouldn't be fair to the people who are left in the media WG meeting. So we brought it to a Media WG meeting, and took a vote about what we wanted to do. It turned out that what we wanted to do was dissolve media as it was operating. The reason we're all here now is to talk about what happens next.

• Patty: We're five minutes past time on this topic, FYI.

• Angela: I think you all know me well enough to know that I sometimes ask questions that are hard. I've got a bunch of them, and I'm not sure how to proceed with that. I think there are profound political implications of what's happening here right now. First of all, you all have worked your butts off, and I think that it is a sad symptom of our movement that we have not figured out how to let people know that we appreciate what you do. I would say take a bow, you've done an outstanding job. You've served us really, really well. I wish I could stop right there, so please know that what I'm about to say doesn't cancel that out. There are different kinds of WGs in this movement. Media has fit into the kind which provides some kind of resource to the movement has a whole. It can be I think, said, that you all exercised your autonomous decision making right to dissolve this WG. WGs can be formed by people who want to, and dissolved when they're done. That's my problem with autonomous action. I don't see how transparency and accountability can be found in this way of making decisions for our local Occupy movement which leaves many high and dry, but also has a tremendous impact on resources we have. You all have far greater resources than anybody else in the local Occupy movement, including equipment and monetarily. I've heard that you asked somebody to pull their private money from you, there's been certain decisions you've made about Occupy's private resources. If that's not true, I'd really love to hear it. While it's a totally justified autonomous decision, I just hate to think about the precedent that it sets, that this decision could be made privately, with such huge public impact. I support people stopping when they want to, but when they stop something that's so important to the movement, there's something that really gets me about making that an autonomous action. Don't feel like anybody has to justify what they've done, I'm just concerned about the precedents it's set.

• Eli: That point about the money is definitely something we should talk about.
  • Dan: So people are aware, Media WG had a private donor, who was also a very active member of the WG. The money that was given to Media WG was specifically for Media work. Essentially, what we felt was best, at our Saturday meeting, when we talked about the allocation of resources, after we paid for rent for e5 for the next 3 months, we felt that because the Media WG was dissolving, and had not fulfilled the original intent that the money had been given for, that we would ask that the donor take that money.

• There was a slight medical interruption, so the meeting had a short break.

• Linda CC: In addition to the money, are there other assets that are part of Media WG, and have you made decisions about those?
  • Dan A: Are we talking about this now or later?
  • Angela: Can you just name them?
  • Rachel: There's the iMac in the bubble, there's a router, three mobile hotspots (which have been used by live, radio), three iPod touches (live), 4 battery packs (live), a lockbox at Ravi's with two microphones, there's also a couple locks in that box, the mics belonged to Farhad, and the router belongs to lefty.
  • Joshua: There's also two external harddrives that go with the iMac.

• Linda CC: What do you mean by bubble?
  • Joshua A: There are several groups, maybe they're WGs, maybe they're not. Ex. the crew of people who handle FB, who handle twitter, livestream, etc.
  • Rachel: Some of them are independent groups, not just subgroups of Media WG. Some of them are subgroups of Media. FB, Twitter, the Blog, the Calendar, Cel.ly, the youtube account.
  • Joshua: These are all things that we thought of as under the umbrella of Media

• Linda CC: So have there been decisions made about what to do with the assets?
  • Rachel A: the iMac, the HDDs and the router are in the media cubicle, and are in use. The hotspots have been in use by radio, livestream, and facilitation has expressed an interest in having some self-sufficient livestream capacity.

• Justin: What seems to be the most contentious issue is that of the WGs dissolving. It seems to me that's not really an issue. The people who were working in media decided to dissolved media, so they could call this meeting and open up the process and wg. By being here, we're all kind of members of Media now. WGs are really just a time and space on a calendar.
• Rene: WHat Justin said is exactly what we're going to say. A huge majority of Media decided to step back from their roles & responsibilities. It's not really dissolving, but it's effectively dissolving. Many of us are here to figure out how to get on the same page and try to work through this. The media work must continue, and we obviously need to restructure the way we work with media.

• Ellen: I'm really appreciative of the media wg, but at the same time I've heard so many complaints about how things were going. Let's take this as an opportunity to restructure how we do this. The one thing I did have a problem with is giving back the money to that person as if there was not going to be another media. I think that needs to be discussed tonight.

• Bil: I came to a couple media wg meetings and everything was crystal clear, we talked about the donor while he was there. I was impressed with the work people were doing. Everything I found was completely above board, I trust you folks enormously. I think we have sufficient audit capability that I'm not worried about you running away with anything. I really don't want to talk about the past, I would really like to jump into the future and say "where do we go from here".

• Eli: I'm sensing a little tension in the room. I know we don't have time to finish the agenda, but I think it's important to address that tension. Do people want to continue this conversation right now, or move forward? Since I'm seeing about 50/50 how about we continue for about another 10 minutes max, and then definitely moving forward? I'm seeing mostly up, so let's go.

• Carolyn CC: I would like to know if the media people who stepped back are willing to train a new set of people? Because I think there's obviously skills and a developed strategy and method of work that would be sad not to be able to benefit from all the expertise you've developed?
  • Liam A: From the third week on at Dewey there was a weekly media training offered. That course is kind of on paper, and that's available, I think that would be a great thing to get to all the working group. As far as getting the people who walked away to come back and do training and stuff, I think it's time to empower yourselves.
  • Dan: Part of the reason we're having this meeting too, is that some of us wanted to work actively to empower working groups to produce their own media. I'm happy (and I think others too) are happy to continue to do things like livestream training, as well as some functions that the media umbrella accomplished. What we're here saying is that the structure we had set up (give us some requests and will produce an output) wasn't working. What we need to be able to do is have working groups produce their own media, and for some of us to help train people, for ex to write press releases. That's not something we should have a WG doing anymore but something that the whole community should do.

• Linda CC: I guess I was a little uncomfortable just leaving the money issue. I feel the way Bil does because I trust and admire the media group but I wanted to have an understanding of what the decision making process was. It seems like the money was given on the condition that the work was continuing to go forward, and without that being likely the money was given back, so I'd like a brief explanation of why that was. I'm very excited about going forward, and I'd love to see media be proactive rather than reactive. I'm also concerned with the power dynamics. I recognize with FAWG that we've recognized similar dynamics. The community is going through some positive growth there. We've outgrown some of our old forms. I like affinity groups with people who have different skill sets.
  • Eli A: We thought that because we, the media wg, were dissolving, and because this money was being given to the media wg for a very specific reason, the only appropriate course of action to the donor. However in doing so we knew that this money was not necessarily leaving Occupy Boston, it could be redistributed back to OB. We didn't want to leave a power vacuum of an empty WG and a lot of money.
  • Liam: The way that money came to the WG was that the donor wanted to fund campaigns and equipment necessary for campaigns. This is part of what we as a WG felt like we weren't doing: campaigns. Knowing that we were not fulfilling that mission it would be much more problems than it's worth to take that donation. I think our biggest worry was that there's this much money in OB, the amount of animosity that's swirled around it was shocking, so we were happy to get it out of our hands.

• Rich: The point that concerns me is about the decision making process. I think the fact that once you folks decided to dissolve you decided to have these conversations publicly is a good thing. My question is, the way FAWG said "we're having a lot of problems", before we figure out what to do, should the decisions of what to do with the money, etc, be community decisions?

• Chris: I understand you want to move forward, but the past is essential with the documentation that I've been working on on the wiki. I understand that media is like disposed, and it's hard to get WGs together. Nothing against the past, but the past will enlighten you on what to do better for the future.

• Facil. switches from Eli to Patty.

Discussion: How do we publicize OB activities

• Eli: In the past Media received requests for write-ups etc, to get information about requests out. But now that structure is no longer in place, how do we do that?
• Kendra: I think the thing to do is thing about organizing in a way like a company, we're going to need writers, editors, different roles, etc. Part of what I saw going on is you rolled everything including marketing and public relations into one and gave everything to a few people. Identifying what people are good at and putting them into roles that they're good at. I think if we could get organized under different departments a lot of this frustration would be better managed.
• Dana: I think it would be useful if we could identify crucial functions that are not currently being performed and then filling though. I don't know what the format to do that would be, but I hope it could come out of this meeting.
• Liam: We identified certain bubbles that are generally thought of under media but really are different groups, like social media and the calendar.
• Joshua: As I said before, calendar is one of the self sustaining bubbles, there's a calendar form on the website, if you want something on the calendar you should fill out that form.
• Sarah: Can we write this down on the board?
• Joshua: Many bubbles like calendar are basically self sufficient, like calendar.
• Rachel: Who has the capacity at this point to add people to the calendar list?
  • Brandon: OBIT can do that.
  • Rene: OBIT has the ability to do that, but they're not the default. Farhad is the admin for a lot of those lists, he asked who wanted to be admins and nobody responded.
  • Joshua: The calendar request function should still be function. The only thing we don't know is who can add people to the list.
  • Rachel: Yes, the calendar structure still remains the same, but there has been a lot of talk, specifically within facilitation (because they have to flexible), that there should be more representatives throughout the community who have admin access to the calendar.
    • I would just suggest that we take our time tonight with the things that are disappearing rather than things are just slightly changing.
    • Sarah: There's a lot of vagueness when it comes to our Media and that has to stop because it makes us all sit around frustrating.

• Rachel: One of the reasons there is so much vagueness is because we haven't gotten to the meat of our agenda, which was laying out the audit of all the bubbles and going through the list. So I'd like to propose that we go down that list now so we can get a clearer idea of what's going on.

• Patty: I'm seeing once again that there's a lot of tension in the room and that some of the people who set this meeting up are feeling upset and are walking out and that's not good. This meeting was so that the community could come together, not so that we could separate ourselves. We also have to remember that we're all volunteers, we don't get paid. We need to remember that when we're thinking about each other. There's important information that needs to be said here, but let's not do it in the context of blaming (Dan: or interrogating). We should have a discussion as a community, not as two or three sides.

• Carolyn: What I'm going to say isn't completely in the spirit of what Patty is suggesting. My biggest concern going forward is that there's an assumption that many things will just devolve to working groups. It's been a strength of media that it represented a lot of different working groups and it kept us all from having to have that full skill set. I don't think it's realistic that we're going to do all those different functions in each working group. My hope that going forward is that we'll find a way to reconstitute a new group with those skill sets who can work with WGs.

• Ellen: I think as we're moving forward, I really love the idea that more of us can have access. My big frustration that I mentioned earlier was that we couldn't get anything on the blog without two weeks advanced notice. At the same time, the great thing about having the cohesive media WG is that many of us have different views, but it seemed like there was a cohesive message. If we do devolve into different WGs that our media will be confusing to the general public, if WGs are giving different messages to the public. So I'd hope if there'd be a circle of media elders who can give us guidance.

• Jorge: All I wanted to say is that I think that if you do want to empower the people and empower the WGs than the working groups, and people in those groups need access. Access to the blog, web, and calendar. Somewhere down the line I guess we have to work out standards and practices. That's what I like to see going to the future. Access to the people who we want to empower, and some standards and practices.

• Angela: I'd like to try to explain where I'm coming from. What I heard Sarah saying (which might not be what she meant), is that for far too long there has been far too little transparency about media. There has always been this amorphous, undefined, unamed, "who do you know is doing what". I respond to these things not because I'm trying to disrupt things, but there are political foundations, and if we take something like anti-oppression, there are ways that you do that which we're not doing here (or not all), and I'm afraid that we're going to replicate what we've already had.

• Linda: I wanted to go back to Rachel's suggestion of listing the things up there, and I'd also like to know if there are folks from the former media group who have things that they'd like to do. If there are things that we've been doing that they want to continue or new things?
  • Eli: I want to build a movement that can transform society. That's what I want to do. I don't want to write a blog post, or live stream an event. Those are tactics that will get us to the point of social transformation. I realized what we were doing was no longer building a movement. We were just responding to requests and getting burnt out. What we really want to do is media direction action. We want do twitter bomb campaigns, guerrilla messaging, etc. We want to be part of the strategy and planning this movement. I saw the Occupy MBTA and was really excited by it but didn't have any time to get involved in it. I think that if a WG is planning an event then they are the best people to talk about that issue and campaign, and if they don't have the skills to write a blog post or press release (which, I don't think there are many WGs that don't have those skills), but I want my energy to go towards building a movement.
  • Dan: What he said.

• Dana: Maybe it would be a good idea, given what Eli just said, maybe there should be a place to put resource pools, where we can say "I have skills with video editing, if you want some help contact me". Some way were people aren't just cows where you can come milk them for media.

• Chris: I am starting a documentation working group and my specific definition of this group would not be that you have to meet at the same time at this group. To be part of the WG you just have to do the work. We need to get information out that's correct. We need stability. To reach out I think we just need people to come forward.

• Ellen CC: Do you guys have energy to do workshops for us in learning some of these skills? Because if you did, that could empower all these people.
  • Eli: We're not leaving. As an example Gunner. During Occupy MBTA Gunner did press trainings for people in that group. People are willing to share these skills in the context in a group or a campaign. We can do general workshops but that's not effective in my experience. It's much more effect in the context of an event or campaign. Maybe a resource pool is a great idea.

• Bil Point of Process: I am utterly confused as to what topic we're on. Can the facil. clarify.
  • Patty: We were about to start talking about the inventory of media resources, but we started to move into media direction action, so I started listing some ideas for how to accomplish that.

• Eli: Those skills exist in affinity groups and WGs, and if they don't, those groups can lean on the broader community. We should figure out how to facil. that kind of thing. We should figure out what's going to be missing in the next few weeks.

• Patrick: Thank god we're onto a constructive phase in this meeting, but we're running short on time, so are we OK on stretching this out into two or three meetings.
• Sarah: I'd like to stress that it should be a get shit done meeting, not a therapy session meeting.
• Eli: We have until 9:30.

• Patty: It sounds like some people want to hear what's immediate and can't wait until another meeting. So, I'm asking the ex-media folks, is there something the group used to do that needs to be taken over immediately.
• Eli: Right now we have an email address that's media@occupyboston.org, at the bottom of our website. I've been the only one monitoring that, and have just been forwarding a bunch of stuff to the community forum list. That email is receiving a lot of mail, and it needs to be taken care of.
  • Angela: How many hours do you think you spend on that a week?
  • Eli: it's not so much hours. It's not just receiving or responding, it's figuring out the best way to deal with that request. The question is how are we going to fill that hole. Is nobody going to reply? Or are seven people going to replying to the same thing.
• Rich: what I'm hearing here, and this has been one of my concerns, if everything decentralizes to our WGs, what's going to represent us as the sum of our WGs?
• Eli: I am still continuing to receive that list and just forwarding to the old media wg until we find a solution.
• Patty: You also mentioned text, is that something which is an immediate concern?
• Eli: yes, and no. The guidelines are all posted on the wiki. There is an open group that anybody can join which can temp check things to be sent out to the text list. To be honest it's basically only me and (Dan) Cheeno that have sent messages out to that list, but we should talk about it.

• Ellen: Horizontal is great, but sometimes with an email request we've just got to get shit down. This has been my experience with media, sometimes you don't have time to make a consensus decision.
• Anna: Right now there's nobody to write a blog post and a press release, and nobody is doing it.

• Dana: I'm suggesting that if people come to that email, the way to phrase what's going on is to say "we're reorganizing media at OB" rather than "media has dissolved". It sounds more positive. I like that we're reorganizing for an infrastructural change that we're making for a long term. So you're saying that you can keep doing the email requests, should we talk about that so it's not just one person doing that?

• Linda: What I have been wanting to say is that I feel the media DA stuff is just as important as the other stuff that's up there and it's all a list of things that we need to take care of. We might not know what the most important things are until we get them all up there (on the board).

• Rachel: So, email requests deals with one side of this, which is external media wanted to talk about occupy boston. The other side is OB wanted to make it's own media. Those happen by separate mechanisms. There are other ways that press requests come in. Because news media is used to dealing with particular individuals, there are a few people who external media is used to getting requests from. Typically those people would bring the request to the media email list. The other side is blog posts, press releases, what we do when we plan an action. There are a group of people who can currently post to the blog. That group can expand. The proposal that came out of the media inventory was that (the blog) should become a separate bubble to make it easier for people to get posts on the blog. That means people will write their own blog posts and send them to the bubble to just press the button and post them. Gunner spent some time building his own personal press list. He has generously offered to go through that list and a list of all the coverage we've gotten so far and building a master list of press contacts for OB. What we do with that press list is also something to talk about. There are many people within the media WG would I'm sure would be happy if you asked them individual to help write a press release.

• Josh: I just wanted to clarify that there are several types of blog posts, those that happen pre- and post- event posts. In terms of going forward with the blog, there are different levels of access to the blog that we could give out. We could set up that people could write posts, but those don't actually get posted until approve by some QA group. There are people who have access to the blog, but currently we're (media wg) is not going to be actively posting about that.
  • Rachel: what needs to be formalized is who people need to get in touch with to post to the blog.

• Sarah: why don't we use the new tool that OBIT has setup of the forum, because then it's all there and the public can see it. People can comment on the thing if they want to, but they're all there for the public to see.

• Patty: this meeting needs to end in 10 minutes. It's obvious there's going to need to be at least another meeting about it. I'm going to suggest that people submit specific questions that need to be answered like "how do I get something on the calendar", and perhaps the group formely known as media can sift through those and help come up with some answers for how we can move forward. We also have to decide when we want to have another meeting.
  • Rachel: We've spent a fair amount of time talking about this now, and we're maybe at the point were in addition to questions people can submit concrete proposals. If we decided when the meetings going to be we could say "have those in by X time."
  • Rich: I just had a question, whether this should be another meeting, or if it should use the new process for discussion at GA.
• Patty: the proposal on the floor is that instead of having another meeting we do it at GA.
• Ellen: I hear what you're saying Rich, but I feel like it would be beneficial to have another meeting before we go to GA and have to start again with a whole new group of people.
• Linda: I think it's really important that we hear from the former media WG folks about how they would like to proceed.
  • Eli: Peronsonally I don't think that it should be on us at all to decide. I think there are enough people in the media WG who are committed to making sure this happens smoothly.

• Dana: can you meet Wednesday at 6?
  • Eli: yup.

• Liam: we did preface the vote to dissolve with a commitment to an orderly transition.

• Jorge: there's also a possibility to use the community gather on May 7.

• Patty: There are three possibilities, bring it to GA, have a meeting at the same time next week at e5, or to have it at an open community gathering at st. pauls on the 7th.
  • Anna: Safer spaces was working to use that community gathering time for a May 1st debrief.

• Anna C: 7 is so late on a weekday.
• Patty: It seems like some people would prefer 6.
• Positive temp check on 6 - 8:30

• Patty: what are we going to do to about people who want to send questions/proposals for the next meeting?
  • Rachel: I think there should be a single thread on community forum, and hopefully somebody can agree to collate the responses.
  • Angela: What's community forum?
  • It's another mailing list that a lot of people are on.

• Patty: apparently this space is not available next week at 6-9. So we're back to square one.
  • Rachel: can somebody volunteer to recieve questions and proposals?
    • Dan Cheeno: I will.
  • Angela: I'll volunteer to find a space for this meeting next week.

• Patty: Is there anything that absolutely needed to be discussed tonight that wasn't?
  • Eli: We need to clean up!

• Patty: Thanks to the people form media for setting this up!