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Meeting Notes - April 19, 2003
Notes from Saturday, April 19 meeting of the North Seattle Neighbors for Peace and Justice:
notes taken by Eric Maia
Present Eric Maia, Tom Swenson-Healy, Judy Cree, Marty Zupan, Kay Groves, Janet Siebal, Abe Osheroff and Gunnel Clark
Events -
Potluck and Bluegrass concert coming up on Saturday, May 3. This is a fundraiser for the Fellowship of Reconciliation. The Stirring Committee will call the phone tree to promote the event, but we decided we didn't need to go beyond our group for this event - e.g. no fliers.
Fellowship of Reconciliation is also having another potluck of their own, next Sunday April 27 at the Woodland Park Pres. Church. There will be a speaker on the connection between the peace movement and the environmental movement.
SNOW is doing a joint action with Women in Black at their regular vigil on May 8, Westlake.
We're also in planning phase for a small garden party on May 10 - for folks from the North Seattle group, our spouses and friends. More to come on this later.
Brainstorm on what our focus should be:
There was some discussion about political action. We decided it was premature and counter-productive to focus on a "dump Bush" message right now. We should possibly get involved with more local (congressional) elections this fall if there is anything that looks productive - remind people what their incumbents voted for this year...
Outreach & Education should be our primary focus right now - strengthen our network during this "down time." Reach more people in our local community and strengthen our connections - keep the network ready for the next period of urgent action.
One possible topic to discuss and educate on: what is the war doing at home? Effect on our community and our civil liberties.
We should also take some time to keep our spirits up - for example, the garden party. This will help us get to know each other better, since we're in this for the long haul.
Our educational events have been going well:
The Gerri Haynes talk was very successful - about 80 people attended.
The video tapes are distributed and being shown - when you loan or show the tapes, please send a little update to Eric Maia at maias@speakeasy.net, to be posted on the new "Accomplishment" page, so we all get an idea of what's happening.
Web site - I'll put together a new "Accomplishments" page where we can add little reports of what we're doing. That way, we can all see what's going on, and it should be pretty encouraging.
I will also be putting together a "Sign Gallery" on the Web site to showcase creative ways people are displaying their yard signs or other messages. If you see anything that catches your eye, send me an e-mail maias@speakeasy.net (or send me a digital photo if you can get one yourself).
People obviously still have a strong need to make a statement and are keeping their yard signs in place. Since "NO IRAQ WAR" or "TROOPS HOME NOW" no longer are the right messages, we thought there might be a need for a new message. I'll draft up a design for a new sign, based on the button and banner, that says "Neighbors for Peace & Justice" over blue (or the UN flag as a background) so we can see if it would be of interest.
New educational proposals -
Future Speaker: a suggestion was made to ask the ACLU to provide a speaker about the Patriot Act.
Educational "clearinghouse" on Web: since the videos seem to be doing well, we may want to also develop a lending library of books, and also point people to other educational resources - articles, TV shows, etc. *****We would like to encourage people to make suggestions of videos to be added to our "Lending Library."