All right, this is the December 5, 2024 general meeting recording.
I forget what we usually do. We do a recording check, and then I think we do agenda overview. So for the agenda, we're just doing one by law modification so we can have our steering committee vote. Quick update on the tax form that me and Chris worked on. The steering committee elections, any call to order in leadership,
roll call. Introductions, okay,
the coalition thing we talked about before, and then an end of year review. So super chill. I did see Tanner. I did see we can add it to the very end before we do our end of your discussion. All right, so for roll call, we can just do a do new members. Think everyone is here when Miles is here. But miles, if you want to do another intro, go for it now that you're officially a member. Oh yeah, sure.
Hello. I'm Miles. I came to, I came to a meeting, like, I want to say it was like maybe three or four weeks ago, I was there in person for that one. Currently, yeah, it's my first time. I just, just became a member, and never even done a Zoom meeting before. So this is a first time I'm fresh eyes on everything.
Well, welcome. Thank you so much for joining. In terms of and then we do the members in distress. Check. Adrian's not in distress, but she's in a meeting, so she can't make it. She got double booked today. Robbie can't make it. He is not feeling well and hasn't been able to sleep for all day, so, or, I guess, all night either. So he is super sleep deprived and not able to make it today, and anyone else have anything, just a general wellness check in With everyone in their families.
My family is good,
all right. Well, everyone else is good.
That is good.
I'm Curt. I'm currently here right now because I'm on family leave for for family they're okay for now, but yeah,
well, hoping they stay okay. Thanks for hopping on anyways, and think that's it. Are we good? Move on? I'm gonna say yes. Okay, so first item of old business, bylaw modification. So we posted this on the forum two weeks ago. You can go to link see the original post. Basically what it does is it takes in our current bylaws, we have one membership coordinator that takes care of membership and education, and it splits them into two positions for membership coordinator and education coordinator, and then we just updated section campaign coordinator, Section 10, because it was section nine before this requires a 2/3 vote for approval. So since there's six of us, we will need four people at least to vote yes any discussion on this? Is everyone good with it? Any questions, concerns, comments,
I'm in favor of it, but that's I feel like kind of obvious. It is. You know, even from when we started, it was two roles, really, that, you know, probably should be split up. But, you know, I also it makes the steering committee an odd number, which feels better for some reason, it doesn't actually matter that much, but
that's my opinion. Yeah, really like that number in our first meeting, we there were, it was supposed to be two positions, but no one else raised their hand so they got fused. Um, all right. I. Anyone else also,
I'm going to drop the link to the notes in the chat
go on thrice. Yeah, thanks. You can follow along at home, just on your phone instead of having a look at the screen, if you don't want to. All right, so I guess I will move to adopt this bylaw modification, changing membership coordinator into steering committee, membership coordinator and education coordinator, expanding steering committee to five members. Everyone in favor? Please raise your hands.
Tanner. Pete miles, Riley, me and Christina. All right, unanimous approval. Hey, thank you, everyone. All right. Next item is a tax form, 20 or 1024, A, this is a tax form to finally to officially qualify us as a 501, c4, non profit. We had approved this already back in April, but we still had quite like we ended up afterwards questioning what we had written. So me and Chris went back and we wrote some things. We didn't do a whole lot of editing. We kind of just rephrased the section. I'm not going to read it all, because that's how we lose numbers change the percentage of the round to saying, you know, labor rights and unionizing efforts, in terms of, like, educating people, helping people organize, etc, is 15% tenant rights. We bumped it up to 35 I think it was 25 before political education. We said 15, and then supporting legislation and policies we put at 35% I think before it was also 25 and we felt like it was too low, and they might critique us for, you know, artificially putting it low, but this is still below the recommended, you know, 49% that they say that you should do. The other thing we changed was in terms of activities, engaging in actual elections. So this is different from this supporting legislations and policies. You can do that as a nonprofit, and doesn't count as like election, election influence. So that's why this is 25% instead of 35% because there may be times when we're talking about just policy that doesn't count as election stuff, especially now that the next year is going to be off election time. There's no really elections for us to interfere with anyways. And so we cut it down to 25 we started mentioning last time we had said, just blanket, we're just talking about everyone, and we didn't put in specifics. But they want specifics, because they said, explain in detail. So we talked about the no votes for genocide campaign. We talked about political outreach, printing materials and petitions and flyers and organizing community events and incur and to inform the public and encourage participation. This is a big thing, like they want you to know that you're trying to get people to participate in the political process, because that is a public good. So that's how we're phrasing it. So yeah, we just wanted run this past everyone again, get another approval. I've put all of the invoices for everything we have spent into the treasures inbox, and so it's on a folder and a drive. The last thing we have to do is compile that, and then we're done. And we have about $1,200 from from dues so far. So it will cost $800 to file this, so the $200 is going away, but after that, we'll be set, yeah, we'll be set with nonprofit status. We can get our official bank account, and then we can hopefully open up to doing more things like collecting donations, if that's what people want, but we gotta actually get our 501 c4 status first. So any questions, comments, concerns going forward with this document.
So this is we're applying for, applying for tax exempt status as a nonprofit.
Yeah, so the 501, c4, so that lets us do some political activity. Okay,
we weren't able to do that before completely, like in the green. So,
no, you haven't, I think,
I think even working on it for like, a year, right?
Yeah, yeah. You have a long time from when you file for, like, intent to form a 501 c4 then you have, I think it's over 18 months actually, because I thought it was 18 and then me and Chris style was actually a lot more. It might be something like 24 months or something. So you have a long time after that to then officially file your 501 c4 paperwork based. What that does. What that does is lets people make these organizations fund them, influence elections, and then no one knows where the money is coming from. And then, like, two years later, after the next election cycle is, like, already done, then you can file on the paperwork and be like, Oh, it was actually Richie Rich over here that was funding it. But, you know, no one knows before the election.
I see, I see, I see,
but that grace period allowed us to actually finish this also,
800 800 bucks. That's a lot to file. But yeah, yeah, I don't have any questions. It seems like that's that seems like a good I'm in favor of it. Anyone else I
um, do we so like, as far like, like, percentage wise? How close are we to if, I mean, obviously you don't know, because, like, you can't go to the Franchise Tax Board or whatever and ask them, but where do you think percentage wise we're at on this
in terms of actual time spent?
Well, no, no, no, sorry. I mean, as far as, like, how close to finishing and like, getting qualifying for 501, c4, are we? Do you think, Oh,
we can file this month. Like I said, the last thing we have to do is, basically there's one column for expenses, which is just summing up all the invoice sheets that we have. And it's like the same thing every month. So it's basically just finding, like, six numbers and then times anyway, by 12 and we put in there's membership dues, we just put in the number from stripe, and then we're done like, those are the last two things we have to do cool. And then if they op, send it back, then they send it back, and we can do revisions. But honestly, I think this should work fine. I
All right, if no one has anything else, Tanner
wants to know if it costs to refile. Hey,
I know so many people here pull up a chair. I forgot my HDMI cable, so there's no TV. Um, I think it costs money every year to refile, and then we're filing. We just have to update the section where it doesn't cost money to refile. If they reject it every year, you basically just submit either a short form. If, like, your percentages don't change, we just updated dollar amounts, and if your percentages do change, then you just update that section and send it back to
them. Ooh, that hair. I
All right, you got the second microphone. Do you
want the second microphone? Sure. Hi,
you're dead quiet.
I think I turned it off. Oh,
um, I moved to approve the 1024, a tax form. Are we refiling? Okay, I moved to approve it. Yippee.
Fingers crossed.
I will vote in favor of this. Oh,
I moved to vote not approve. All right. Am I supposed to say? Move to approve.
Yeah, Move to approve. US, the Treasurer submitting the document, I guess, to the IRS. Anyone in favor, please raise your hands.
All right, that's unanimous All in favor. Thank you very much. If a new person joins, please tell me, because I can only see six people on the screen, so I won't see if you're not actually raising your hand. All right. Next up is steering committee elections. First big round of applause to everyone that was nominated. Congratulations.
Congrats guys.
How do I do the the React also, congratulations
to Christina, who was also nominated. Oh, so first we're just going to go over the bylaws real quick. We approved these back in April. This was when we had some new members, and they all quit because we were going on our bylaw binge. But yeah, they they died, so we could have a majority voting. System. Basically it's elections are just majority voting, so any candidate who receives a majority of the votes is declared the winner, and a majority is defined as more than half of the votes cast. Abstentions don't count in determining the majority. So if you abstain, you're just removing yourself from the vote. And if we had three people say, then there would be a runoff between the top two candidates. All votes will be public, so no one is anonymous on this. The reason for that was just to prevent factions from forming and just in fighting from anonymous votes. Transparency is just good, and then everyone can talk to each other. If we know where everyone's stances are, all their votes will be recorded. The Secretary will go ahead and post in the minutes who voted for what, and our record will be there. And if anyone asks for the votes, it's up to the secretary to provide them any questions about that? Okay, I guess we choose to. We can just vote on the people who don't have two people running, or the seats I don't have two people running. So I'm gonna, I guess. I wish Robbie was here. He's the guy that knows all these roles. But we just do it one by one, I guess. So I'll move to vote for, put forward the vote for the English Committee, which is Pete eight. If you want to say any education, education, yeah. Education Committee. Um Pete, if you want to say something, you can otherwise, we can just proceed to the vote. Um,
yeah, yeah. I don't really have anything to say besides just that, something that interests me and that as someone who is currently in education, but also just interested in political education, it just felt like kind of a no brainer for me to at least nominate, put myself out there with the nomination.
All righty. Then everyone in favor of Pete becoming the next education committee member? Please raise your hands, Pete, you can vote for yourself if you want.
Opposed
this is a second vote.
Congratulations, Pete,
congratulations, unopposed and a unanimous vote. Very nice, as good as it gets. It
would have been funny if I just kept my hand down. Like, I mean, like, I'm not gonna do it. Just not me. You can if you want. Yeah,
all right, the next one is campaign coordinator. Me, yeah, I guess next year I want us to think a little bit harder before we do focus campaigns and really try to attack power. And I think that's where I want to take the tenant union work, you know, really target, not just targeting random areas, but like going after the powerful people in sandkin County, and they're where they are landlords. So we can actually, you know, that way the tenants actually serve as a lever to try to get stuff done here in Stockton, and which will be more effective, go after the bigger players versus, like a rental landlord somewhere in Stockton. Not to say that we will not help everyone, but, you know, prioritizing. But yeah, I guess we'll say everyone in favor. Raise your hands. Check myself. I
don't become capable of this role. Yes,
unanimous. Thank you very much.
Congrats, Harpreet,
thank you.
Two years in a row,
the dictatorship has started. Is Chris, just on behalf Chris, I know that our database stuff has been taking a while, but Chris is knowledgeable about a lot of the database stuff that we have been working on. We actually lost a bunch of progress because we haven't been paying for an 8n and super base because we weren't using it, and it's like 50 bucks a month, and they deleted all of our work because we weren't using it, but we did go back and redo everything, and we're in a much better place than we were before. So just on behalf Chris, just want to say he is making progress on a lot of that stuff, and I'm hoping going into next year. We can do everything from having actual budget reports to having, like, a database of votes and have being able to record our time so in terms of, like, where we spend our efforts, so we can, you know, report that to the IRS if they want. That'd be good. So everyone in favor, raise your hands.
All right, unanimous congratulations, Chris,
yeah, they say 93% it's impossible. No, 100% every time.
All right, so our first two people selection process is between for Secretary, between besma and Robbie. Yeah, like I said, Robbie can't be here. I guess I'll just stand him afterwards, if it's even. But that's not go ahead. You can go first. Oh,
um, I don't know too much about the secretary position, other than like Rob does a lot. I know that's not good for selling myself, but I adapt. Am I supposed to sell myself? I adapt really quickly. I want to learn new skills. I Oh, well, I have only experienced interviews. Yeah, I want to do more. I have a lot of capacity. I want to do more for the org. Honestly, in any role that I would have been nominated for, I would have agreed to do it. Yeah, I want to give more of my time, as much as my time, to actually help create change in whatever way that we plan. That's all I have to say. That's my selling point. Guys.
Alrighty, yeah, I guess on Robbie's behalf, he has been keeping up with the minutes and he knows all of all of Robert's Rules, which is a very useful skill for people like us who know nothing. But yeah, all right, so I guess we'll can we do? Do, can you do two different emojis on here? Like, how do you vote? Yeah.
So do you want to do, like the balloon for vesma and the rocket ship for Robbie or something like that? I
don't know if those are recorded on Zoom. I'm gonna write them. Who votes for him. Okay, how about Raise your hands if you vote for vesma, and then I'll just report it later. That's my vote for besma Tanner, miles, rightly, okay, and then you can Christine. Is that for besmir? Is that for Robbie?
It's okay.
I'm really sorry I was very slow because I was looking at all the different emojis. I got lost. Yeah, so that's for Bosma. Although I just Yeah, I don't, I don't know Robbie, and I feel like I know Bosma more, and Robbie knows Robert's Rules, which I suppose is really appropriate. Yeah, no, I'm sorry, yes, I am raising my hand for batma. There you go. All right, yes,
12345, okay,
so it was unanimous, almost unanimous. Okay, I did.
Christina, were you saying something? No, no, sir. So
I'm really sorry. I'm eating and I'm like, I'm sorry. No, I'm not saying anything.
I'm done. Don't worry about it.
I'll be diligent with Robert's Rules. Guys.
Well, I, I think, I also think that we, we can. The thing is, like, we have people who have been doing job, like, specific jobs, right? They can still help with those things, even if they're not on the steering committee. That's like the way it was supposed to work originally, anyway. So,
yes, this is not a Here you go. Good luck. There is a constant hand holding process throughout the whole thing, you know, and that can last throughout your entire term. And then, you know, you can repay the favor to the next person. Or we can have, like, two people who are skilled at different things, as Secretary, helping the third person, you know, in year in year two, from here or year three.
Understudies were a thing originally that we were planning on doing, so we should do that. Congratulations.
Vespa, yay.
Yay.
Just to add something, I was just thinking. You have a old writing club I used to be a part of where we would switch off on, like, roles, just so we'd all have kind of experience. I just think, like, going forward, that probably be, I mean, like, I might be interested in, like, doing another position, for example, is just like, probably wise that we all have knowledge and experience in the different positions, at least for a little bit.
That was my thought process, too. With it, of like, everyone should eventually, like, have a role just so let's say someone is out of capacity, or someone has to leave for whatever reason. We're all, like, skilled in these different areas and so like, if we need more help with education committee stuff, like, we can have someone help. If we need Secretary needs help, you know? Yeah,
well, technically, steering committee is supposed to ask for help all the time.
Oh, yeah, be prepared, guys. I constantly
ask for help. Alright, can't and
now the second one is membership coordinator, which is Adri and Riley. I asked Adri, like I said, is in a meeting. I asked her if she wants to give a short statement she's typing it so Riley, you can go first while she's typing.
Yeah, I did my best the last couple or the last year and a half or whatever it was. I think it might be a little bit easier to like narrow focus slightly. But I also think that I would like to see going into next year a focus on recruitment. And so I think membership is going to be important for that, and so I, yeah, I want to do that for sure,
alrighty. And Adri says she'd like to be open to feedback on what members would like. She would also like to maintain requisites for membership and even re examine some of the requirements we have to ensure that we have more participation across the board. All right, everyone in favor of aid? Referee first, raise your hands.
Yeah. All right, got 102 all right, and oh Pete, Okay, anyone else before I move on, I all right, and Riley, please,
definitely voting for myself.
All right. Congratulations, Riley, you are the new membership coordinator.
Whoo. Yay.
All right. All right, congratulations. New steering committee. We meet on the Monday after the working meetings.
May I say something very quickly on behalf of the elections committee, yep, so I am one half of the Can everybody hear me? Okay, yeah, I am one half of the temporary elections committee that was intended to collect nominations and make sure everybody who was nominated was actually willing to run and whatnot. So I just want to congratulate everybody who was elected and everybody who was nominated, because I think honestly, everybody who was nominated was more than qualified to do the job, and everybody is awesome. So I wanted to say that. I also wanted to do a quick shout out to Peter, who could not be here tonight, but he also assists with that process as well. So yeah, much love. You
guys did such an incredible job with the nomination committee. So
yes, and nominations committee also.
Oh, and if we have time at the end. I also posted a thing on the steering committee meeting notes, but we'll see if we have time for that at the end. So,
all right, moving forward, new business, the tenant union focused campaign leadership. So Sean is at work, and I think Nora couldn't make it either, but they both nominated themselves to be in the leadership position for the tenant union focused campaign. I. I guess I will also sell them, since they're not here, Nora has been really helpful with calculator. We've made a lot of progress because she was able to, because she lives there, she was able to talk to the property manager there. So we have the rules and regs. We have the ccnr. We have the bylaws from before. So we made a lot of progress in terms of like what we've done so far. Sean also, and both of them have been working on the tenant union handbook. And thank you for Best Buy and Christina for also working on the handbook. I think we'll be done probably this weekend, with at least an initial draft of the handbook. And both of them have also been interested in just learning more about how, you know, we could do better organizing for tenant unions. So, yeah, I think there would be great additions to the focus campaign. So on going to move to we'll have two votes move to vote for Sean, for the 10 union focus campaign leadership position All in favor. Well, any questions first, I guess, sorry, um, I guess I just go over the bylaws for what the leadership position is, because, just in case folks aren't clear and there are a few new people, um, so each focus campaign, um, you know, we have two focus campaigns. Each campaign can have a leadership position. It can be one or more people. So for this, we're going to have two if people approve both people, the campaign leadership can be elected by a simple majority at a general meeting anytime after the approval of a focus campaign, and they're responsible for overseeing the operations of the campaign. It could be any member in good standing, and campaign leadership is authorized to plan, execute actions, mobilize membership, issue statements, undertake other necessary measures to achieve the goals and objectives approved by the membership. But just everything has to be approved by the campaign coordinator first. So there is some autonomy and what you can do, although the practice so far from our Palestine focus campaign has been, if we do have like statements or major events that we bring it back to the membership, it is not necessary. So if we have some emergency thing, like protests or something, you can move forward with it. But otherwise, it is good practice to still come back to membership and not run totally autonomous as a campaign lead, and that's how we plan to keep doing it moving forward. But yeah, any questions?
So we there's no cap on how many campaign leadership positions there are.
There's like a five or two
No, so you can it's just at least one, I believe, so you can have as many. I think
it was supposed to be one campaign leader per campaign, plus the campaign coordinator, so like, one in steering committee and then one in each of the campaigns.
Yeah, so it's the least one, but it can be expanded. And I think just for capacity reasons, it will be nice to have two people on board,
and you can vote for both people twice. You can, like, you can both vote for each person once there's two people running,
right? Yeah, there'll be two separate votes, so you can vote for both people. Cool.
Anyone else? All right, all right, yeah, like I said, I moved to approve Sean as one of two campaign focus, campaign for tenant union leadership position. All in favor. Please raise your hands.
Unanimous approval. Thank you very much. And then I also moved to elect Nora as the second tenant union campaign lead All in favor, please raise hands better. All not in favor. Please raise your hands and Any abstentions? All right, thank you very much. Round of applause to tan or to Nora and Sean, yay. Like a sound board where we can just like play,
yeah, and whoever loses air horns. Brandon,
okay, brilliant, almost done with the boring stuff. Okay, so last two things are better discussion topics. Well, there's one item that Tanner submitted that we'll do before end of your review. So please remind me. That, but we still have 50 minutes, so I guess we can dedicate like, 1520 minutes to this. We're
Honestly, we're cooking time wise. We're like, Yeah,
this meeting, we've ever had
efficiency through the roof, like,
within 10 minutes of the meeting. Wow,
look at us. Okay,
so we had previously talked about making like a coalition meetings. You know, we were presented with a proposal, but I, like the membership, kind of disagreed with how the how that coalition was being formed. But I did reach out to those folks, and they said, if there's any coalition type stuff that we want to do, they're more than open to participating, and they they want to participate. So we had, yeah, we had previously talked about it, so I wanted to, let's spend like 20 minutes talking about that again, if people are interested in it. So like, there's questions of, like, Who do we actually invite to these kind of coalition things, other socialist organizations, or do we expand it to, like, neighborhood groups, religious organizations, community organizations that are doing, you know, work? Should the meetings be offline? Should we stream them so they're very stream them? Should we do like, half and half, so you can talk about stuff offline, and then other stuff you can do online as a kind of a way to, like, promote your work at the same time that you're discussing it with the with the coalition. And, yeah, should we? And, yeah, I'm doing this question, like, should they be completely open? Anyone? Community members share their projects. You know, the groups present can present feedback, open up opportunities to collaborate, and then perhaps, like our role can be kind of putting the socialist twist on stuff that people are working on. That way they're not just doing normal like electoralism or like lobbying. But again, Open Meetings carry risks in terms of people knowing what everyone's doing. Some organizations might see us as just a volunteer pool where they can come and get volunteers, especially projects that you know already align with what people think needs to be done. Like you tell people you know someone's like, Oh, I know someone who's running for city council. It's really important everyone's a lot of people are still very in electoral mode, and maybe that sucks in a lot of energy. So, like, how do we deal with that? Do we just let them in, but then do direct and honest feedback? But yeah, I guess we could just, like, a minute and a half for everyone, if, like, if
I was gonna say, How much time do we want to spend on this? Yeah, I
guess then we could do 20 and then still have 25 at the end
okay, 20 minute timer.
Sure. Let's do 1515. Okay, save half an hour for end of year review. But yeah, let's try to keep your comments like a minute and a half ish, just so we have a chance for everyone to go back and forth. But yeah, anyone that wants to go, go for it.
I have a quick question. What are, is there a, is there a specific goal to having these coalition meetings, other than community building? Because, I mean, obviously I'm in favor of that, but, I'm just curious if there is a direct goal to this, other than just, like meeting, making connections, basically,
yeah, I think the I mean, at least personally, and what we talked about at for the first meeting that we had with the with the other organization, like, there are pockets of left wing groups in San Joaquin County, but no one's really coordinating. And like we kind of generally agree with what they were talking about in terms of, there are a bunch of groups who aren't coordinating. There's a lot of people duplicating efforts when they shouldn't be, because we just don't talk to each other. But also, I think it's important for the leftist who are here to be able to critique each other in kind of open and, like, like, honest manner, like with each other in terms instead of just, you know, saying shit at rallies about other organizations, instead of saying it to their face. So, yeah, that's kind of, it's kind of what this, what this would be for.
I also want to add on that, I think, going off of what Harpreet was saying, the we have a lot of people in the San Joaquin County, and we have a lot of organizations that do separate things, I think if we organize with like, other organizations, you know, if we actually have, like, clear communication, if we know what we're doing, what they're doing, if we, like, talk to them about what we want to do, we could actually, like, bring more numbers, right? It could take some weight, alleviate some of the weight off of us feeling like, oh, this thing is so big. Think the, you know, range of the San Joaquin County is so large that, like, what are we going to do? Right? A lot of our efforts have been focused just in Stockton. So it like, in the grand scheme of things, it feels like we're not doing anything. Also, I think it's it would be good to hear like constructive criticism, or, like, learn from other orgs mistakes without having to do it ourselves. There's a lot of things that, like in hindsight we learned that we shouldn't do, and maybe, like hearing and talking to other orgs, we can learn about strategies and tactics that have worked for them in their respective cities. And yeah, I just think it would be, like, helpful, and also, like, what you were saying kind of with the tanner, with the community building aspect of it, of like, okay, we can do, we talk about wanting to do mutual aid, here's this organization that does it right, and we can coordinate with them, or COP cities right stuff having to do deal with, like, police brutality. Here we can, like, work with them. We can coordinate with them, rather than feeling like we have to build everything up from the ground up ourselves.
Just to add on to that, I think also it's good to like, obviously some of these groups are just going to be like, we know you guys are doing stuff because you get grant money for doing it, and, like, no one really cares about this stuff. But hopefully there are also other community groups that are organic and ground up, and it would be good to connect with those people, because those are, like, real concerns that working people have and that they're already organizing for, and that we could really, we could help elevate to the next level. And it helps us. It puts us in sync with what people actually are struggling with and what they actually want, versus us kind of doing like a top down like, Oh, this is what you need, and let us or let us help you in a way that we think is best. So, yeah, i
Anyone have any comments that they want to share, any thoughts of like, who we should work with, what should like, where should we draw the line? Any concerns, any things that you do want to see talked about, anything of that nature?
Okay? I would just say sorry, just my comment. Agree with both of you for sure and definitely with
what Harpreet said in terms of, yeah, just getting to know people as opposed to getting to know people, as opposed to be like a top down kind of a organization and telling them what they need, or
all of that. And I guess the only thing from what I've seen is, yeah, to be careful to not become like a volunteer pool kind of thing, like not to get sucked into that, you know,
that just has to be evaluated. You know, as you go along, you just have to be aware of it. But just,
I guess, kind of always the goals that you guys just articulated, just kind of keep, keep those in mind, kind of with every thing that we do, because it can slide into something else, you know, and be a drain. Um, and then um. I think that in any of these organizations that are listed are great, any and all. Um, um, I don't really. I I think that in person is pretty important. Having in person meetings is pretty important in terms of, should the meetings be offline, only streamed, or half and half definitely have to have some in person stuff. Um,
I guess that's all I really had to say. But, um, I don't know how you know, how those, how the outreach will go, how the like reaching out to build these relationships,
what that process will be, and what, how we what the process would be for deciding which ones you want to work with or partner with or coordinate with, or not. I guess I'm wondering what that process would look like.
Yeah, I think there is, of course, a risk of, like, being associated with people that we don't want to be associated with. But I think, you know, at the same time, maybe if we do promote it as being very open, and it's not. I guess that moves it away from being like a coalition, where it's like a set number of people that we always meet with regularly, and turning it more into like just the public space for anyone to come. And we're just kind of like organizing it and like anyone can come that way. We're not actually tied to anyone that comes. We're just hosting a space.
Tesla, you want to go? No, you can go. I think we're, I think we're going to say the same thing. Well, yeah,
so the last couple of meetings, I think we both suggested doing like, you know, community assemblies or whatever. And we could, you know, test the water by inviting individuals from the groups that we are interested in potentially working with to the like community assemblies. And then, if you know, if the vibes right and like the, you know, we feel like they're the kind of people we could work with, then we could be like, Hey, would your organization be interested in working with us on this thing and just kind of, you know, like, one step at a time instead of just jumping straight into the deep end kind of thing?
Yeah, I guess, what is the actual goal of, like, what we want out of these, like, is it just exposure to each other? And then, you know, from there, like, you could pick the people that we like and then invite them to
that seems like the first to me. That seems like the first step right is like, just getting to know people, and then if we if they seem like the kind of people we would like to work with, then we'll know kind of better what our goal should be, right? Because, you know, like, cb by POC might be like, good at one thing, and like, you know, Stockton, you know, like, every group's gonna have a different thing that they're good at, and we can work with them on whatever it is that
they're good at.
Oh no, go ahead. It's,
it seems like there's no downsides to having it being open and having the coalition meetings, because you get to take stuff from different pools, you get exposed to all the different pools and you're, you know, like I'm reading it here, it says carrying risks. Some organizations might only seek volunteer labor, direct honest feedback about proposed ideas. Could help screen people like that out. It seems like a win. Win. You're, you're being exposed to maybe some ideas that are a little maybe you don't agree with them so much. Maybe like you like it says there. There might be some people that are just seeking volunteer labor, but I think, I think the rewards sound to me like they outweigh the risk. Because you're you're getting more feet on the ground, you're getting more ears out to hear things from different perspectives and see where they excel, see where they may be lack in some places. Build like a constructive understanding of where you can go from it. And also, you're pulling people into the group too, who might, you know, be looking for a place to jump into. And you know, see, you're open for those people. Maybe you're going to invite some people that you don't see eye to eye with, but, yeah, it's, it's good, good way of building up, like, a general kind of immunity. You know what? I mean?
Can I? Can I offer a metaphor, a metaphor or a comparison? It's like when a content creator makes content with a bigger content creator, and they're, like, trying to leech off their audience a little bit. It's like, we're gonna, we're gonna do, you know, something with, uh, with this group over here. And it's really just so that we can get more members to do we really want to do. That's the way I'm viewing it. At least,
I like that comparison. Um, to my, my only concern with having everything be like public, I'm talking in terms of like strategy sometimes, or things like events where the element of surprise is like the biggest part of it, right? So if we are doing like strategy meetings during these like coalition meetings, of like, oh yeah, we're going to tackle this person. We're going to show up to the like to this event, right? Then it takes away the element of surprise, the shock, right? Or they can get like, an accurate count of like numbers of like groups that are going to go maybe nip it in the bud. So my suggestion is maybe, maybe having something above ground, like the people's forum, or like the community assemblies, and then, like, once we figure out, like, Oh, hey, these are people that like align with us. These are people that like we maybe not even like trust, or people that like we want to work with or want to plan events. With we can have separate, like, strategy meetings for events, just so, because I agree with everything that like 100% it's good to get people in. It's good to get more ideas in. It's good to like, have different spaces, even community members, right, that may not know anything or like, have never organized, but like, have this idea or have this concern. I think that's incredible. That's what we need. But, yeah, having, like a above facing and like a not underground,
I don't know what the other word is, underground is right word,
an underground like thing as well. Just so, I think,
sorry, two minutes, by the way, two minutes to finish what you're saying best, Mr.
I'm just going to say, like, just so some things aren't some things are still surprised, kind of like, how the forum works. We have things for public, people, for anyone to see, and then we also have other things, like the whole like, Josh harder showing up to his, what you call it fundraiser thing that was something that was locked just for members, like there's things that should be front facing and there's things that should just be left for those that organize and strategize.
Yeah, that makes sense. You gotta have a buffer, one for one for getting your feelers out there, the other for avoiding potential, like secrets getting leaked, or bad faith factors coming in and taking advantage of the openness. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Need a little bit of both. You need an even handed approach in both ways. All right.
Tanner, go ahead.
I think they both summed up what I was going to say. So it's all good.
There you go. Okay, so just to sum up, I guess, and then we can take a vote if everyone agrees on my summary. So we do need, like, an above the ground open meeting. We can, I guess we can call it whatever people can decide later, but it's just okay.
Maybe that's, that's actually kind of what I was going to say, is okay. So the broader one we call coalition meetings, the more directed and private ones we maybe call strategy meetings. I like that word strategy because it's specifically about like, Okay, we know you want to do something about this. Let's talk about maybe what we could do to solve this problem that is a little a little bit more of a private matter, you know what I mean.
Okay, so we'll have two errors. One is open meetings. It's a we'll invite whoever we should probably hold it. We'll hold it monthly. We'll establish that we'll have, like, one day, same day of the month every month. That way it's just like a regular thing that people know is happening. And we'll make it pretty open. We'll make it pretty open. We'll make it pretty public. We'll try to do in person. We'll try to hybrid, if we can, and then I guess we can decide in a bit whether it be live streamed or not. That's not super important, but that's just for a way to for us to talk to other orgs, for other orgs, and us to get feedback on what people are working on, to perhaps coordinate on things, but this is like to get into contact with people. But the main point is just for for everyone to know what everyone else is working on, no matter where you really are on the political spectrum. Like, I imagine some people, like, neither major party is going to come anyways, but everyone that's doing community projects will at least have an opportunity to come get some feedback, and for us to figure out what they're doing, and even if we don't collaborate, it's still a chance to keep in touch with what people are doing. So, you know, folks are doing, like, school board stuff, we're not involved with it at the moment, it's still good to keep in touch. It's still good to give feedback. If those people are like are confused or ask questions, it's still very useful for us to be able to give them advice and for them to give us advice on things, because those folks are going to be much more plugged into, like local politics than we are. So that would be the above ground Central Valley working class unity coalition meetings. Out of those people, you know, if we find people that we are closely aligned with politically or in terms of our goals, we can invite them to our meetings, and those can be called our working class strategy meetings. Honest. Those don't don't need to be public, they won't be public. They'll basically just be doing us, doing outreach to people that we think align with us. Everyone, okay with that description?
Yeah.
Riley, where you can,
can I make a slightly more specific suggestion? Sure, should we? Should we do because, like, if we were trying to do community assemblies once a quarter anyways, what if we do community assemblies once every three months, coalition meetings on the other off two months, right? And then the underground meetings, whenever is appropriate.
I don't think we've talked about assemblies. I
think, I think you and I were talking, we're like,
No, we talked about it at one of the
meetings. I think it was suggested before in previous meetings. But we never, actually, like,
we never voted on it, yeah, yeah. We
never voted on it. Or, like, actually, yeah,
yeah, okay. Let's not do this. We
did this last time. Let's just vote one. Let's vote one what's on the agenda, and then next time, we can add it to the agenda, if we want. We
can when, as we get into like planning, that's when we can figure out specifics. I just quickly want to go back to something that Christina mentioned about this, like, here, here were our goals. And then, like, we get too lost in the sauce eventually and just end up doing like straying from our goals. I think maybe we could do like a every three months or every however long like, reevaluation of like, have our goals clearly written out, and then see like, where we could do better, or like what we are doing more. Just so like, we don't come to the end of it and are like, Oh man, like, this was supposed to be that's something that I noticed with the Palestine stuff, yeah, just so, like, we're on top of it. We actually, like, have time to, like, look back and see things that we should have done better. That's not at the end of it.
Okay? So we'll add, sorry, just we're running out of time. So, so we'll add, I guess end of first month will, in January, will be the first month we hold something. So in February, report back on whatever the hell we did, and then in March, come back. That would be two of these, see what went well, what's working? I mean, there will be a big part of, like, we actually do have to do outreach where we're doing these meetings to get these other organizations, because we're not going to have heard of many of these organizations, and we don't have contact with many of these organizations, because they're not if we're doing broad outreach, they're not left wing, and we're not going to know who they are. So that's a process we'll have to go through, and if, like, the first two months, or just epic fails and no one comes, then maybe we re evaluate in March. Okay, so I will just reiterate, I guess, so I'll move for us to start doing starting in January, Central Valley working class unity coalition meetings. So it's like a working class coalition, not just the left wing coalition. Again, we'll invite a broad spectrum of people, basically whoever we can. If we end up doing it not here. We can try to contact the folks in the neighborhoods where we are, but that will depend on if we can actually find a place that's not here. And basically the goal is for everyone to just get in contact, figure out what other people are doing, for everyone to provide feedback to each other, and then off of them. If we find people that we really want to work with, we can hold the strategy meetings with them and throw their time whenever. In February, we'll revisit what we did in January at the general meeting, so that way everyone has a chance to provide feedback to the first attempt. And in March, we'll come back and revisit it again, and then we'll ask for another approval after that, so people don't feel like it's not going well, we can drop it and then we can reassess. Yeah, so we're basically just moving to do this twice next year, all in favor, you
uh, okay, unanimous, thank you, everyone, beautiful, all right, before end of year, one thing that Tanner wanted to discuss was a short discussion, and let's try to keep this like five minutes. We have 20 minutes for end of year review. Um, on voting by proxy, just so other dues, paying members have a chance to vote, even if they can't attend. Um, especially for, well, did you mean just for elections or for anything
I meant specifically on elections for steering committee, and honestly, I only added this specifically to have a vote on adding it to the agenda for next month, and then that, hopefully next month, we'll have a larger discussion, and then in February, actually vote on adding it to the bylaws. I simply wanted to bring it up to say, basically, we had a little issue where Adri wanted to attend but she couldn't. I thought it was pretty unfair that she, you know, she couldn't vote because she wasn't at the meeting. And so I think there's pluses and minuses to. To both having votes by proxy or just having people vote in person. I went through this with my freaking my the union that I'm a part of, I wasn't able to vote on a very key piece of legislation in their their thing that I couldn't vote on it because I wasn't there that day, and it ended up passing anyway, so it wasn't a big deal. But anyway, I want to add it to the meeting to talk about it next month. So we don't talk about it this
month. Okay? We can just add it to the agenda that doesn't need a vote. You can just, yeah,
you don't need any loan at any time. All right, then we will speak about it next month.
So then this will be added. Everyone, think about it. Okay? So last thing is, the end of your review. We did this at the end of last year. I think it was really helpful, and it writing some things for the artwork coming into this year, other stuff we didn't really get to but yeah, we just go through kind of this process of like, let's celebrate our successes. Let's talk about areas for growth improvement. And then you know any strategic recommendations that you might have, and then this will help kind of guide steering committee, the new steering committee going forward, so they know, like, what the membership actually wants done, and so they can help coordinate with membership and implement those things. So do want to just do, like, five minutes per section or something,
right real quick? Do you have the picture of what we said we wanted to do last year? I
don't want to look at that. I
kind of want to compare what we were like thought we wanted to do versus what we actually did do.
All right, while I look it up, yeah, how much time? Five minutes each section. And that's too little. I guess we can do 10 minutes.
How many people do we have in chat? 12678, let's do 10 minutes, because that's one minute per person. Basically,
yep, all right, speak quick, speak short. Celebrating our successes. What do we do? Well, what projects that we complete, what processes or operations have been improved in WCU? Do we make an impact on San Joaquin County? I
uh, I think that the the last tenant using tenant union meeting or two have shown at least a tiny sliver of progress there, and I think that's due to the hard work of everybody that's been contributing to that campaign. So, you know, while it may be not as as successful as everybody wanted it to be, I think, personally, the last couple meetings definitely showed me like, oh, some people are actually paying attention. But that's cool. I
I was thinking that we have actually done pretty good as far as increasing our membership. I think we gained more members this year than last year, which is I, you know, we should be, yeah, exactly we should be growing, right? I'm pretty happy. Also, the thing that I think is way more important is most of the new members are active members, and that is something that I am incredibly happy about.
Yeah, I think we gained more on that, because we gained a bunch last year, and then they fell off.
Yeah, they don't, they don't count.
Um, well, we bored them to literally to death. It's true.
It was a it's a learning process. We're
celebrating our successes today. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, anyone else,
yeah. Just want to say sorry I'm late, but I do want to celebrate our, our forum improvements and just general meeting etiquette improvement, like it just it's so much more streamlined now. And I think that is why we've been able to retain our new members, because it makes more sense we're still making improvements too. So,
yeah, I'd have to second that when I first joined, meetings were like, super long, and they would end, like, an hour later, and we still didn't get everything done. So like, awesome job, guys at like, condensing it, but also not taking away from, like, our conversations. I. I also think that, like, a recent process that we've like began to implement is, like planning things out further in the future. Well, we will implement something that we've talked about, something that we're like starting to think about learning from our past. Yeah. And also, I think, just clearly before going into or, like, writing up plans or things that we want to do for the focus campaigns, just like going into it with, like, okay, what are our goals? What do we actually want to see happen? How do we want to impact people. What do we want the impact to be? And then planning it around that. And then, as for impact on the San Joaquin County, I think in in general, I'm going to speak for the Palestine, the no votes for genocide stuff. I think for me, I or, I guess, like something that we did well, or something that, like projects that we did complete, I was going into this, like, prior to it, that, like, not a lot of people cared about Palestine here, because there wasn't a lot of movement. There wasn't a lot of people like that talked about it or did anything about it. And, yeah, through talking to people, I realized that there are way more people that do care about Palestine than don't, that do want to organize and do want to see change than don't. Most people just don't know what to do. And I may be, you know, foreshadowing what I want to say for, like, our areas of improvement, but like, yeah, that's, there's, there's a lot of people that are that care, that want to see change, that we should and can engage
five minutes.
Do we just have no successes? Is that why no one's talking?
I when you're when you're a leftist there is just so much fucking work to be done that, I mean, it's hard to even really count your successes, because it's just like it seems insurmountable. That's why, that's why I'm not saying much. At least
I just got here, so I can't, I can't, I can't speak to the
even that meeting we had, the post election event meeting was, was a success. That was a huge, oh, that was a great success. I think going off the negatives from last year, we don't have too many general meetings now, yeah, has been enough for us to survive. I think before we had a lack of clarity on goals, and like Dustin was saying, I think we've done a much better job of that. Well, they're not, you know, we haven't been able to meet those goals, but we've at least done the work of, like, writing them down and thinking them through and talking about and discussing with each other, like, why are we doing what we're doing, and having kind of long term goals in mind with that, we used to not have any project management goals. I think the task threads probably need a little bit of a revamp. But before, we had nothing. And so I think that is a plus compared to what we had before. We also talked about connecting with people before asking them to take action, at least with like our newer members, I think we've been doing a much better job of that, of actually getting to know people before we immediately asked them to start doing stuff. Sean would probably disagree, because we asked them to go Canvas for Palestine like right off the bat, we we did get to go to other people's events, so we, you know, we got to collaborate with tonight for Palestine, with the bipoc, with progressive unity, yeah, progressive unity. And hopefully we, I mean, this is for everyone else to answer, I guess, but hopefully we've had clear instructions on what's going on, I think the state of the organization, stuff that we started doing, I'm hoping that helped in terms of clarifying, like where we are as an organization, like in that month, and like what we're currently working on. So, yeah, I think we ended up did addressing a lot of the negatives from last year.
I as you were talking I also thought about two more things that I think we approved. In the beginning, it was really difficult to like as a new member, to know where you were needed, or, like, where the work was, when the meetings were, unless you like directly, like, were like, hey, I want to help. Or when are you guys having these meetings? So, yeah, good job on being like, hey. The with like on the forum post, like, these are the actions that these are the things that we need to get done. Please sign up for it. Or like, These are the days that we're having, the meetings, even in the WhatsApp of being like, hey, Harpreet has been doing, like, a really good job of like, reaching out to people. Being like, hey, let's have a meeting. Let's actually do some work together. Yeah, hopefully that's something that we can continue to build off. Two minutes.
I was just gonna say that, yeah. I thought that the I thought that the the post election meeting was great. That was a great achievement. I don't have much to compare to for the rest of the year in terms of other things, but, yeah, you're like continually moving forward, planning and doing so I think that's great.
I wanted to add a little bit as well, just seconding what everyone else was saying that compared to, like, I guess the probably, like, nine or 10 months I've been around, but like, on and off, like, kind of noticing, uh, where things were at, I guess, like last March, when I first, like joined, compared to now, I definitely see improvements in terms of things being a little more organized, a little more streamlined, which is actually something that now, as education coordinator, I would definitely is, like, gonna be a focus of mine, at least in terms of, say, like, making sure our meetings are like, stay at like, say, an hour or so, you know, like, keep that time, like, stuff like that. So I I do think there have been incremental improvements.
We're basically out of time,
all right, speaking of keeping things on time, I guess 10 minutes for areas of growth and improvement. So what lessons did we learn? What goals do we fully achieve that we want to keep working towards next year? You know, what were some resource constraints or bottlenecks that we ran into that we weren't able to overcome? Did we have communication collaboration issues and just missed opportunities that people feel like we weren't able to take advantage of
10 minutes? Yeah, I don't know about you guys, but I definitely feel like there was a lot of places that we could have improved. I know that, you know, just like trying to get people out to meetings to participate is not the easiest thing ever, it's got. It has gotten easier as people have, like, kind of eased into, you know, what participation looks like. So I hope that as we, like go forward, we get even better at, you know, holding regular meetings and like, you know, if the if the like steering leader, or whoever is the person, like, in charge of the meeting, isn't there the people that regular members will be there to pick it up, because, in theory, that's what we're supposed to be doing.
Everybody's understood, yeah, yeah.
I agree, yeah. I think that everybody, including myself, could improve it, learning the facilities of each individual steering committee member and and help, helping and participating with their their duties. And I also think that, again, this is maybe half patting ourselves on the back. I think that one area where we improved and could still improve is knowing when to abandon things when they're not useful. If we figure out that something is not working, we can abandon that shit and not you know, diddle. Diddle bottle around with it in the same vein, if something is, you know, seems to be having some meter of success, sticking to it and directing more focus and energy towards it. I guess specifically, my mind is always drawn to the tenant union. Because, like, even though there has been progress, man, sometimes it just feels like if these people don't want to fight for themselves, then why the fuck am I fighting for them? But that, you know, this is the plight of of the working class. So yeah, half patting ourselves on the back, half hoping that we can grow and improve in the next year.
I'd like to piggyback off of something that I've heard once or twice. I don't, I don't know if that was from, from you Rollo, the i. Growth and improvement in social media in just like, a general approach to, like, using different platforms and engagement to get you know, like something as simple as just an image that people associate with what's going on is something that's like, it seems like very little, but it's a big it's a big deal. It actually ends up like, I'm I brought, I got brought into this through through Riley, and just by his word of mouth, it reached me. I don't really go on social media that much. I'm not really active or engaging a lot on social media platforms. But I know that it's a, it's a big thing. It's, it's like a way bigger thing than than most of us can wrap our heads around. So I'd say that's the, the biggest opportunity for growth and improvement. It's just finding some kind of, like, a reliable upload thing on one of the platforms that has good engagement, and that's, you'll see more people like me showing up, just based around that, younger people who have more energy and aren't completely sucked into, Oh God, I have only 10 hours free to myself any given week. You know, like you'll get, you'll get more and more and more of that. And that's, that's what you want to see.
I want to piggy bank piggyback off of that, not piggy bank. Um, I think that we have for a lot of things, including social media and and the way that we go about it, we've kind of just like, stayed in one lane of like, this is how we go about it. Let's continue to do it this way. I think that one thing that missed opportunities is like for us to play around with it, see what works, see what gets like the most engagements with like our format, or the days that we post it, or the time that we post it right maybe. And based on, like, what Miles was saying. And I've been thinking about this a lot of how, with a lot of our posts for events, one, I think we post them late, we don't give people enough time to actually, like, plan around it, to like, I don't know, tell their friends, Hey, man, I'm busy. On that day there's a protest, or this, this thing coming, you should come or, like, we can get lunch after um. That's something that we could have improved on. Just planning things ahead and then actually, like, posting it ahead, um, and in that same lane, I think we shouldn't just focus everything on social media, word of mouth is a huge thing. It is what gets people going. I think that's something that we feel. I can't speak for every single one of you guys, because I don't know if you invited friends and family and random people. I have no clue. I can speak for myself, though I have not done the best job in like, spreading through word of mouth, because of this like, are they going to like it, this fear of like, is it going to be enough? But either way, you have to like, I have to get past that. Yeah, spreading, like, spreading things through words of mouth, getting people to come and show up. And in addition, during those events, actually recruiting people. Um, I don't I like, for a while, I didn't want to be like, the PSL of like, Hey Matt, during every single event, every single person you talk to, Hey, man, join us. It's a little overbearing. It's a little much. And then sometimes it just feels like you're doing this, you're going to these events just to recruit people. But recruitment is a huge thing, and I think that's an opportunity that we failed on. Yeah, three minutes, yeah. We during, during most of our like, rallies and stuff, there were new people, new faces that came that we could have recruited, or that we could have at least kept contact with.
I don't know about you guys, but everyone I know in real life is a right winger, and the only progressives and Democrats and anarchists and socialists that I know participate in this group already.
Oh, feel that one 100%
Wait, sorry, Tanner, I actually think that there's an opportunity there to pick out the people who you think are the most inclined towards our general beliefs, even if they are right wing, and invite them to like the, you know, community assembly, like the public stuff, right? Because just exposing them to us and showing that we're not, you know, crazy liberals or whatever you know, that might make them more inclined to join. I've
been thinking about bringing the more sort of centrist of amongst the people that I know that at least could be amenable to these kinds of discussions. It's just like most of them cannot be fucked to think about politics other than like, you know, Trump bad and. Also Kamala bad, and I don't really know why. I just think those things. And anyway, yeah,
I just wanted to, I'm sorry, I just wanted to say, also, I agree with bosma's assessment of for the social media and also miles, yeah, social media is pretty important to have that presence, and so what we're doing, and yeah, reminders. Like to have an event posting ahead of time, and then, like even just a reminder thing, because people are just all over the place, and there are a million different events and things going on. So yeah, I just wanted to agree with that in terms of getting presents out there on social media. Yeah, it's
not, it's not everything. Of course, you have to have word of mouth, and a lot of times it feels, feels difficult to recruit somebody in and it feels mechanical. You feel like you're Tanner says proselytizing. You don't want to come up like that. There's like, a time and a place, there's a there's a point where people are more likely to accept a suggestion, and it's usually not the first thing you do when you shake their hand and say, Hey, join our thing, you know, like, that's that's how people know that you're proselytizing Adam. It can usually just start with a conversation you get. You gage their their sensibilities, and that's when you drop Hey, you seem like you're interested in this kind of thing. Would you be interested in coming by here? We got these things going on. Your interests seem to be somewhere around there. Just give us a call if you're interested. That's literally as simple as it is sometimes. And that can be just a gentle nudge. Can be a way more effective than a massive push from like every side. So it one minute. Yeah, it can be it can be that. And it can be with the social media thing. Sometimes it's literally just an image. It could literally just be an image that they see enough times, and then they associate it with a group. And then they start thinking, you know, I'm always seeing this thing. What is this? And then they click it, and that's, then you then you got it. That's, that's all. That's all that it takes. Usually, Persistence is key. I know it's also kind of annoying. I I hate it personally. I hate the idea of, like, I hate having to promote my own stuff. Like, even when it comes to art, that I just like, God, I don't want to blow people's feet up with this. If they want to see it, they'll see it. But you know what? Most of the time they don't, if they don't see it the first time, they're not going to see it at all. So you got to, you got to keep to it, and it's, it's a little bit of everything. You know,
yeah, I wanted to super quickly touch on a goals we didn't achieve. Just generally, we need to play up our wins a little bit. And if we have to move the goal post, we should do that. I know we tend not to, because we have such lofty goals, and we need to just kind of celebrate, I know we do it at these meetings, but we need to, like, broadcast, larger, push out like, you know, even if it's not a win, we can kind of spin it and be like, you know, we got people to come out to a meeting, or we we got, like, we just need to after every event. We need to really play it up, like there's this many other progressives or leftists that are in this area, because I think that's a big challenge we have, especially going forward, also just manpower. I know we talk about it all the time, but it's hard to get, like, tax stuff done, for example, and we didn't get it done, but we're getting there. We're much closer than we were. And when we went over the tax stuff, Harpreet and I found that we're, we still have, we still have a little bit of time. Not saying we got unlimited time, but we have a little bit, but it would be nice to complete those goals, but, you know, just have them in the books so we don't have to keep thinking about it and feeling like we're we're running behind. Yes, those are my two pieces of input.
I think the only critique I would have on social media stuff is from my experience of many years of organizing. Now, you cannot let people think that liking stuff is them doing anything, and that's too often like that would be our critique, or my critique, of what we've been doing. Is the way we engage in social media lets people think that like liking a post, critiquing harder is doing something when it's not and like that's the downside of social media is that it lets people participate in the most superficial, useless way possible. And of course, there's, like, a way to do it, and in which way, like they don't feel like they're actually participating unless they actually come to a meeting or come to an event, and like, that's how we should use it. But I think just, I mean, it's good to get our name out there, because, you know, like, Bess went joined because she. Had seen our org already on social media. Like, Peter's also joined. Oh, great, um, but like, other people have seen our posts and like, that's why they've joined. But at the same time, like, the majority of people that like our stuff, like, obviously aren't here, and just from experience, like, it's hard to turn online engagement into real life engagement, but it's also because I think people feel like liking statements and sharing posts is like, I did my part, and I think we really have to cut that at the knee somehow for social media and not like,
what would be, what would be an example of one of those posts that you're talking about where someone clicks it and they feel like they've engaged and they don't have to go any further, what's like, what's I mean,
like, like, all of our protest stuff, like, we've had coalition partners who share the post and, like, you know, send it to their friends or whatever, but then they never actually come to an event and and just the number of, like, The number of reach we get on our social media is so much like dwarfs in person, actual engagement and so like, and just from experience before, like you, you, you see this on pages that have political stuff where, like, their engagement is sky high, and it doesn't translate into real numbers. And it's because people end up translating like engagement on social media with actually doing something. But just like, I want us to move away from the vague raising awareness, because that's all the left has done, is raise fucking awareness and do nothing else. But yeah, not saying like we shouldn't use social media, but we have to critique the way that we actually use it.
I actually totally agree with what you're saying, Harpreet, because, and this is something that I've been thinking about a lot, and, like, struggling to come to, like, a actual, like, what do we do about it? Because you're totally right, like, with Palestine stuff, for example, right? A lot of people think that, like posting it's become such, like a passive thing of they think, by just knowing it, that just by, like educating themselves, by posting it on their social media, and maybe someone else, like gets educated about it, that it becomes, I don't know that they're doing their part. It's
like passive action, essentially, is what it is. It's constant passive action, and it's horrendous to watch. And I Yeah, totally. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I just completely agree with what you're saying and with what Harpreet said. Way too much dependence on social media and people feeling like they're being active by liking a post, or even responding to a post, or that they've said something or something. It's really, like, horrendous to me, but I, but I guess I feel like what Miles was saying, and I think what you were saying to Bosma is just that, like, if, and I, I don't actually, I don't actually pay a lot of attention to the Instagram, social media posts that you do. I do know that I saw, I saw, I saw a couple of things that actually made me want to even, like, go check you out. It was like a film screening, and I don't know, just like a picture of you guys, like, like, not chasing down, but something, doing something with Josh Hart. And I was like, Oh, that looks really cool. So though, and you know, I didn't like it, but I'm also just like, I don't do stuff. I don't do that. Don't like on social media anyway, so, um, but I think that for event, I was just saying, for events, um, I think that it's good to SET set reminders. Like, if you're going to post an event on social media, like, remind people about it. Just like, post it again to remind them, because people might pay attention to it. But yeah, relying too heavily on social media is really just a pitfall. It's just a lot of people who are like, Oh, I follow them, or I like that, or maybe, you know, and then they scroll to the next thing, and it's just a waste
of time. Yeah, I'm sorry. Let me just finish my thought, and then I'll make it really quick. I was reading this, like, art, this book by Antonio Gramsci, and he was pretty much talking about, like, hegemony, and like, the like, the role of social institutions, and how like, and I was thinking about it, I was like, You know what the social media really has turned into, like, a social institution where, like, we post stuff and we make people feel like they're doing something. And the the fact that like, to me, the fact that the government continues to allow it shows that there's really nothing that it's actually doing other than creating a lot of, like, passive activism. And that's something that, like, I think we're failing on of like, you know, I'm not saying that for us to completely abandon social media because. Does get a lot of people in, but I think that we should redirect and like think about different tactics that we can do, because 100 we have had posts where maybe like 100 people have liked it, or like 80 people have liked it, for like Palestine protests, and only three people show up. And to be honest, as like, someone who, like, coordinates them. It is really shocking and really sad to be like, oh, all these people, like said that they were going to go and not these people, not like three people showed up. Kisses to the people that did show up. I appreciate you so much. But yeah, I do think that we should go about tactics and strategy for, like, getting people involved, for getting people organized, should change.
I mean, I think as a self critique, posting on social media is also like the easiest thing to do. So it's like, it's a bit of, like, letting go responsibility, where we're like, Oh, we didn't have chance to do, like, relational organizing. We didn't have a chance to call everyone on our phone list or email them. We'll just post social media posts. That's fine. And so it's like, a, it's a way to, like, get out of accountability for not doing the other stuff. And so I think it's just on us to, you know, realize we're doing that and then not not be okay with just like it should not be okay for us to only have a social media post when we have an action, we should always have something else going
along with it. So I actually think that so. Number one, we're insanely over time. But number two, I think that we have been thinking about social media the wrong way, right? When we often think of social media as a way to inform people about our positions or about whatever right, I kind of think that we should be using social media the way, like a band uses it. It's the point of the social media is to get people out to events, right? And so what they basically, all they do is post like, hey, we have a show, you know, we have a event that you can come to, right? And use that as, like, show the people who came and all that kind of stuff as a way to draw people out, instead of, like, if you like it, that doesn't mean anything, right? What means something is that you were there and that you were, you're, you know, you participate in your faces, on in the pictures, or whatever, right? Like, it's like a cult. It's a kind of, like, cultural mindset shift, but you know, that's that's obviously something that's going to take a while for us to do. Yeah, that's if
that message that everyone's saying I'm seeing in the chat is, social media is designed for passive engagement, not really a new revelation, but the tech overlords don't want us meaningfully to engage with each other. That's part of the thing you can get out there. That's part of the way you get it. Is what Rolo was saying there too, was just, instead of just giving them that easy thing to click on, instead of posting like a sassy meme where someone says something and they agree with it, and they go, I agree with that. I'm going to share that. Well, no, you don't get to just agree with that and then share that. You got to show up to the thing. Here's the thing, here's the event, here's where we are. Show up. You'll get pictures with us. You'll go to places and do things. That's what the engagement should be rewarding. It shouldn't be rewarding that part in your brain that tickles you because you clicked like and I did my part. It should be, oh, look at all these people that are out there going to things. I should be going to things like a like, like Rosa said, like a band, like a show. People want to go to the show. They see people going, and they go, man, they're doing stuff. I'm tired of just sitting here and doing nothing and just liking
stuff. I know we're over time, but I just quickly want to say that's my freshman year of college. I joined a church, even though I'm not a Christian in the slightest, because they took us around and got us food and had a community and all of this stuff. So it really does work. Just like advertising yourself as, like, you're gonna we're gonna do this, and we're gonna go here and like, the satisfaction wasn't just like liking a post or being a part of it, it was actually going out there, getting to know the people that like you talk about. I didn't end up converting in the situs, but it did work in like, talking to people and go out and do things. One more critique that I want to add is, I think we've haven't done as good of a job at like, gathering everyone's input on things, or like the ways that they want to go about tactics, or like wording or stuff like that. And I don't like I we, we should probably figure out like ways to go about it in the future. But again, this is from my perspective, and I don't want to talk for a. Anyone, because I haven't really, like heard anyone talk about it, but sometimes I think that people just like, go along with what they're told, rather than like, if they have a better idea, if they think that there's a different way that we can go about it. I do think that the opportunity, opportunity that we missed, yeah, we like, we need to get more people out there, more people speaking. I know every single one of you guys, every single person in this org is well articulated that like, has thoughts and ideas and like, we should do a better job of, actually, like, listening to everyone and like, when it comes to like planning stuff out, that that also does mean, like, people actually showing up to the meetings where we're doing these things right. But yeah, like figuring out a balance of, I don't want to speak for people when I write, like, if, if I write something, I don't want to put words in your mouth. I don't want to put strategies in your mouth. I want to actually hear what you think, what everyone thinks, and yeah, we I don't. I don't think that's something we've done the best job at. It's just been like, whoever shows up to the meeting, that's the voice that's going to get heard.
Yeah, I think we go off of that. I think we actually need to prioritize, like, asynchronous stuff more, because, like, the like, I have a lot of one on ones with people, and they're like, at random times. And like, if I was to be like, like, I tried to set up a meeting with like, Sean and Nora at the same time, and it took us, like, two weeks to finally meet because, or No, I don't think we did. We just ended up doing, I just ended up doing, I just ended up doing separate one on ones anyways. And so like trying to, like, always do stuff in meetings where, like, we're talking, and trying to get people in a group of three, that leads to the people the most availability always being the only people working on stuff, because people just aren't, like, available to do stuff all the time. So I think if we were doing, like, if we really prioritized doing things more async where, I mean, I'm going to try to push people to use the forum more, because, I mean, there's entire like, companies that just use forums to, like, do their work. So this is not like a new thing that we're trying to do, but that way people have time to, you know, if we have, if we're working on something, like a post for Palestine or something, and we're like, Hey, if you have, we'll give people like more time when we need to plan ahead of time. But then give people like a week to be like, you don't have to come to a meeting where we're going to talk about it. Just what are points that you think we should hit? Or, like, write a paragraph or something and just put it in the form. Or like, everyone can see what everyone's talking about, and then you can do it whenever you want. You have 15 minutes, like, you know, getting the work or something on the bus. You can do it then you don't have to meet, you know, eight to 9pm or something on a Tuesday, when you're probably not going to be a bill available. Because, like, we all have more free time throughout our days, and we spend it like Doom scrolling. And instead of doom scrolling, like, instead of taking like one Doom scroll session and using it to just like, read and quickly comment on something that we're working on, we'll get everyone, oh, my god, more than you know efficiency. I can't make it to this one. The in person meeting is going to be like an hour long, and maybe you don't have an hour, like, every Tuesday or every Wednesday, and you only have like an hour total to give the org. Well, it's easier if you can just quickly skim through a thread and reply in 15 minutes, versus, you know, hour long meetings.
I feel like I've been talking a lot, but I just want to add to a point that Harpreet was saying, I think maybe because I do want more people, I agree with you 100% that, like, one on one meetings and like, you know, being there, like, whenever people do have time is great, like, It's honestly the only solution, rather than trying to find a schedule that works for every single person, I do wish that we did have meetings outside of our regular meetings where we can, like, hear about what other people think, what other people want, because, like Tanner, I don't know what you want. Pete, I don't know what you want. Every single one of y'all other than maybe, like Riley, because I talk to you every, literally, once a week, yeah, yeah. Like, I don't know what you guys want. And I do want to know. I do want to, like, learn about your ideas. So maybe, maybe something like, if, if you have, like, one on one meetings with someone, maybe, like, talk about it in or, like, post about it in the group chat, right? Anyone else that's free can show up, right? And if no one shows up, then it is what it is. You're right where you started anyway. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. What the solution to this is, but I just know that, like, I do want to talk to every single one of y'all and like, not just me, but like every person, talk to every single one of you, every single one of us. Oh, that's my secretary. Oh, hell yeah.
All right. Um, Tanner, Christina Pete, Chima and Chris, do you have anything that you'd like to add?
I agree with pretty much everything that's been said. I'm ready to move to the next John. Do we have any more John's to go over this meeting?
John?
Any more things, any other stuff,
negative stuff?
No, I don't think so.
All right. Well, I guess very briefly, everyone gets 15 seconds strategic recommendations for next year. So, like, what's and we talked about this, like in September, about, like, what's one thing you want the org to work on? But, um, like, going into next year, where do you think our focus should be? In 15 seconds, so we can end the meeting.
Who wants to go first?
Me, okay, okay, I would like to see us focus on recruitment and community outreach. Those are the two things I we can't, literally can't do anything else until we do those things. That was 1015, seconds. There you go. I
completely agree. And I think that the what we were talking about in terms of the, gosh, what were we calling them, the coalition meetings, as well as the strategy meetings, are brilliant. We should focus on doing those, recruiting more and then obviously, I think narrowing our focus for our goals, also great, great strategy, also the social media stuff. I think it was all great. This is a very productive meeting.
Second that, next
in person interactions, which goes with what you're saying and and using those in person, like using the results of those in person, taking photos, making it look like there's people engaging with each other, because I think that's what gets more people here. That's probably over 15 seconds, perfect
next,
streamlining goals and focusing on time. I
Yeah, he said that was 10 seconds. Dreamlined next.
I agree with everything. Everyone said,
two seconds. Wow, yeah, who's next?
I think we should focus a lot more on, like, community engaging in community engagement, talking to people, and also, like, having workshops, like, like, more educational stuff. I know this is going to be longer than 15 seconds, but like, tena was saying he has friends that are in the center that, like don't know why they feel this way. That's something that we, 100% could use to our advantage. Yeah, next,
really think about what it means that liberalism is dying. Have strategic, believable wins that we can offer to people and really hone in on building working class consciousness as a goal.
Literally 12 seconds. Perfect. Is anybody? Did we miss? Anybody? Your microphones on, on,
okay, I think we're good. All right, yay. Congrats everyone on a wonderful 2024 have fun. Rest of December, I think I may talk to the new membership coordinator. Talk about doing a new onboarding for our few new members. Yes, our new member orientation, because we've got some folks from last time who still haven't joined. But on that, I think,
just also a reminder, there is a game night on the 16th that if you guys want to come hang out, get to know each other some more. 16th.
Alrighty, I will move to adjourn the meeting. All in favor. Raise your hands.
I never want to leave this meeting. I want it to go 24 hours a day, yay. Okay.
