All right. Just said hello, everyone. We're gonna do introductions, we'll do one online and then we'll do one person. We'll just go back and forth. So from the top for us, so Riley, go ahead.
My name is Riley flyer. I like socialism. I'm an anarchist, and I want to change things. There you go.
All right, and we'll start from right to left.
Oh, is that going through the zoom? Hi, I'm Dennis. I've been peer pressure to be here. No, I I just want to do something. And this is a great place to start.
Alright, I guess I'll go next. My name is Harpreet Chima started this group really grateful that everyone's here. Same thing want to do something other than just post so
Robert Hemphill? Yeah, basically the same that want to do something. It actually may be beneficial instead of just looking at all what's wrong.
Join and go ahead. Hi, I'm here to see where this organization goes.
And just to be transparent, China is my fiancee, so she's not a random person. She's gonna see where it goes. Yeah, that's Hi.
My name is Chris Jericho. I'm just a want to be involved in city politics and do some direct action.
Great and then power. Well, hi, my name is Paulo and I'm here because I believe in the importance of a strong and organized working class
My name is Alex. I'm here for probably the same reasons that everyone else is here. I want to do something
Hi, my name is Adri. Here for same reasons I'm trying to do something even despite being in school, I don't know I maybe this was bad timing for me, but I'm gonna do my best to kind of stay involved as much as I can.
It doesn't get easier once you're out of school
I missed it.
No worries. Don't worry about it. Okay.
He said it doesn't get easier when
trying to keep her hopes up.
All right, we'll try to find a wider webcam feature.
Oh, a you should use a goat. That's what I'm using GoPro has a crazy wide viewing angle.
That is a good idea. GoPro for next time. Alright, so meeting minutes from the last meeting, I'm just going to pull them up on my phone. So we do have like a forum chat that working class unity.com. That's where he posted the minutes from before. But basically, the decisions that we made were reduced, we're going to be $10 A month minimum with a sliding scale plus a waiver for anyone that can't afford to pay the $10. The general meeting dates were second Thursday and first or fourth Monday of every month. The interim steering committee is I'm the membership coordinator. Riley Do you want to give your position?
Onboarding I think is what it's called right.
I think membership, I think membership.
I can't remember your campaign coordinator, our membership coordinator. Yeah. I don't remember what the name is.
Alright. And then do you want introduce yourselves? Do it.
And I'm Robert Hemphill, interim secretary.
Krister cop treasurer.
All right. And so we'll remain in from for at least a couple of months while we do all the paperwork and get everything sorted. After that membership can decide whether we hold another election. And then the term ends in December and lasts for a year. So we did the first reading the bylaws. We emailed the bylaws to everyone not sure if everyone got a chance to look them over. But today we'll be voting on a second reading and then passing them. We had a reading group so we're reading the ABCs of capitalism. We read the first 25 pages we had a meeting for that. Today we'll figure out what the second date will For the second half of the booklet, basically three pamphlets are like 50 pages, each real basic one on one on what capitalism is for folks that, you know, whose politics goes as deep as like, I'm a Democrat or Republican, trying to get them on board with what we're working on. And then we approve the strike ready pledge, and then we have an update on that later on at this meeting. So I will, I guess motion to approve our last minutes. Probably you're the resident expert here. Okay.
Did we agreed last time or at the steering committee that we need a non steering committee member to second, right.
Yeah, we're putting that at the end of the presentation. Okay, cool. Okay, so any amendments? No. All right, moving on. Alright, Officer report, basically went over the bylaws figure out what we're supposed to do. I think we don't need to go over that now. But once we actually formalize what we're going to do more write it out, and then have it posted online on the forum for everyone to know.
Any questions before moving on?
Okay. Okay, new business. So for our first kind of social event, I figured we could go to Lodi pride. It's a good place where a lot of other organizations will be we can kind of make our president film we won't have shirts or anything but we should have I should have fired ready by the weekend. So we'll have small little fires as the handout they just kind of ever named mission statement on it. It's a high water brewery it's from 10 to five I was figuring we should also have time to go together if we want to so we can also socialize outside of a meeting context and get to know everyone but time works best. It's Saturday to Saturday yeah
I have to do something in the evening so anytime before five is probably fine.
Okay
Hello, John. Are you gonna be in town?
I will be I hadn't thought of a time where I could go yet though.
Sorry, I will be available.
Okay, how about noon
does noon work for anyone?
Sweet. How about everyone here? Yeah,
that sounds fine with me. I was just thinking we have a schedule or what's happening during the day. Is there anything we should be there for?
Are the I guess have like a stage with stuff right? I don't know.
Yeah, they usually have they usually have like a drag thing and like some music and then usually have a politician talk like I think Jerry McNerney was at the last two pride
in Lodi. Yeah. Should we go and Boo whoever speaking
may that might not set a good initial example. Or impression for people.
But it would be very funny.
Okay, people are looking at if there's anything on the schedule
drag hours from two to three. So if we want to stay till two I think
that's I'm thinking.
Noon staying till three again. Okay, so we'll show up at noon. I'll have buyers. You want to pass them out? And then we'll just go chitchat with people. Perfect. All right, great. And next item, so tenant organizing. So we have to focus campaigns basically, in the organization. And we talked about this a little bit in the steering committee meeting. But we kept it to two like major campaigns that take up most of our time and resources because we don't want to basically make it where everyone has their own subcommittee with their own passion project that doesn't go anywhere because they're one person working by themselves. So we give everyone the opportunity to come and present what they want to work on. I'm taking the initiative to present can organize and today but the bylaws say that you have to give a month notice beforehand so this is the month notice in July the first meeting we'll take a vote on whether we want to do this or not. And if we do then we will go through a whole different process but sorry, is fine but notes. Okay, so we Want working class control over how and where we live for tenant organizing, not just freedom from the insane rents, but also freedom to determine democratically how our communities and neighborhoods are arranged and organized. So you know, the difference between that as politicians who promise, like, we're just going to do rent control, or we're going to do good cause evictions. That's not actually us having control, right? That's not actual socialist control over where we live in how we live. That's just us kind of having regulations that protect us from the worst kinds of landlords.
Yeah, not just not just landlords, just the worst ones.
Okay. So we also don't want to achieve whatever is deliverable, according to some wanker, some board members of some nonprofit, because that's usually what the limit is when people do political organizing. As socialists, we should be pushing the boundaries of what's possible and cultivate the base, in which this case is like the tenants and the in house like everyone who actually doesn't control where they live, their revolutionary imagination and potential. So that includes anyone who doesn't control their own housing or that of anyone else. So, you know, we're excluding the landlords. And we should try to reject the division between the housing homeless, regulated and unregulated units, market rate and subsidized units. Right, once you start getting into kind of wonky housing policy, there's all these different ways to pit people against each other. So we should try to overcome that. And then give people kind of a unified vision for what they should be fighting for long term like, we should give them the horizon for what they should be fighting for, not just some, like local reform that some politician might pass through. And so a tenant union should have a democratic and accountable program created by its members, when that's contested and Rudan, what tenants want and need. If we do not want people to treat it, like another nonprofit, one that helps them when they need it, and then they can leave until they need more help. We have to avoid client ism, or service, grievances. It shouldn't be problems that we as organizers go in to solve for people. We should have working class tenants be the protagonist in the struggle against the city and the landlords, and have them organize and have them solve their own problems. So teach them how to handle the problems themselves. That way they understand how the system works, or organize against it instead of just again being a service. Nonprofits, even if they do have radical language in their mission statements, which almost all of them do these days, they can't confront much less challenge the structures that underpin the oppression, they want to attend to those structures to private property, the rent extraction, the hierarchy, bureaucracy, and politics through deliverables instead of actual control. They sit at the foundation of the nonprofit world, because of them because of those structures. We've hollowed out our welfare state, because whatever was not profitable enough to be fully privatized, has been left to languish in the hands of nonprofits, because those are the things that are necessary for nonprofits exist, they can't exactly function way to get rid of those structures. So if nonprofits are the fish in capitalism as a fishable, the fish cannot imagine that the fishbowl needs to be shattered is actually an analogy from one of the other 10 units. So as a focus campaign, well, any questions before we go on to the actual campaign? Line? Reasonable talk? Sorry, go ahead. Really,
it sounded pretty reasonable to me. Okay.
So again, this is like my announcing of tenant organizing proposal, the vote will be 713. That's our meeting in another month. In the meantime, I'd like approval from membership to set up a meeting either between Latu or at UN. They're basically run by the same people, but at UN is now like a national kind of organization that has a lot of other tenant unions from across the country. And then Los Angeles tenant union is one in LA, which is also a big one in New York, but la probably relates more to lessons, you know, we're in California. So before that, before we move on, like to motion like to move, setting up a meeting between one of these two organizations sometime this month, that's open to all the memberships. So whenever they're available, we'll make the meeting open to all the members. And then we can just ask questions on you know, how do you start, whatever questions we have. And also if you have questions now, like let's ask them now and then we can know how to present them to one of these people. Yeah. Yeah, I need so our bylaws say that no one from the steering committee can. We can't motion and second Yeah, there you go. Thank you.
Is that mean there's two people in the room who can second? Yes. Okay, great. Just making sure. Yeah, we're gonna definitely need to work on recruiting.
We have six people that can second. We're good. Okay, cool. The seconds outnumber the steering. That's the one. Yeah, yeah. So any questions like for one of these boards if we do if we are able to set up a meeting before next one? Well, sorry, you second. Can we have a vote? We just do a voice vote. Yeah, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Any opposed? All right, eyes have it. Okay. Thank you very much. Any questions? We'll get this process down eventually.
Is there anything in particular to San Joaquin, that would be unique to our area that, like, tenant laws? I don't even I don't know, in terms of, because I know LA, they probably have something figured out in terms of like, the rent moratorium and such. I wonder if people here are in a similar situation where I know like star is one of the big private companies that manages a bunch of properties around here. I guess. I don't have enough experience. We have a private landlord. We have like a family landlord. So I guess we i Yeah, kind of brainstorming kind of what Robbie was saying is figuring out like, what's unique to San Joaquin? And what might, what problems might people will have here that they would or wouldn't have in LA?
Yeah, and there's some like Stockton specific stuff also. So you really have to drill down. And then you have to separate the rhetoric from what is actually happening. Yeah, there's power. And if you remember the specifics, but they told us we had, like super strong rent control and Stockton, but it was basically what the state had passed, because they'd have like, 8% or something. Yeah.
So yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I don't have my notes in front of me. But yeah, there was state legislation and then Stockton City Council under Michael Todd just wanted to open up those protections to single family homes. Unfortunately, the council voted that down. So it's whatever state legislation is offering as protections we could have gotten further, but the city council didn't want to.
Gotcha. Yeah. Sounds like City Council. Yeah.
Okay, I noticed we're right behind the the Housing Authority. Does that do anything? Or I don't need I just know the name. I just noticed the name.
Yeah, that's a good question. I honestly don't know how like all the different divisions in housing are all put together. So that's a good question to ask.
I mean, it's good to open the forum right now for asking questions. But I do think this requires a bunch of research in order to be able to put questions together. Yeah.
Yeah, I'm like, trying to think of things right now. And my brains just like nah. Yeah, we're not doing this right now.
Is there a document or somewhere where we would share or dumb questions in order to?
Yeah, the foreigners with it?
Yeah. So after this meeting, we'll set up we'll make a post on the forum. And then for this meeting, specifically, seeking his comment in there. Okay. That's great. You're in the middle. Do you want to introduce yourself? Oh, yeah.
Hi, I'm Sam Regan. Sorry for being late. I got lost
is there like a What? What should I be sharing? What about myself? Oh.
I mean, I'm here because like,
to build socialism, I guess. Nice. And especially in Stockton, I feel like it's important. We, there's like, it seems like there's a lot of need for radical change. So it seems like the place to start and I live here.
So yeah.
Perfect reason. So we're just going over. We're just talking about tenant organizing. And so we voted to approve meeting with Los Angeles tenant union or at UN. And so now we're just brainstorming questions that we might have for them. We'll set up a meeting with them. hopefully sometime this month, and you know everyone can attend. But in case you don't make it, we're just collecting questions now. So we can ask them, and then we'll share the meeting with the whole the whole membership afterwards. Also,
we probably should have clarified this when we approved it. But you're saying we we mean you Harpreet will contact them right? Or? Yes. Well, that's something that we want to. Yeah,
I'm the campaign coordinator. So sure, that would be my job.
Well, I'm glad I didn't pick that draw.
Okay, so there anything, any other questions, I think I'll just ask like, what kind of what kind of housing we should target first, kind of how we should pick out a neighborhood in Stockton. And then Paulo brought this up before but there is something in the five oh, C four guideline to say like, if you are limited in who you accept an attendant union, then you can't be a see for. And so this goes into the next item of having guide for San Joaquin County where we can say we're serving the community. And we'd accept anyone that wants to join the tenant union, that we were kind of saved from that kind of accusation. But you know, obviously, we can only go neighborhood by neighborhood. But that seems to be how all the other tenant unions do it. They have some sort of guides, and they go and organize on building by building is more. You can do that in New York. I don't know how building by building works here. Yeah, like sneak into apartment complexes. So again, la to you has a bunch of guides. I figured if we do move forward with this, we can just copy one of their guides as a starting point. And then go from there. They also have a guide on how to start a tenant union. So we can look more into that at the next meeting. I again, so for the way this works is at the next meeting at 713. The next next meeting, that's when we'd finally authorize this campaign. This is just one month notice of I'm proposing less than membership. Okay. Okay. Anything else before we move on? All right. Um, farmworker outreach. We had talked about this a little bit before of wanting to reach out to farmworkers so we, you know, have more of a non white group, sorry, new people in our know, anyone else have prior connections besides like Louise and Ganya?
Know, all the guys I worked with when I pick grapes. I don't really know anymore. So.
I know, someone named Ileana, who a few years ago was organizing, like a drive to get school supplies to migrant farmworker children. So I could reach out to her and see if she has like a more direct connection. I don't mind doing that.
And I
just said, you know, Louise, he organized a lot of farmworkers. I think he had a protest on the first boycotting Florida essentially for their legislation. And he put up, he put up a petition that was by like, Latino influencers on tick tock or something. And but I mean, it was a good document. Like, you know, Biden's been screwing. It's also, you know, the new app thing at the border to accept asylum. So your asylum claims, sorry, yeah. And so we can look at that at the next meeting. But I guess, I will also talk to Luis Medina and see what we how we can help out. I think, for some of their big legislation, there's not really much we can do. But at the local way, if it's school supplies, I've been to some other housing, so they have like trailer park housing, and it's terrible. So I think 10 Organizing would also help out there. But we need things translated into Spanish for them. Okay, and if anyone else knows anyone, or has an idea for anything, you know, you can bring it up, the next meeting will get better about having the agenda out there ahead of time, and about having a way to like add onto the agenda really easily. Okay, so the teamsters ups. So UPS is currently voting on whether they're going to authorize a strike. And, you know, they're gonna use that as a bargaining chip. So they may or may not go on strike. But if they do authorize it, it's, you know, leverage that they can use against ups. They're collecting the vote now. And so I talked to someone who's an organizer for them here in Stockton at one of their ups hubs. He said if you do go on strike, of course, or reach out to us and they'd appreciate any support, which we could do, which we've authorized to our strike ready pledge. But they also said that someone had gone out and just like did interviews with them that the day before and we could do the same of just like talking to them, you know, what's the more you guys striking just to build more, you know, community support and to pressure UPS more. So I wanted to motion that we go move this test, move to, for us to go out and go either talk to him, or someone that he points out and just do like a short video and then posted on our social media and to our small email list. Just talking about whatever they want to talk about.
Need to say? Thank you.
This wasn't started. Yeah. But I'm sure they have other locations too. So we can see where they want to go. Anyone want to help out with that? Yeah. Riley, whatever.
I mean, if I if it's at a time that I have time, then yeah, sure. Okay. Okay,
I was gonna say the same depends on the time when they're available that I'd be willing to come out though again,
however, okay, great. I'll give them a call and then see if they want to do it. And then just send an email to everyone and whoever wants to come, come come, essentially, I think that'll be a good start for the oranges to get our footing into, to the unions know that we're rounding that we're actually supporting them. So hopefully, they rope us into things in the future. Do
you have any information on that? And should we include anything about that when we're at Pride, or canvassing or whatever?
No. Need to spread anything there?
Like I was gonna say that that's actually maybe not for until the end of the meeting, but we should definitely talk about points for pride. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. That was on the agenda. Okay, cool. Sorry. No, I mean, it was already on the site, and we passed it and didn't do anything with it. Okay. So we'll go back. Okay. So for meeting times, yeah, he, I mean, I asked him if you if they needed us to share something now. And he was basically like, No, we're just doing our vote. But since someone else did a video with them before, I think we're okay with that. Okay, so meeting times already talked about the general meeting times second Thursday, fourth Monday, steering committee. So that's also open to everyone. So anyone can attend again in the future will be better about actually posting it will also, we have the recording of the first one besides the first like three minutes. And we'll also share that, and we'll transcribe it and post like a summary. So again, our goal is to make sure that steering committee is super transparent with whatever we're doing. We don't want it to be where you vote people in and then we do stuff in secret, and membership doesn't know what's happening. steering doesn't really have any power anyways, according to the bylaws, but we just want to make sure that we're as transparent as possible. So since we have to even out the agenda for the general meetings a week before, we're just going to meet a week before the general meeting. So we're first Thursday, third, Monday, same time. Again, no one's free to hop on. And the ABCs of socialism. I think that people that came liked it. And so we'd like to continue. We need two days to do it again. Does anyone have any preference? Sorry, it was capitalism. That's a different book.
Yes, I'd like to do two days in a row. I think that helped, because two different sets of people ended up coming both days. And so what day's work for a majority of folks? Do we just want to mirror the times that we did it before? We can do that Thursday, Friday?
Yeah, cuz that would I mean, that would seems easy, because then if we just have it regularly on like, basically the same days over and over again, and it's two days in a row, at least somebody you know, you'll be able to hit one of them probably.
I don't think we have third day free anymore. Oh, maybe we can we can do like Third Thursday.
First, Thursday, second Thursday. Yeah, we can do Third Thursday and Friday
of the month. We can do this should work for me at least.
I think we want to do twice a month so we could finish the three pamphlets in three months. I don't have a calendar in front of me. So that's
the third Thursday. I got it. Thank you
we could do like a Wednesday and Friday.
Could we do
the second? Wednesday and the second Friday? Or I forgot what the schedule is?
Yeah, like the second and fourth weeks wants to Fridays?
Yeah. Because that would be like the if we're doing the first Thursday and the third Monday, then we did the second Wednesday and the second Friday.
That would, yeah.
So second, and fourth, Wednesday, Friday of every month, which at this point would be Yeah, the 14th and 16th. And then the 28th and 30th. And then I think one meeting that we wanted to move, and we can just do this ahead of time was the fourth Monday in December is Christmas. So can we can either cancel it or we can move it to the like, we can move it back. Or we can move forward? Depends on if you want to have like, a holiday thing.
Probably move it forward. I feel like the week between Christmas and New Year's is rough for most, like most people, at least.
We can also just not have a meeting and just have some social event.
Yeah, that's yeah, that'd be good. A Christmas like a nondenominational Winter Solstice party.
Although if we don't have a second meeting in December, we will have to spend time in that single December meeting for elections.
Oh, that is true.
Could we hold the elections? The meeting before that? Yeah.
So the seven
Yes. Perfect. Pearl Harbor.
Sounds good. Okay.
I just take those Yes. Okay. All right. All right. Yeah. All right. Thank you very much. And I think, Yeah, we're good for Thanksgiving.
Okay, that's great.
And if we want to go back real quick to the Yeah, I guess canvassing opportunity? What exactly are the talking points that, like, what did you want to talk about? Riley?
Um, so I think that it would, if we're trying to get people to be interested and come in, we should, you know, give them a general overview of our, you know, the group's general beliefs. We I read a bunch of notes on Secondly, when you find them real quick. Yeah, we should
basically, give them an
idea of what our beliefs are, what our campaigns are going to be the two main ones, at least see, you know, try and see what they might be interested in, if they have ideas, kind of give them an overview of what Joining would look like, right? How much it would cost to join obviously. Yeah, and then, I don't know exactly, I was reading a thing about how to onboard people into organizations. So I don't know exactly what this means. But like, we, I think we should find a way to try and it's called a call to action, right? But like you're trying to motivate them, to feel the urge to go and do whatever it is that, you know, we're doing their thing that we want to do to make change to get out and help their community. So I don't know exactly what that would look like. But I think that's what you do. Don't know if anybody else has any idea though.
That like, that's great.
I was just going to add like, I Yes, I agree. And then also, considering this is pride, like, I think it would be important to maybe go back to the roots of pride. And so understanding that like, pride was primarily like, made by trans woman and also the there was also like a class asked aspect to it as well. So I think just letting people know that they're like they are not separate and As a way to maybe kind of bring people in Sylvia Rivera was very, like, would emphasize that in her own experiences, how the movement then started to just become at what it is now. Like this rainbow capitalism things so. And you know, she still died a homeless person. So, you know, she her efforts were still were and ended up being lost. So I think there can be some connection to that or, you know, for those that it resonates with.
Yeah, that ties perfectly into the tenant union thing. So I think that's, that's a really good idea. It's
just Yeah. But I think really emphasizing the tenant union thing, because I think queer youth, especially here, just because the wages are bad, really struggle with places to live around here. So I think reiterating that and letting them know, Hey, we're gonna, if you have any questions, even so we can propose them to you, and maybe you can send them up and you can have a larger brainstorming session.
Hey, they can join and go to the meeting themselves. Yep.
All right, yeah, those are great points. I think, if we want to, like, write it out for everyone else, so that way we have it. Someone wants to formulate it into a post that way we can.
Yeah, that was the thing. I was gonna say we should probably write some like concise scripts so that people have like some general taglines that they can say or something to give them a like a conversation starter. Because I remember when I canvass in the Bay Area, it was terrible. Because I never knew what to say because they didn't have any scripts.
Alright, we're gonna have like a candidate script. Well,
it might maybe not for this one, but for in the future. Because it I don't know if we have enough time for this one. Yeah.
It's a day. We got a day. Should we playing for like two talking points? Yeah, but Okay. Anyone else? All right. I just hope everyone goes to the forum and looks there. Okay, so approval of bylaws, I'm going to do some modifications that we made to the ones that were already there. So one of it was or one of them was for a motion cannot be both moved and seconded by by steering committee members alone. Another one was that for legal documents, so some of the tax documents require us having a chair or president and right now we don't have that. And we don't necessarily want it. But so we so I added in the context of local, state, federal and other regulatory documents, the campaign coordinator shall hold the title of chair president, while the member membership coordinator shall hold the title of Vice Chair vice president. These designations are solely for documentation purposes, and do not imply any extra duties or privileges within the organization. So that's just to clarify this literally just for those documents. And then Robbie brought up a good point for quorum right now it says that a quorum of 10% of the membership in good standing is required for general meetings. Should we set a minimum amount? So I mean, we're pretty small org at this point, like two people is a quorum. So we don't want that to happen. Should we set a minimum number of people I need to come to meetings? I think so far average attendance is
like seven. I think probably three is good. Because it two people's just friends hanging out, but three people now that's that's.
Three sounds good. But we might want to revise up to like, five or seven. Sure. Yeah, as we go through sounds good to start to me.
Okay. So we'll modify that with three. And so I will move to adopt the bylaws with these modifications. Can I get a second? Sorry.
The only other point of discussion I had was in the right now in the bylaws that it says that we will follow Robert's Rules or whatever. And there's a lot of stuff in that that we might want to adjust in our bylaws, but I don't think anyone's here to disrupt right now. So if we just say, Okay, well adopt them, and we'll do our best we're all still learning. But then in our next revision, I think it's at what after the next Election somewhere in the bylaws that says that we will do constant revision. So as long as everyone's okay with that, and no one's gonna say, Yeah, we gotta set it up this way, you know,
with that caveat. Yeah. I think we have Don't be a record in our craft. What's a call? Like our proper behavior? bylaws? We'll bring that up next time. But we have stuff like that. Think we have Don't be bad. Don't you know make the whole meeting by yourself? And then don't be like a sex pest, which is a problem and lefty. Oh, yeah, Caitlyn mafia often don't be a sex best. So don't be sliding into everyone's DMS all the time. That says instant ban because we don't, we don't need that
it's one person has ruined so many orgs like half of lefty or die because of like when it's next best? Who ends up like in leadership, and then you can't like get rid of them. So yeah.
Which is why we need incident recall short stuff
we did. So we do have anyone can be recalled anyone that steering committee members can get recalled by I think a two thirds vote at any meeting without cause. So at any point 30 People can just come up me like you're gone. And so you're not banned from the group here is demoted to member. Yeah. Same thing with, I think banning someone from the org. Also, it's fairly easy. So in terms of like accountability, the bylaws, if you read them, they're set up to be pretty swift. And to make sure that no one in power can kind of ruin everything. Well, I say in power, power steering doesn't really have any power anyways, but it's just set up to avoid that kind of stuff. And if you come up with any idea, so this like two thirds, or this, you know, motion, or moving, second by steering committee thing was brought up because we were talking about how we want to avoid that kind of like power hoarding by anyone. So if you read the bylaws, and you think of something that we can add to the bylaws that would stop that from happening and increased transparency, increase delegation, increase kind of democracy, bringing up at a meeting, and we can talk about an added in
on just in the bylaws itself as a two thirds vote, we can modify it at any meeting too. So if something comes up, that's a problem, then you just two thirds vote to change it immediately.
Yeah, we're trying not to, you know, we're doing the Silicon Valley thing of like, you know, make things quickly break things, and then keep coming.
Yeah, and also don't be evil, which they just totally ditched.
We're trying to disrupt the left organization. Okay, so we have our dates for this. And I think this was our strike ready pledge just to review again. It will support union workers who are standing up for their rights and demanding better working conditions, fair wages and respect in the workplace. In light of recent increases, or increase in striking workers and labor militancy, it's crucial for us to stand together in solidarity. As any union decides to strike, I will be prepared to support them in their fight for a better world, I commit to never cross crossing a picket line. And always, and I'll stand with my fellow workers. So it's pretty generic. I know. DSA is doing it for UPS specifically. But I figured we can just do it as kind of a standing thing that working class unity as I didn't want to talk about how we could kind of use this to recruit more people. So you know, we can have it be like a little petition that we can all share, like is this. Can you sign also, just as a way to get people into the membership pipeline? Which right, we will, yeah. The pipeline just being like, once we have their email, we can badger them to join them.
I can, yeah, I can make up like some like a membership document. So name, email, phone number, that kind of stuff.
Okay, we do have Action Network, back end. And that stuff I need to like. So for some of the stuff I'm in for the new folks, you guys don't know yet. But I've been dropping the ball a little bit on getting everything posted and everything. But that's because I've been having too much on my plate. But I'm hoping in the next month or so to kind of offload that to now our interim steering committee. And all of those instructions, again, will be like posted publicly. So the idea, the idea being it shouldn't just be like Raleigh, or Riley or Chris, like figure out how to do it. We should also have other people learning how to do it so that way, you can step in the next time around. And then at the end, I just wanted to talk about if anyone else has any ideas on stuff to do. During the steering committee, we talked about maybe just doing like a park cleanup thing with the Stockton cleanup group. I forgot their name He knows exactly.
Yeah, I'll reach out dn reach out to the printer and then patch does. My girlfriend does the community garden at hatch downtown? I don't Yeah, she wants to do cleanups like once a month. So we'll come back to that too. But there's there's one on Saturday as well, from eight to 11. But it's probably too late.
We can we can share it that folks want to do. And
this is just a
strictly out of curiosity, but my background is in political comms. So I'm just curious about how you're engaging like who you are in what you're asking people to do, because I came because Chris was talking about it. And I was like, Oh, that's interesting to me. I'm still, it's still vague to me what your interest is, and how you're trying to move people? And what would be enticing if you introduced yourself and said, I'm part of this organization, etc. So I think like, once you do know those things, like having some, you know, role like Canvas role play or something along those lines, it sounds like you're getting that probably out of the book that you're reading, which it sounds like you're getting some of the concepts and you're able to talk to folks, but just knowing, like, for example, when going to pride, like when you're engaging people like what does that conversation look like? And and what are you pitching sort of like, what's the vision etc? I'm not saying that that's like an immediate term thing, but like over the longer term seems like that would be something that would be beneficial.
Yeah, that's actually exactly yeah.
Yeah, I think right now, we're still stuck in like paperwork, land, and stuff. But like, overall, I think my goal for the group is to, and I've said this before, like, become a part of the social fabric of the county. So we should not just be doing canvassing and like, you know, tenant organizing stuff, obviously, the political stuff is important. So we activate people, so we educate them, and, you know, get them to be protagonists in their own life. But we should also just be, you know, doing the cleanup stuff going to pride for actually helping people set up like sports leagues, a lot of thing that I hear parents talk about that's Stockton government actually doesn't do, there's like a lot of complaints from parents who want to set up sports leagues for their kids. And Stockton City Council just blows them off, essentially. So if that's something that we can get the resources for, and help them set it up, then that way, that has nothing to do with politics. But it's still something that people can say, hey, I wanted to do something in my community, working class unity, like stepped up and organized and did it. And then, you know, hopefully, once you do that for folks, they'll join the org, and then replicate that with other folks. Or then, you know, come and join us for tenant organizing, and be activated that way. But we want it to be more than just a political thing. We want it to be kind of people's like, second family, essentially. Because that way, even if we may disagree on certain things, like let's say, you know, two years from now, we do have someone who is kind of iffy on pride or whatever. They'll feel comfortable, like, one not saying dumb stuff, but to like sticking around because I feel like, okay, I, I might not agree with this, but I agree with all the tennis stuff people are working on. And usually through working on things like that. And it's what Jean Michel, he talks about, you know, as you're trying to organize for a collective struggle, you kind of overcome your own kind of, you know, negative opinions of other people. So that's kind of the ultimate goal for working class unity, which is I know, that's not like an elevator pitch version of it. But it's, I would love your help in the future, for you know, fixing the cops.
Also, you just describe why I love syndicalism or anarcho, syndicalism, at least. Because like unions are like super radicalizing for the people who are in them.
Yeah, mutual aid. And then you brought up like younger people, I went to work. So one thing I did want to get to eventually was, you know, trying to reach out because now young people are working, and they really do not know their rights. And so it doesn't even have to be like about unionizing. It's just about like you do have a bunch of rights ready, and trying to, you know, go to school campuses, trying to get like, you know, hearing on hearing with a bunch of kids. Try to just explain that to them. And, you know, we can also recruit right now, I don't, yeah, we don't have anyone under 18. But I don't think we need like a youth version of our group, we can just combine everyone into one thing. And it'd be great to get young people to join this instead of some nonprofit, which is where they go now. Where they end up just, you know, being really limited in what they're able to do. And again, if that's stuff that folks want to work on, I think that's fine. Like we can start a thread on the forum. We can talk about kind of labor stuff to talk about. And like that's fine. Just because we have to focus campaigns doesn't mean we can't talk about other things. It's just if we're actually going to be like mobilizing and stuff then we should limit that to things. Yeah, anyone else have any ideas we could
I just wanted to mention that I think it this may be just useful for me, but I would like to know. Or it might be useful for all of us. So just know maybe a little bit of what we all bring, like, what are our strengths? What are our skills? And kind of just like how can we, you know, apply that here? So, you want to start, okay, yeah, just just if everyone was okay with that, but, um, so
where do I start? Okay. Now, I'm not long already sorry. Well, I am bilingual, I speak Spanish. Not the best, but I can get a get by. And so that's one thing. I'm going to school for social work. So I'm in some kind of that sphere a little bit. And learning how to give people therapy. So that's another thing maybe that just like learning how to communicate and just listen to people is something that I'm engaging in a lot. I do know how to garden a little bit, dabbled in that. So any of gardening stuff or starting one maybe? Can maybe something beyond that? I don't know. Maybe I can share others once I think about him. But that's, that's all I can think of right now.
Alright, so go back and forth. So, Riley, do you wanna go next and then we'll go back 10 person.
Okay, so I'm describing my strengths and weaknesses.
Yeah, how can we exploit you for good?
Okay. Well, my weakness is definitely not kryptonite. Okay, so strength I can't I'm pretty good at talking to people. But I'm not particularly outgoing. So I tend to not start conversations but if you bring someone to me who has questions I can usually explain pretty well at least what I believe I have terrible self esteem so that's probably a weakness of mine. I can do graphic design I play music Yeah, I don't I don't really don't know yeah
like I said, my I have a background in political comms. I've worked for a number of work for with collaborated with a number of progressive and left wing organizations. I was in like punk show organizing for a long time. And those are the biggest strengths in this context. I'm a I'm a decently okay photographer. And I will tell you none of my weaknesses
Joanna, do you wanna go next?
Yeah, yeah, we don't have strength is okay.
I think think I'm very family oriented. So I feel like I bring that perspective. You know, wanting to better the situation condition for my family. So I feel like a lot of people are in that boat. I guess.
Yeah, it is perspective as usually missing from all ethnic groups.
Yes. I think I think I'm very knowledgeable about City Hall, at least local politics because running the the anti to nine times, obviously, it's, it's contextualized contextualized. To like, what is going on? Currently, I know there are gaps for sure. With like, we're talking about the tenant stuff, but um, I think it's a good platform that I mean, I'm in I use it to recruit people and educate them because I think it's important. I think it's important to educate as many people as possible especially people here who don't know any of their rights and like we're talking about with young people I've worked in it I've worked in education, so it's I have a lot of connections to talk to young folks and see what see what's going on in their world.
All right, Powell.
My strengths um, I really like reading and researching and I think I express myself best through writing I, my weaknesses are probably probably the canvassing component. I'm not really personable or charming, and I'm a little standoffish to if I'm feeling uncomfortable. So those are probably some of my weaknesses. And then maybe another strength would probably be, I'm really passionate about health care. I help a lot of family members navigate our healthcare systems, especially our public health care systems like Medicare and Medi Cal. So
yeah, that's it for me.
All this time to think and my strengths? Yeah, I don't think I bring anything specific. I'm computer competent. I'm a body, I'm here to be numbers to help spread and do whatever.
I think
my strengths are. I work as a substitute teacher, so I can talk to like a group of high school kids really well. I also have experience like with punk show organizing, which is like a kind of community or community organizing, in a sense. I can make a flyer.
And,
yeah, I can do some like art stuff. Music. My weakness is probably, I'm like, not stable. And I have never, I have not lived in the same place for like, more than eight months, and like 10 years. So I'm in and out of Stockton. I'm trying to be more stable. And I hope to be able to help more long term than that, but that's my weakness.
Yeah, I think
physically, I help by just being a body. But I also do, I'm a software engineer by day. So if we ever need any techie stuff, specifically, like putting anything with website, or maybe action network can be stupid sometimes. I think most importantly, though, the within like, next month or so I'm going to start bringing my wife and she has many skills and will be very excited. Yeah. And I'm just I'm just here to fill her in and tell her her schedule fills up. And it'll be I'll be blogging in that time for sure.
Yes. Sounds great.
I will be coming to you with questions about Action Network and like web flow and stuff afterwards. Yeah, I'm like, I'm winging it on like everything. Okay, that's probably my skill, like, Can like wing it on a bunch of stuff. From I'm not like an expert on anything. So everything that I can hand off to someone who actually knows what they're doing will be fantastic. And yeah, I think I think my weakness is just I'm a little scatterbrained and very unorganized and doing a bunch of stuff at the same time. So again, I would, it's great to have books, because now I can delegate things to you. So yeah, I think it's pretty good group. solid group of folks. Yeah, thank you for bringing up that question. Okay, so I think, between now and the next meeting, we'll have we'll have pride. Maybe we'll have a cleanup event. And we can, since it won't be like WC you originated weakness share it, and folks show up. We did talk about T shirts, I think we settled on, like black and yellow, like one black version, one yellow version, just with our logo, plastic plastered on the front, we'll get pricing for that. And then for new members, I think they cost about $20 Each from a union printer. So once we start getting member dues, we'll just wait until two months before we give someone a t shirt. That way at least it pays for itself. And and then maybe you have that meeting with the one of the 10 organizers. Between now and next time. And if we want to start a thread on and we wanted a thread on the for talking points for pride, there was something else. Okay. And then if you do want to start a thread on just kind of labor organizing talking points for young people. And in terms of gardening, there's actually there was an article for I think Oakland, they were talking about how like crime actually drops in places where you could do set up like community gardens especially in like divots. And that's kind of been, like a decade long research at this point have shown, like fixing up empty plots does reduce crime. But we need to kind of link that to having those communities be able to actually own that plot of land because what you don't want. And what's happened before is people invest a lot of energy and time into a lot. And the owner shows up and goes, actually, I want to build something here. And he just wrecks all of it. So we can start to thread on that. And then maybe that can be a project that we take on in the future. Okay, it is 637. So running late. So thank you again, for everyone for coming. I know we're still slow going, but I think we will start doing stuff. Real stuff in like a month or so. So thank you again. Yay.
Jazz hands.
Thank you to everyone online.
Is it just me? I don't know. Now we got Joanna and Paolo, right.
Oops, I'm gonna leave you guys on so you can talk if you want but yeah.
Oh, yeah, that was the thing I was that I wanted to I gotta remember to bring up is the Food Not Bombs thing. Well, what is the Food Not Bombs thing. Um, so Stockton and Lodi, don't have a Food Not Bombs chapter. And I don't know if not necessarily for us, but it would be good to have like parallel organizations that we can benefit from. So not immediately, obviously. But in the medium to long term, it might be good to you know, see if we can branch out into other related kind of organizations. Or just take on the what Food Not Bombs does and just do it ourself.
Sorry, you wanna grab the mic?
Just from the Instagram, I saw that San Francisco has a chapter. Yeah. So I don't know if there's like an opportunity to reach out to them or just and maybe some consistency is helpful for some people to know that it's reputable.
And I know in Lodi, specifically there was a group that was not food, not bombs, but it was like kind of the same idea. They had like a community garden and did like free meal distribution on very limited resources. So it wasn't like very regular, but just to say that like the the there are people who are interested in that who are not currently here.
Was that the one that was on Sacramento Street?
It was on Elm Street on Elm Street. Okay, and the street produce project, I think.
So what is Food Not Bombs like project?
Like what what, like, what
is our project? Like? What's there?
Well, there was a community garden and like a food pantry. Yeah, they started during COVID I helped stock the pantry a lot. And then like about once every two or three months, they would have a like a Saturday morning meal where they would show up and cook meals and post fliers and, like the unhoused community would show up and get like a free meal. And then yeah, like you were saying earlier the owner showed up and said you can't do that anymore
yeah
yeah, Food Not Bombs has a pretty long record of being like a source of like, radical change, like they got, they got blamed for the the revolution or the, you know, a change in government in Iceland, because a lot of the people who were in the Food Not Bombs shatter in Iceland participated in the, you know, getting rid of the bank, like the banks and changing, taking, you know, getting new people into the all thing. So, you know, they, they, they, I will say, though that they have a they also tend to be the target of police pretty regularly because in the state because they're feeding people and apparently that's illegal.
So it's not like an anti war thing. It is,
but it it is less is more about food, usually, but it's also about that yeah.
The point like you were saying earlier, like you want the organization to do, you know, not just be politically focused, but have all these other things like giving up food used to be the gateway to having conversations about militarism, and anti imperialism, and that was kind of the structure and then there were these, you know, we'd grow out into community gardening and now having sort of all these other pieces, but the free food It used to be the initial point of having the first conversation with people wherever they were at. And like I said earlier, like, food, not bombs was my first interface into any political involvement at all. It's the reason I'm in this room. So yeah, I think it's, I mean, at least personally, anecdotally, it's an extremely powerful model. And
yeah, if there's no chapter locally, we can just kind of adopt their model, as one of our focus campaigns is to decide. And yet there's not really an anti war group here either. Like even just that. I know there's a lot of people here who want to do like pout, like Palestinian organizing, and there's really nowhere to go. Besides again, posting. So, yeah, that's something we can look into in the future.
I had a pretty interesting conversation with a guy named Sylvie who is he's a Palestinian who was studying in Romania. And we were like, we were so like, we were on the we were like getting along really well. We were like talking about, you know, settler colonialism and whatever. And then somehow the conversation turned to religion and it all exploded. So you might want to be careful about that.
Because cuz, yeah.
Already, we are well over 630 So Oh, shit. Yeah, I gotta go. Alright, thank you again. I'm gonna stop recording. Anyone else online want to say anything before we close it off
okay,
yep. Bye, everyone.
Bye, everyone. Nice meeting you all. Hi, everyone.
