Okay, now the creepy robot lady has spoken. We can start the meeting. Let's do introductions while I set up the share screen. We can go online and then offline. Okay? I'm sitting over here, so let's do that. Okay. Riley, do you want to go first?
Okay, Chris, go for it.
Hey, I'm Chris Charcot. I'm the treasurer and someone who's part of WC
should I pass about?
I'm sure we can start on the set. Sorry. Do you want to grab the microphone? I'm on now backward and forward. You're getting what? Keeps it more lively
Hello.
Isn't on earth can you put on it's very quiet
Hello. Yeah. Hello. Okay. Hi everybody, Elissa Leyva, she her hers and I will organize your with stocks and Stan's NWCU.
Okay, Riley, do you wanna go now?
My name is Riley. Schlanger. I'm the membership coordinator. And
yeah, that's about it. Oh, he him. There you go. Are they then that works too.
Hi, I'm Christine. I'm new. It's my first meeting. Can you guys hear me? Yep. Yep. Although I've been following Harpreet for a long time, I'm really glad that you guys have all put this together. I look forward to being a member
join and do I'm gonna Hi, my name is Hi, I'm Joanna. Yeah, can really
can't really hear anybody get a closer to your mouth is Patrick. Oh, can you hear me now?
Sorta. Okay.
Okay, anyways, my name is Joanna. I'm here because I want us to have a better life
All right, Lucas, do you want the next
Yeah, that's fine. I am Lucas. I work for CSEA which is a classified school employees union. I also want us to have a better life and this is my second meeting that I attended
this is Robert Hemphill. I am the secretary. And yeah, I'm here to try and get this going. And
when there's no Cheers, everyone my name is Sandra and I am a community organizer in Lodi.
Okay, and my name is Harpreet Chima, and I'm going to Oh, person. Samuel, do you want to introduce yourself or just doing introductions? Oh, for
sure. Hi, my name is Sam. I am just waking up from a nap. So I'm in bed still. And I don't have my camera on for that reason. I don't know what I'm supposed to share. So I'm saying I'm here. I'll be here.
Alright, let's great. No, don't do that. Okay. Someday we'll figure out how to do this properly on our side. Okay, basically the way it works here is you are L you are on Zoom. We have a TV so everyone can see and hear you and we have a speaker. So we're trying to make this kind of equal for everyone that attends in person and online as much as possible. And we do get everyone. Okay. So do you want to start off the meeting Robbie? Since you're entering things
Yeah, sure. Let's get started then. Okay, so because we don't have a standard agenda, the first business This would be to adopt an agenda. So Harpreet, can you move that we adopt this? Can you? Can someone move to it?
I'll move to adopt them.
Can I get a second from so we have a rule that steering committee cannot move and adopt at the same time. And so we need someone else to second.
I'll second.
Okay. It's been moved by Riley and seconded by Joanne that we do I know that we adopted this agenda for this meeting. Is there any objection? Okay, then we will adopt it moving on.
Okay, then first, Harpreet did the opening mostly but then we could have a quote or state the duties of the different officers are a statement of purpose or a group affirmation. We can all just say, you know, working class unity. Yeah, just something cheesy to get it started. And so we'll skip all that since it's optional this time. Since we're busy, okay, so then, then we have roll call. So I would ask the secretary to take roll, but since I'm the secretary, I'd ask her that makes sure that are the officers here? And do we have a quorum?
The officers here and our quorum of I believe 10%? Well, a minimum of three is here. So we're going to perform.
Okay. We'll move on. Okay. During our last digital meeting, we did not I mentioned it in the speech, but we did not actually do it. So first, we have to approve the meeting. minutes from two meetings ago. So the June 8 2023. The minutes were posted. Are there any corrections or additions? Hearing none, the minutes stand approved as posted. Then for the second, those would be the last minutes from June 26 2023. Those were also posted. Are there any corrections or additions? Hearing none, the minister approved as posted. Okay, then next in the meeting would be the report of officers. I'm the secretary. So I would give a report on any mail or correspondence, but we don't have a mail. So we're good on that. And we might have a report from membership committee campaign committees or any other committees or members that did anything that we need to report on. But I don't believe there's anything else at this moment. So moving on.
Are Chris, did you want to Chris disappear? You're still here. Do you want to just report filing the tax documents since?
Oh, yeah. We filed our articles of incorporation today. So we have officially started the process for becoming a, you know, tax exempt nonprofit organization.
Alright, well, then. Thank you so much.
Yep. Thanks. If we have no other reports, then we'll move on. And get so the first unfinished business we have it has to do with the bylaws. We announced prior that we were going to have the vote on it as we are required. And it will require a two thirds vote, or 50% of the total membership, which either one qualifies probably. So I guess I'll turn it over to Harpreet. And we'll take them one by one.
Now you speed read them? Go ahead. Okay. These are super quick just we had, we didn't have a conflict of interest policy. So we have that now. For nominations committee, we just clarified that nominations are going to take place at the beginning of November, and then voting for the news. The next steering committee will be the beginning of December, that gives a month for against two weeks for all the nominations to come in. You can nominate that second meeting of November. And then the final vote will be December. And so that gives us about a month to make sure everyone comes out and votes in early December for the next steering committee. role in composition. Those were just we were just clarifying that we have chair and vice chair as membership committee and as campaign committee, but those are only positions for tax purposes. They don't hold any other power in the organization and for Yeah, that was a legal documents and rolling composition was
I think that was just stating that when we were putting the meeting, okay.
Yeah. So yeah, it was very minor modifications of the bylaws. They are in our email. If you want to go check them in the future. And again, if you want to change them, you can bring it up to the membership at any time at any meeting and then in a month, we can modify them again. So, for the vote, we'll just ask everyone to raise their hand either online or on Zoom. Sorry, do you need to make a motion? Well, I'm just explaining how about and that is, be it. If you are an A, just wait until we get tonight, then raise your hand. If you want to stay and wait until that raise your hand. So
if I'm hosting, I can't make the motion. So.
Okay, so I moved to adopt these bylaws. So modification to the bylaws. Can I get a second?
Okay, Sam. Sam seconded it. Okay.
It's been moved by Harpreet, that we adopt these changes that were distributed to the membership to the bylaws. And we have a second, all in favor, signify by a hand do you say?
Yeah, just either raise your hand on video or raise your hand on the Zoom call? With the like the emoji and that's fine. Okay. All
in favor? All right, thanks. So all opposed. Okay, motion carries. We have adopted the changes to our bylaws.
Okay, I was adopted. Thank you very much. Hey, Chris,
real quick. How do you do the put your hand up thing? In? Zoom?
Oh, it's in reactions. Okay, bottom tab. Got it.
Okay, and we'll probably want to talk about if we want to have a, I don't know, tech person that would be able to keep track of the Zoom meeting and possibly type out the motion. So it can be displayed for everyone when we're voting on him, just for complete clarity. But that's for future reference.
Yeah, and we probably need a better way than raising hands on Zoom. But for now, we will survive. Okay. New business. So there's the new business for today. Do you want to go over Robbie?
Well, we're hoping to cover the tenant union, the UPA strike pledge that we're gonna try to get pictures or signatures for the geolocation that will be after this meeting, the park cleanup that we have, potentially on the schedule, or that we have on the schedule, social events, stuff about potentially the newspapers that we talked about the steering committee, as well as the text documents that we turned in. So we'll start with our pre who will present on our first campaign.
Oh, yeah. Okay, so I brought up the so this is a focus campaign focused campaign is basically we kept ourselves at two and there are two campaigns that are gonna use up the majority of our the majority of our resources, basically, so we have side quests, those things would be like the community cleanup, or were you spending a weekend doing Park cleanup. It's not taking a lot of research time, not a lot of resources. But the focus campaign, like a tenant union campaign, will take up significant time. And so we're capping ourselves at to the idea was brought up a month ago, we delay a month, and then at the next month meeting, this meeting, will take a vote after the presentation on whether this is something we want to follow through on or if it's something that we don't want to bother with. Okay. So, what is a tenant since we're doing tenant organizing, a tenant isn't someone who just pays rent, it's someone who doesn't have full control over where they live, because they don't own their home. This includes people who rent people who don't have a stable place to live. And even people who are homeless, they're all part of the struggle because they don't have control over their own living conditions. And this is a quote from in defense of housing. Ultimately, the problem with making housing a commodity is, is that a such living space will be distributed based on the ability to pay and provided to the extent that it produces a profit. But ability to pay is unequal. While the need for a place to live is universal. There's an unavoidable contradiction. So there's a conflict between treating housing as a business and the fact that everyone regardless of their income, needs a place to live. So before we move on to what, you know, trying to figure out if we wanted to make 10 unions what our tenant unions, broadly speaking, attendant union is a dues funded member run mass organization of tenants. Here are some examples of tenant unions. They're all dues fund to funded organizations. The top left is from Boston. The top right is from tank out in Oakland. We went visited them a couple of weeks ago, and the bottom ones are locked to Los Angeles tenant union. So this is something that's been happening all across the country. We're not trying anything brand new. Our country actually has a long history of tenant unions. They're just To now it's just with rents being so high, they're coming back into fashion essentially. Okay, so what is the tenant unit?
Its base, that's what it is.
and organize Association attendance form to protect them further their rights and interests, acting and representing themselves in common. But as socialists, the long term goal of tenant unionism for us is controlling the means of social reproduction. So, d commodifying, and democratizing housing. And social reproduction here basically refers to all the activities and resources that are necessary to maintain our lives on a daily basis. So things like housing, health care, food and education. And as we talked about in a reading group, under capitalism, we have to, you know, enter the market, sell our labor, or earn a wage to pay for all of those things, even though those are things that we need to live. And if we don't sell ourselves to a boss who will pay us a wage, we aren't going to be able to get those things. And so the long term goal of our organization is to take these essential life sustaining resources, housing, health care food, and put them under democratic control of our working people, rather than leaving them in the hands of a few people who treat them like things to be bought and sold only if it makes a profit. So with the tenant union, the long term goal like our horizon that we're looking for, is to remove housing from the market, which is to D commodify. It and to make it something that everyone has a say in which is democratizing it and then lastly, tenant unions are about everyday life. And I'm gonna go into this in a bit more detail but before I do Can someone explain what you know quote everyday life means to them like when you're thinking about everyday life, what exactly comes to mind
unless somebody in person that wants to say something to you go ahead and go
revival your basic needs theory house you shower your your car, or transportation, food. Childcare.
Right.
Yeah, I know she she covered basically everything I was gonna say. So. Anyone else?
Okay, so yeah. Right. So everyday life is like, you know, your leisure time hanging out with neighbors, the activities for reproduction, like for survival that we need, you know, even laundry, cooking, etc. And our jobs. And those are all like, these aren't political actions, right? It's not lobbying, it's not voting. And so why exactly are we a political organization interested in tenant unions, if they do pertain to everyday life. Because work and because work in housing are also a part of our everyday lives. And just like labor unions and attendant union, you're part of a structure where there's a lot of people who are in the same position as you are, as a renter, and a few people on top who will have control over you. But your position as a tenant, just like your position as a rank and file union member, gives you the ability to act collectively. And when you do tenant canvassing, it's very different from canvassing for political campaigns. You're talking to people about their everyday lives, right, the mold in their kitchen, the AC that doesn't work, things that they're having to cut back on, because the rents keep going up. And you're telling them that they don't have to rely on anyone else besides themselves and their neighbors to get the power to fix those things. And it's this kind of politicization that elected electoral politics cannot give you, um, you're allowing people to come together to build power and to fight and actually change their everyday lives for the better. And that is what can convince people to get engaged at a greater level. Right? If if we can win 10 campaigns, and we can win those, then perhaps we can win, you know, some ballot initiatives, perhaps we can get more involved in electoral politics. But if you can't even get your dishwasher repaired, how are you going to believe in, you know, socialism and taking over the means of production?
And then lastly, tenant unions are not advocacy or services. So advocacy is about, you know, trying to win legislation here. You're shifting legislators are lobbying is not what one would consider everyday part of life unless you are someone that does that kind of stuff. And, you know, for the most part, people understand control over politics has been lost to the capitalist. And mostly what people think of politics is that they're the, quote, noises of the ruling class deciding how to rule with no input from anyone else. And that's from aeronautics. So I think that's why tenant unions in, you know, this time is kind of a unique way to organize people. It doesn't have to do with electoral politics, and it can actually deliver immediate wins and organize people in a more personal way. But overall, does this make sense? You know, after reviewing this, I know we're going kind of fast, but we have a lot to cover. And why do you think it's important to build tenant unions? Do you think it's important to give people power to fight in their everyday lives? And how do you feel about this process so far?
No, I didn't really hear the first half of that prompt. So
just asking, like, Does this make sense to? Is it like, do you think it's important to build tenant unions? And oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And like, how do you feel about forming a tenant union so far?
Good. Positive.
Amazing. Yes.
Yeah. And we, at the meetup, in Oakland, there's a lot of discussion about advocating for individual tenants to just giving them the resources to be able to create their own tenant unions, or create, you know, unionize their own properties. But we could also help facilitate that as well.
What about for folks who live in like, underserved neighborhoods like section eight?
Yeah, the different types of housing is something we'd have to like, get into later, as it gets very complicated.
So I had though, I will say that section eight is probably one of the people like one of the groups of people we probably need to help the most, because it's really hard to get housing when you have section eight.
Christine, Alex, hey, Sandra, thoughts?
I didn't hear it. She said. Can you repeat that for me? Harpreet?
Oh, she was asking about Section Eight housing, which, okay, I have a different type of housing.
Well, right. That would be an interesting approach to figuring out where to go first. I noticed in one of your slides, they mentioned a particular landlords name. In California, more and more, a lot of landlords are not even people.
Yeah, they're like investment firms or whatever. Yeah.
Yeah, that was a big topic. Also, at the West Coast. Tenant union meetup was finding resources for finding who your landlord is, if I mean, because it's usually a nameless entity or a management company, but someone owns that property somewhere. So you can use you can find them it is possible. It's just obtuse, it's on purpose.
I just would like to add that, for the Latino community to be able to unionize, it's going to be some sort of difficult. The reasons are I assume it's not going to be language barrier in this case, but fear not adding to the fear, because that's the main main reason it's also not feeling the not feeling that they also have the right. Since a high percentage, it's it doesn't have their documentation in order. So that's going to be for me, it will be a challenge. It will take a lot of time. And assuming that's what we don't have right time. So what will be working the steps be for us to be able to move faster. It's I believe that a campaign that it's just dedicated to a group A person could benefit us in a brighter, broader way. And the good thing about the Latino community is that once one of them understands the process, they there's always one of in the group that becomes the leader. So that leader will take that information back. And that's, I think, a connects what? Chris was saying that in the West, they were explaining so he I, Chris is going to be more informed, and probably how to put this together and better words than myself than me. But yes, it that's just a thought of speaking. We're working with the Latino community.
Yeah, that's usually important.
That's a great point. Yeah.
I'm doing by the way, it was worded just fine. You did great. That's great.
Alex, do you want to say hi, thank you for thoughts.
Hello? Um, yeah, I agree. I mean, I, I've been renting on and off for a long time now. And wages have never changed, and rent has almost tripled. I think, since my first place. It's literally has been a liver die issue for many throughout that time, and is increasingly becoming that and I think things like absolutely, like, figuring out how to get your dish, our fucking sorry, our plumbing has not worked for a month, and we've been fighting with our landlords to do anything about it. So that's, that's resonant. But then bigger than that, I truly don't know how people increase, I have it pretty good. It's a struggle. I don't know how people who are having trouble sort of getting a salary at 40 hours to 60 hours, are able to get any house, to rent anything to find a place. And so I think that, yes, like things like getting utilities fixed, getting attentive landlords is important. But, you know, as important, if not bigger, I'm genuinely curious about how we get to a point where we stopped that accelerating rent over the fact that cost of the fact that, uh, wages never go up.
Yeah, that's a good point. Because there's like a whole bunch of like, interconnected issues. And like, even though, as an organization will, will be for focusing on like, certain parts of them, we can use those issues to, like, expand upon all of the, like, the interconnected problems that capitalism has, you know,
lol, Joanna, Lucas.
You know, this isn't really like, I'm not as well versed in this as I am and other things, but I think it was Sandra, who had talked about, you know, finding leaders and things like that, and there certainly are ways in organizing in general to find those natural leaders, most of the times you want the people who, who are naturally already looked at as that person. So, you know, I have an organized outside of, you know, the work place. Right. So I, you know, there are going to be differences there. But there are certainly ways to find those leaders to have them, you know, in, you know, indoctrinate them in a sense, right. And I talked about this in our smaller setting earlier, but there are there ways to have those conversations and specific, you know, ways to learn how to have these kinds of organizing conversations that that can help go about that. So, you know, if I can lend my expertise in any kind of way, that way, I'd be happy to do it going forward.
Yeah, we I think we ran out of time in this meeting to fit in how to have those kinds of conversations, but definitely in the future.
We, Lucas, we should have you come to like a special meeting just to talk about that kind of stuff for people want to learn about it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Christine, Sam, any comments before we move on?
I think you were starting to give us a little history on it. It might be helpful for us to see some instances were turning unions have been successful in one rights, I was reading a little bit about one in Kansas City, where they were looking at the eviction notices during COVID. And they would, they were trying to rally for the people who were being evicted and forced the court dates, you know what I mean, they were not gonna be able to present their sides to a judge before being evicted, it might be helpful to learn a little bit about some of the successes, strategies. And it kind of goes to what Sandra was talking about how to reach a wide array of people, especially people who are going to be very reluctant to maybe who need it, but reluctant to join and help because fear of being kicked out fear of what could happen reprisal.
That is Luckily, the very next slide. Oh, Sam?
Can you guys hear me? Oh, yeah, um, I think I think that like a tenant union thing is a very, it would be very beneficial for this organization specifically, that's kind of like a big umbrella, socialist organization, because you don't have like, the workplace in which to organize, which is usually like, like the location of organizing, kind of, whereas like a tenant union. Like, I feel like, it's a good first step as it provides some kind of like structure around which to organize and attract people to an organization like this. So I think I agree that it's important that we start there, or that it's a good starting space. I also think, like what Sandra and some other people have been pointing out is kind of how I've been feeling about it too, in the sense that, in my experience, a lot of people in Stockton are, are, I would maybe expect them to be kind of hesitant or untrustable about an organization approaching them and saying like you can organize your tenants like they might not believe that it's possible, or I just know a lot of people who have had experiences in this valley where people have been promising big things and then not follow through. And I think that makes people reluctant. And I just think that that's important to keep in mind as we go forward. Like how can we? How can we first of all get people on board and not abandon them? Like we have to make sure we follow through on any things like that?
For sure. Listen, do you still want to go? Okay. All right. So get ready. Now this is going to be an info dump on a whole bunch of stuff. We got to talk and out of the way now. It's just me blabbing. Okay, so victories for past tenant unions. So yeah, we've been pretty theoretical so far. But let's talk about some real world victories. There was the Parkdale tenants kickoff rent strike to demand repairs and to end rent hikes. And they won. And they had about 200 tenants who withheld close to a quarter million dollars on monthly payments. And I think that's important to kind of conceptualize that, when you do do a rent strike, it's going to be very pricey for the landlord, right, like shorter individual rent might be 1000 or 2000. But collectively, it's a lot of money. We are neighbors and we organized in Oakland, that was a tank union that organized and did get some victories, and Houston, Texas victory. They won after a two month rent strike. Those are newspaper articles. So you can Google them if you want more details. But, you know, again, victories have happened, usually through tenant strikes. But we'll talk a little bit later about victories that happened even without having to go into a hole strike. And so there's also the mutual aid aspect of forming a tenant union, right, you don't necessarily have to reduce your rent, like that's not the only victory that comes from it. So typically, the way that you know, left does, mutual aid now is very much just like a charity. So it's like a less well funded church. And that's not what we're aiming to do. Historically, mutual aid has been combined with the union. And so once the tenant union gets to a certain size, you can start building this outward, tenants are helping themselves and benefiting themselves by coming together. And so events like the one in the picture where folks are hanging out, providing really good food to each other good music, like that's a win in itself, neighbors being friendly enough with each other, that they're checking in on people the checking on people that aren't well or the elderly. Like all of that is still an improvement to people's everyday lives. Right. And that should still count as a victory, because you need that kind of solid already before you're gonna win anything bigger. And that makes organizing so much easier as well, because when someone has a problem or a new tenant moves in, there's a community there for them to plug into, instead of just being an individual that's having to deal with their landlord all by themselves. And just as another part of this, like, because we aren't being a service, what we don't want is for tenants to get a problem with their landlord, and then email us, right, because we're going to continue being a small team, maybe some of those tenants join us to do other stuff. But the goal should be that they contact their neighbors, the people that they're close to, to resolve the issues with their tenant union. And so the the goal for tenant unions, obviously, is to do much bigger things than just that, right? It's a dry runs down across the whole city, or, you know, marched down city hall with a pack Street, because we have so many tenants that are unionized, but the only way that's going to happen is we're actually growing our tenant union. So that's a vital aspect, we can't just unionize a few places, and then kind of sit on our laurels after that. Okay, so now we're gonna go over a few things that can help us make decisions on like which neighborhood to pick. And this is kind of the nitty gritty stuff. So just bear with me. For what we saw at the tank conference, in the bay, were in there were like 40 different unions that came from all across the west coast and Canada. Sometimes, projects would fall into people's laps, and so they'd go knocking on some building, and there'll be a really serious problem that all the tenants already had, you know, problems so serious, they were ready to basically move out. And so it was very easy for them to say, hey, let's put up like one final stand was actually fight, the landlord tried to get this fixed. Those people who those are people that are really agitated and like ready to fight, right, you don't have to really do all that much. Also, we can get lucky. And you know, maybe there's a member of working class unity in the future, or now, um, who already lives in a building that is having some sort of problem. And you know, that person is already integrated, maybe they somewhat know the residents already, that's a really convenient place to start. And, you know, getting at least one committed organizer is usually the hardest part like Sandra, and like Lucas, were saying, and so if you already have that person there, that's, that's a great start, just right there. And just a note on like, agitation, like we'll talk more about this, and like organizing conversations in the future, hopefully. But just because someone is agitated, you know, there's issues that they want dealt with, doesn't mean that's a sign that those people are going to be beholden to their neighbors, or that they're gonna want to work together and organize with their fellow tenants, it just means they're pissed off about something like we have to do the heavy lifting of actually getting them to work together after that. Okay. And then these are like objective factors of these things can make organizing easier. So no, trying to pick a location organizer is what we should look out for. You know, we want to find a place that has about 10 to, on the lower end of units, you don't want like to start off with 1000 units. And you want them all owned by the same landlord, obviously. And if you can get a significant chunk of people from these buildings, and you can apply collective pressure on the landlord fairly quickly. And it's really effective if the landlord doesn't own multiple properties, right? If they're, that's the one property they own. If we're going to take away 10s of 1000s of in like revenue in a month. That's something that's going to scare them. Let's see, where are we? Yeah. And if the complex is too large, it's just too hard, is there's known problems with the landlord, like in a bit, we'll go over the research on it, you can sometimes find like violations online. So you're already informed. But there's other things like maintenance, living conditions, large rent increases, that's stuff we're going to learn when we're doing cold calls, or when we're when we're going door to door. Simply organizing is often not enough, you know, it's often enough to get a quick victory around maintenance and other conditions. But as we learned from the convention, if that's all you go for the tenant union tends to fall apart after you get that victory. And so you have to establish a stronger bond with the people there. There are also rent increases, but you know, they said reversing a rent increase can be challenging, so you can look at the rental history of a property, see how likely another rent increase is, it does tend to immediately activate people because it's an immediate threat. You know, it's not something we're used to living with. They can be used to living with, you know, faulty plumbing, but they're not yet used to like a $300 increase in the rent. So that can give it some urgency. So in the future, when we're trying to choose building a project, we should consider these three or these four factors, whether there's a member who's already in the building, and when I say building I just mean like an area with the same landlord because we don't know We have buildings like that the level of tenant agitation if the building has a medium size, so like 10 3040 units, and if there are known common issues across all of those units Any questions so far? Okay, almost done. So for research, if you do pass this, you know, we're going to try to set up a committee to do this. But the research aims to figure out who your landlord is, map out the landlord's properties, find eviction history, legal complaints, political donations, you know, any spicy information that we can use, you can also Google their name online, see if they've been in the news before. There are tools for research nationally, there are some local tools, property radar is kind of a national tool that we can use. And then you can also do public record requests for landlord records. And on our forum, we have kind of a guide on how to do legal requests or public record requests. So we can do some of those. And then, in terms of tactics for winning, so like, what previous victories that have actually happened, what are the kinds of things that those folks did to actually win, sometimes it's really easy, you send a letter to send the landlord letter signed by all the tenants as a tenant association. And just for clarity to tenant union would be like working class unity, a tenant association would be like that neighborhood, like branch basically. And then so you or you collectively submit complaints on the same day to regulatory body. So maybe the body doesn't have any teeth, maybe people don't really pay attention, but getting 2030 complaints about the same thing from the same property will raise a red flag. So that's one in the past. Nothing was got flipped, okay, I'm gonna move to here. Okay, or you can take your entire tenant union. So this is an event that actually happened, while we were out in the bay, this is the view of the landlord. So he opened his door and saw that because he wasn't paying a woman's deposit back. So you can go to their house for the neighborhood, you can do a rally like this, you can go talk to their neighbors to basically shame them, you know, tell the neighbor about how they're trying to kick out some family in the middle of winter. And there was one more
thing stuff got shuffled around, but that's okay. Okay. And then the last thing was also just like you can send, you can be good cop, bad cop and have, you know, the tenant association send a very nice letter saying, hey, please do this. And then the bigger org working class unity, sending a more scathing letter and asking people to call in to the property management company, or the landlord, you know, doing phones, apps. So they're all those are all different tactics that have worked. The main thing is, on our end, like, we just have to be creative, right? Like, if the landlord ends up being some person who pals around with a lot of politicians, that's someone that's going to care about their public image. And so going to kind of bougie places and like talking about what they're doing during some sort of event, they don't want that kind of stuff happening to them, because their public image matters. And so it really depends on who the landlord is. And it depends on how creative we can get, but basically, you know, our pressure is either we can withhold, withhold the rents, or you just like shame them enough to get to make them give in or, you know, as we do our research, try to get actual regulation and fines applied to them. And so the types of outreach, once you do pick a location, you know, you can do cold contact or have like a local activity, we'll talk about a local activity in a bit. Basically, meet people where they are, where they're doing something, have like a quick three minute conversation, ask them for a commitment, you know, that would just be Hey, come to a meeting, or sign this petition. And so that's, you know, you got to you got to be really good, you got to be able to have that three minute conversation down, or you can be, you can knock on doors, you can go around the entire neighborhood, that gives you a bit more information, you know, you should have about 10 to 15 minute conversation with them. That gives you a lot more information on what may be going wrong, because we obviously are not going to know everything that's going on in a building, we're only going to be able to learn from the tenants. But again, I think, Lucas, you will have to help us with, you know, formatting, that kind of conversation. And then once you do once, if we pick a place, you know, we'll do outreach events, we'll have these many different small conversations, we'll knock on doors, once we have kind of an idea of this is a good place to pick there are problems that are similar across the board. People can be agitated or are agitated and this is a good opportunity for us. Then we would go out and have our first tenant association meeting. And at that meeting, that is when we get people to you know, bring them in. Obviously the offer things like we do, or we try to do here like language, justice, childcare. We aren't doing that yet, but you know, hope Probably someday. But yeah. And we already there. Okay. But really the ultimate goal here? Is it have something to say here. Yeah. Okay. So this is kind of key for us, like the primary interaction that we have with the tenants can't be about 10 Organizing can't be about like just tenant issues. And I know that sounds strange. But you know, a lot of tenants, like I said, that we've heard from for at the convention said that after they won a victory, the tenant union would die, because the only interest that those folks had, and joining the tenant union was because of some bad property manager, or some issue that wasn't being solved. And they really had no connection with each other outside of that, right. And like, we've seen that kind of a local organizing, too, we organized around kicking a few people out of a school board thing. And then after they're out, it kind of dies down, because people have no ties to each other besides that conflict. And so the, you know, the lesson that I kind of took away from it was that we not only have to install the will to fight in people, but we have to give people someone to fight for. And so that means really building those social ties. In those communities, though, people, even once we have they win a victory, they continue having those like picnics that we saw or other social events, and that they fight about more like fight for each other on more things than just the candidate union. Like if someone's having trouble with their boss, or someone's in a union that might be going on. Right? You know, it's one big families, everyone decides, Hey, we should all go on price support for like our neighbor, basically. And the unions are able to do that, or the unions that were, I think that's like flower drive here. And I think that's the end. That's it for me, Robbie is gonna give a report from the conference real quick. And then I'm going to read off something that Chris wrote, we're going to watch a quick video from one of the women from Flower drive. And then, and then we're going to take our vote, but we'll do question two for the video. Okay, go ahead.
Okay, well, yeah, I attended the conference. And when I was there, I went to the breakout room to be on communicating with the media. But it turned out more like a conversation than what they'd done. So okay, so we talked about different avenues for spreading the message. Like punk shows, which I don't know if there's any music scene back then. But you've got a project idea or recharged. We got someone on board. That might be someplace said the radio days, but they were cheap. So that was a good way to get the message out. Talking about topics where they'll be trying to sell real estate, they'd stick to the facts on the community. So that seems like a good idea. Oh, and one guy legality signs on telephone sort of what they were saying Would that ever be reporters with a big we are writing a letter or something, but we want to get their stories and put out you know, the real people behind the instruments. For inspiration, people mentioned that the Black Panther newspapers, party newspapers, we're also actively working on some of the events that I heard about, or we talked about that maybe someone should hold a worst landlord of the year ceremony you know, everyone get dressed up, get a nice plaque and save this up. was the worst thing. Yeah. So one group, they were protesting a landlord, who was paying for the wedding of the cousin until they showed up to the wedding assigned the wedding dresses and touching the dance party outside protested and one after the other effigy. Sometimes legislation was one that seemed good was, I think, was in a registry of predictions. When someone tried to file a report on other things was just to take the median of actions you want the one they asked for, and we don't want it to go back and say, or what, what? And finally develop contact, which I don't know there's not a very big media landscape out here, but we're gonna want to get our message out there even if you're not on our side is still gonna sign up for okay.
Okay, I'm just gonna read off from the comments. Damn that We definitely have a music clear team here. And right there, Chris said, we picked probably people up the hatch, which I think we can even said we could definitely do that. Alex, do you want to just weed out propellants?
Sure, so I said, Yeah, two things. One is, I think one of the things that sticks out to me about Stockton versus many other places that I've lived is already sort of part of the local culture is that there is a lot of sort of hyperlocal and neighborhood community gathering in a way that I haven't experienced in many of the other places that I've lived. And I think that that is like partially an organizational advantage, because one of the things we're talking about an attendant thing is it's like, we want to have these local meetups and local sort of events. And like that kind of already happens in a way, which is I think, helpful, because it means like, sort of, like one of those steps may have already been happening. And it's a matter of like focusing what that energy is. And then the other is, I've thought a lot, you just brought up the Black Panther newspaper piece I've thought a lot about and I'm sure many here have about just like the dearth of actual journalism that takes place in this city, and how much of an advantage that is to any, you know, hybrid. And I'm curious, and obviously, Chris does a lot of really great sort of subversion activism with regard to his accounts and stuff. But as far as like shared information that is not like next door, or 209 times what exists, there seems like there's a really big opportunity to exist to actually like inform in in creative areas of testimony for what the like actual working class experience is here and what options are available to people to for that kind of power. Because all this stuff that we're talking about right now is fantastic. But it can't get communicated to a larger group of people on a regular basis outside of just in Yes, one on one. Conversations are extremely important. But how are we going to like broadcast that that's like a really big opportunity.
We got a surprise for you if we can get to it. In 10 minutes. All right. All right. We have a comment. But thank
you can videography on the phone
anyone else have comments here before we move on?
Just FYI, I don't know if it's on my end. But the the room mic is pretty muffled sounding.
It's one or the other one.
Not yours.
Since use this one, I've walked it over. Okay, Chris, I took this method from the event. Do you want to read it?
Yeah. So this would be the first time we got chance to talk some folks representing the flowers street union, I guess it was technically it was flower drive. So I need to edit that. There's some representatives from neighborhood in LA. And they block a predominantly Spanish speaking tenants who had recently been threatened with eviction after the local university claim that they need space to make room for more student housing. So Santa Clara University is trying to evict a whole block. Spanish speaking tenants basically in thought they could just pull it off. I quickly realized how much collective power these tenants had. This was not just the boom bust cycle of organizing through the COVID lockdown. These were tightly knit communities with the newfound power to stop the merciless landlords. So they were successful. And they essentially from their story, which I believe there's a clip coming up, but they they confronted the landlord with everyone in their building and basically circled around him and shamed him. Kind of similar the other public shaming concept and be backed down.
Yeah, so I'm gonna play a video of one of the women from the union. Basically the setup is what Chris said they had invited in their backyard essentially has a conversation with him and hopefully when
you hear
no audio? Yeah.
Okay, I'm gonna be really lame and put two microphones on the speaker. It's not working
How are our vessels are big in our elections are all getting together we're all running around
Jason
academica we know we know how
and Kobe's here at a time and mean nothing
and then you can get out of it. So the problem that we're
seeing
and that was something that
will work, it's kind of everything that
they're looking for is not our vision for what I'm doing for my party. You were okay, sorry. He may not have been super clear about that, but we'll post it online, or I think we have on our forum, we have the gallery to like, the whole, the whole forum. And yeah, we're gonna generate subtitles. But basically, the story was like, yeah, the, the landlord gave in ads to meet them or like a fancy hotel, they're like, No, you come to our house, and meet us here. And so he did, They encircled him, like I said, and even though he relented and stopped harassing them, they didn't stop organizing. And so flower drive actually has a bunch of like, big events, like just on their streets. So close off the street, they're, you know, they're, they're living across the street from big stadium. And they basically give it like the middle finger and hold their own events, all the time. And that's how they've been able to maintain themselves. And it's continued growing and continues, you know, fighting for each other, because all these folks, you know, are like family now. And so they fight for each other. When there's other tenant unions in LA that need help, they'll go out and help them because they all understand they're kind of in the same struggle. And so, for me, this was really inspirational. It's kind of my goal for, you know, what I hope we can do here in Santa Clara County. Okay, so the next slide is going to be the actual vote. But before we vote on any question comments about tenant unions, or about what voting for this will mean? I can go over that one more time. And then at the end, I think we're just gonna have time to go over, like one neighborhood that I'm going to propose we could organise that as like a start, and then we'll probably get everything off after after the meeting.
And feel free to speak up anyone because I can't actually see all the things I'm doing.
Nope. Okay. So if we vote yes, basically, this means this is going to be our first focus campaign. It will mean the least meeting, like adding tumor meeting amounts to working class unity schedule. And so we'll meet twice a month on top of our general meeting to just talk about the 10 anymore. I guess I can go over what that might entail. Before
we vote on it, that's probably a better idea, like voting on it next.
So, Cavalia townhomes. It's on Deonte road between our BRT between El Dorado and West lane, just a bunch of Townhome. But then they're either three or four in each location. We can be there when I was running, and they tend to sort of describe that, that they're bad as long or dead square. And so it may be a good place to go. The neighbors didn't seem to know each other. So to Alice's point, it was like a pretty well knit community, like we can listen, people are telling us aid come like 6pm to talk to those folks. Those folks aren't going to be home yet. Like those doctrines. Everyone kind of knew each other already. But we were going to talk about eviction defense, and they had no idea about any of it. And these are like low income renters who would be protected by it. Yeah, the rent relief? Yeah. No, it was one, we still had it. It was like very early on. And so they qualified, but they had no idea that that it existed. And so it is a very good location for us to start. If we do vote yes. Basically, for the needed steps would be on the research. Like, it's not really a committee, just like a people who want to do research will dig into like, who is the actual landlord? Like who's the what's it called? Local manager, whatever they're called read property manager. Yeah. Like, if we find out that the landlord is like this giant investment firm, that's not going to get into, like, no matter what we do, then perhaps this was not our first try. But if it is a small mom and pop landlord, then maybe there's something we can take on. If we do pick this, while the research team is researching, we should go canvass twice, you know, below between July 25, and 29. To ask people to do the community park cleanup on the last Sunday of this month at Robertstown. Park that park, like right across the street from the townhomes and the community park cleanup, essentially where we're partnering up with the community park cleanup like Instagram page that was active about a year ago. You know, so we'll get people out there, we'll help clean up the park. We can listen, just tell people, Hey, this is we're working class entity, we're helping cleaning up the park. You know, just get people out there not necessarily talk to them about the credit union work. We're just trying to show people that we you know, we're and we're investing time. And so that's what it would look like for now. And then next month, we'd obviously proceed based on the research and based on kind of the feedback we get from the people we talked to during community park cleanup. Okay, so based on that, now we can have a vote, or does anyone else that raise more questions? Sure. So I'll make a motion to Okay. I moved to, for us to adopt the pennant union campaign as one of our to focus campaign for the next six months, essentially, unless we voted down later on.
And we need a second from a non steering committee member.
I'll second that.
If no, I do.
Okay, it's been moved by her preach that and seconded that we adopt the union organization as our first focus campaign. Is there any discussion? Okay, hearing none, we'll proceed to the vote. All those in favor, signify by raising your hand. Okay, thank you. All opposed. Okay, motion carries.
I found that we did something.
Okay. So we can I think super quick since this got brought up, but it's the park cleanup. We'll put we'll post about it. mock ups, right kludge super quick. So these are we wanted to go to a farmers market to get get people to sign on to our supporting labor unions. Like is basically these are times I am going to be DMing, all of you later to ask if there are times that you couldn't make it out. We won't try to schedule one at the very moment. Because we're running out of time. This was no. So yeah, and then there's something we approved a while ago on a first meeting. So that's what we're moving. After this meeting. We're inviting everyone to come out to Dhanraj So taco shop, to chill and meet up and we can do the make friends part of organizing. There's the ad reps and social events, we can talk about it later financial reports and picked up lately. Yes. Okay. And then before we end state park, Sandra, do you want to talk about it?
Okay, well, Sandra may or may not be coming back. So we did in our last meeting also adopt the, to form a newspaper called Voices of the working class would be at voices of the working class.com with the idea that we have, you know, we do the recording if we can, but the main aspect would be, you know, at least once a month, just get get the story of some working class person in Stockton and Lodi Vatican County, and, you know, remove some identifying information because we don't want to get a lawsuit. But basically let them post whatever they want to like, whatever raw real story that people have a working or being a tenant in this county. Like that's one place that we can post it. And so, at the next meeting, we'll talk about what that might look like, like what the approval process will look like, who will be in charge, like in the small group of like approving things and editing and backdrops. But if you're interested in that, send me a DM or someone on staring and we can or actually, Ben Riley a dean be used and talked about? Yeah. Okay. I think that's it. I think on next Wednesday is when loads pick out city council, right?
I believe so. Yes. Okay.
I think the skate park in Lodi, which I was hoping Sandra could explain what exactly being voted on but we'll email an update. But there was an update there the vote for the skate park either they're renovating the current one, I think for building the brand new one, or modifying the current one. Yeah,
the one that exists right now is trash. It's dangerous, and it really needs to get replaced.
So I think the vote for that is next Wednesday?
I believe so. I'm sorry. I'm looking at right now.
Yeah. I'm pretty sure that I just wasn't sure what the vote actually was on. But you want to stand in solidarity with good skaters and vote I show up to Lodi City Council. Can you please give public comments? Hopefully someone's there was a script to hand to you to weed off. So far. Seems like Lodi has kind of been dragging their feet on. We don't have the money to do anything.
Oh, it's been it's been a minute.
Yeah. So that's something that we can, you know, we should always be go out and try to support local bond activist efforts. Okay.
Okay, so, anyone have any other announcements before we move to adjourn meeting? Now, okay, I am moving to adjourn, and it's gonna say anyone second. Our second name. All right. Everyone votes. I don't want to turn. Yeah. Okay. Beautiful. All right. So we're adjourned. Thank you so much everyone for coming, especially folks that came for the first time. Sorry, it was a bit of an info dump for the Senate organizing, but in the future, we will break it down. So we'll have more meetings about the greater how this might integrate into the greater economic system of housing and how that impacts the economy, having organizing conversations, and things like that. So we'll break it down for for now. Hopefully see you all at 730 Dunlops. All right.
Good job.
Hey, Harpreet. Are those are these slides available?
Yeah, they're in the member point. Remember? Great. Okay, cool. Okay.
