Hey, welcome to the June 26 General Meeting for working class unity. We're starting and I'm gonna start the slideshow
nope
okay, I figured it out
okay. So this meeting, obviously in the future we need to, like work much better on our membership pipeline to make sure it's not just us. But we did get, like I said, we got two new folks at the last reading group. So it's not like we are shrinking, shrinking or anything. But I think we didn't do a great job of doing outreach for this meeting with very little notice outside of the one membership email that we sent out last week. Okay, so this is on our agenda today. It's pretty heavy, especially the first half. So, just going to jump right into it. Robert's Rules for meetings, Rob is actually going to screen share, or do you want to just link me to something that I can open here? Probably.
I guess I'll just screen share, and I'll try and go I was already planning on trying to go really fast. But since we have so few people, maybe I'll try and make it extra extra fast and then I can go over it again. There's nothing sometimes. Yeah, that's fine. I'm sure there'll be plenty of questions. So one second
do you want to bring up those two like modifications that we had? I mean, we can't talk about it now since if we're going to go super fast anyways.
What modifications Oh for the bylaws or writing them for the
Robert's Rules. Okay.
Okay, so in Robert's Rules of Order, there are three officers, the Treasurer, treasurer, aka financial secretary, which they maintained, the financial books are for accepting the any money we take in via dues or whatever and for any money that we pay out. And all money is paid out at the discretion of the membership, you know, we'll make a motion that the treasurer do something. So unless there's something comes up between meetings, they shouldn't be doing anything of their own volition. For the Secretary or the scribe or the quarter, they are smoking for the meeting, or for recording the minutes for the meeting. And for maintaining any of the records for the organization, such as a membership register under or any other documents we might have. And then the final Robert's calls for president, but they can be called the chief facilitator or the Grand Poobah doesn't matter if they run the meeting, they make sure that it stays orderly, and that all business is conducted fairly for all members that everyone gets a chance to speak if they want to on what all this stuff that we just got. They can set limits during to make sure that the meetings going orderly, they can set limits on discussion. But like any of their other decisions that can be overridden by a simple majority vote of the membership. So anyone can be over that basically, any decision can be overridden. And in general, the basic only rule is wait to be recognized before you speak. In the in person meeting, that generally means that you'll stand or raise your hand to be recognized, usually stand if we're going to get you know, even more crowded. And then we'll have to figure out something for signaling on the people on the hybrid, or you know, for whether just raise your hand but then we also need to signal for people that don't have video capability. Right. And then so to go through quickly through what the agenda would be unlimited. In so basically it would start the meeting coordinator which we can have that be designated just default as the president but we can say like we've said in our bylaws, anything can be delegated and we encourage it to be so you call the meeting to order make sure the recording started. You say you know I now call this working class unity meeting to order, then we can have optional activities that is, quote, like this, the issue is socialism versus capitalism I am for socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold for long enough, Eugene Debs. And we could have a forum for collecting those, or whoever's doing some leading coordinating can choose one of their own liking. And then we can also have another optional thing for the opening is duties where we, you know, as I went over them, we just have the coordinator say, I'm here to make sure it's all fair. A quarter says I'm here to take the minutes. And that's just to, you know, let everyone know what the elected officers are doing and how the meeting supposed to be run. And then we can also have a statement of purpose. So I was talking with her worried about like, we would want to come up with something, but just, you know, general feel good stuff. Thank you all for coming. We're here to work together for the rights of the working class, and foster community, etc, etc. And then, if we wanted to, we could end feasibly with working class unity all at once or something. Yeah, those are just example the opening stuff we can do. And then so the next would be the roll call, we take the roll call. Generally, you take everyone in attendance, but I know that we might be iffy about names. So we could just do a count to make sure that we have a quorum and then get out an optional sign in sheet there in person and online. And then at minimum in the minutes, we're going to want to meet the role of the meeting facilitator, the Treasurer, all the elected positions, as well as anyone that was assigned to do adjust for that meeting. And the roll call can be either done, you know, the Secretary says facilitator and they say here, President or whatever. Or you can just the checkered I can tell ya, silent roll call has been taken absentees noted. We just move on. Then, we have to have according to the rules we have to reading and approval of the minutes. Since we're doing the posting thing those will generally be all we'll just say the minutes have been posted. Does anyone have any corrections but again, an honor, in the purpose of fairness, any member can call the minutes to be read at any meeting if they feel they need to be for some reason. And then so, but generally, the coordinator will just say, Okay, if there's no corrections, I'll just say that the minutes are approved. No, that's just taking the consensus, because it's a general thing. But again, someone can declare that we need to do an official vote on that, like they can do for anything. So yeah, either it's approved, as posted, or the minutes are approved as corrected, and we correct the minutes, then we'll have the reports of the officers, the Secretary does an email correspondence, the Treasurer does the financial report, we our money was spent that our membership, maybe we do but you know, number of members or new members introduction, maybe we can do that later in the meeting. But the idea for the membership report. And then we'll have a report from either of the campaigns. And generally like if any issues come up, as we're discussing the reports, we can do it there. Or if it's more complicated, we can save it later for unfunded or for a new business. So then the next the meeting, the meeting, leader would move on to now we'll move on to unfinished business, we discuss anything that carried over from the last meeting. Or we discuss any pending matters, like where what we talked about in the bylaw changes, like when we have to have a warning of a vote upcoming vote such as for the nominations or the elections of officers. That's where that would go. And then after that the meeting moved on to new business. And then this is where the bulk of the meeting happens. And here's the basic process of making the motion is you be recognized, however, that maybe you the member states I move that blank such as we make going to the park cleanup in official event, then anyone can second without having to be recognized. If there isn't a second, the organizer will say Is there a second? You know, request one. After It's been moved and seconded the chair states that officially okay. It's been moved and seconded that we and then they do the official however it was specifically worded whether that be in writing or you know, someone just made it and then that's recorded officially. And then then that's when there's the debate. One of the areas where we're going to want to have to overrule Robert's Rules of Order because the default speaking time on a subject is any members allowed to speak twice and for 10 minutes each. So we want to make that smaller the coordinator can listen always set limits and we can always say Oh do we move that this person be giving extra speed or speech or you know more time or whatever, but we want to put a general limit just so that we have something and then so Okay, after we've all discussed it, you know, the coordinator, make sure everyone gets the chance to speak. Then once everyone's has said their piece, it closes, the chair, states it again, okay? All those in favor signify by the voting sign, whether that we do it by voice or by hand is generally the chair, we'll just do it like that. And then if it's close, then we might have to go to a standing vote where you know, all in favor stand up, and then we count and then All opposed. But in general, you can just do you know, consensus, okay, does everyone agree, if anyone objects, and the chair has to officially announced the results, so, okay, by your vote, we have made going to the park cleanup in official event. And all that stuff's there, you know, just so that everyone is clear exactly. Where in the process, what we're going through. Once we finished all of the new business, there's any announcements such as when the next meeting is going to be and any events in between, and then someone will call for the adjournment. So basically, say I move that we adjourn the meeting. There's a second and the meeting is over. One other thing that I was talking with Harpreet about that they do in the articles that I'm in is, after the reading of the minutes, they'll do a report on members sick or in distress, where you know, someone can stand up and say, Oh, I've been ill, or we would say, oh, Riley's not feeling well, and we would encourage to the membership, oh, can someone check on him or, you know, see if he needs anything, just a chance to foster that community. That's another optional thing. But in general, that's how Roberts subjects the meeting, or sections of them. And basically, we can vote to add this to our bylaws, if we want it as the standing order so that the steering committee doesn't every single time have to approve the agenda. And basically, they would just be coordinating what the new and unfinished businesses would be. Oh, and for the Robert's Rules, the books are in our library. If you're gonna read anything, read in brief, the first couple sections cover, you know, go over how to make a motion, how to get recognized all that stuff. It's very useful. We'll probably want to condense that into a cheat sheet that maybe we can laminate better meetings, you know, for new members pass around. And then yeah, the full Robert's Rules is there, I wouldn't recommend reading it. It's 1000 pages and boring as hell.
But that's a good index, if you're looking for something specific. So at least there's any questions? I try. I missed a ton of stuff and was unintelligible.
Oh, that was great. Thank you for doing all the research and reading the page. Condensed.
Oh, and yeah, so I said that we're will want to add something to our bylaws. That's one of the cases where you need a two thirds vote if it's announced, or you can have half of the membership vote. And since I don't think we have half of us here, we'll have to put that off until the
according Robert Yeah. Yeah. Well, so how does it work if our bylaws already overriding? Like we already have bylaw modification rules.
Since we've already adopted bylaws, they already over right, yeah. Okay. Our book of record is our bylaws. And if something's not explained in it, we go to Robert's Rules.
Okay. I think it's basically how it works right now. Huh? Hmm. What is it? Oh, yeah. So once the bylaw change has been announced, making new proposals. Minister has been asked two weeks before the vote to adopt the proposal. I wouldn't even do that this time. We haven't been following on. Okay, so we no matter what, we'd have to do the same spending anyways. But we'll announce the changes because we've noticed the changes last week. So we don't we can't even once you put in Robbie. So we've been send out an email about until last week. So we'll do this next meeting.
We can still discuss it now. But yeah, for it to be official, we would want to have an announcement.
Okay, anyone have any other questions on what probably presented?
No, that was good. I should point out there's a million other rules for you know, amending motion and then dealing with all that stuff. Hopefully we won't have to deal with it. Gonna look further into it and we'll have a cheat sheet for it. But hopefully it'll all be easy peasy.
Yeah. And then just for Paulo and Joanna, we talked about this at the steering committee meeting. But from now on, we were saying that, at the end of our steering committee, we find like one member who would be willing to lead the meeting next time lead the second half. So, like this meeting, if I read all of it, the next meeting, I'd leave the first half, and then someone else would leave the second half. And then the meeting after that, you know, if it was Chris, Chris would lead the first half, and then someone else will lead the second half. That way, you're never stuck doing the whole meeting all by yourself. But you get the practice of having, like, you're just gonna do the second half, and you'll have that first person there to help you through the process. And then eventually, it'll be, you know, members leading all the meetings, and not people on steering committee, that will give everyone kind of experienced running meetings. So once we have our committees, and once we have our campaign leadership's like they'll already have experienced running those, those meetings ahead of time. Okay, so I'm just gonna move on since we have no vote. And okay, rules. Alright. So this is one of two big things that we've talked about today, membership pipeline. So the membership pipeline is a strategic plan designed to guide individuals from their initial interest in working class community to becoming active dues paying members who can recruit within their own networks. And our goal is to make working class unity accessible to everyone, not just people that are active on social media or interested in the political readings that we do. But, you know, it's critical that we remain transparent and accountable to membership as we go through this process. So that means eventually develop developing clear plans and goals and benchmarks for how we achieve to. And yeah, goals and benchmarks are what we're trying to achieve. And we're also going to gather feedback from members and potential recruits, to help us kind of refine our approach as we go forward. So major props before I go on major props to Riley for sitting together with me, and like putting what I'm about to present together, it's honestly only a small fraction of what we talked about, but it's like a mess of notes. And so we're going to present the overall picture over the next two meetings. And, you know, we'll put out a call to everyone here and also on our forum, that if anyone has experience in messaging and recruiting and like activating people to join the membership committee, which Riley will will be leading, and then contributing to this process. So this is kind of what we have so far. This is a very messy flowchart, we'll probably put one together, that makes a little bit more sense. But the main pipeline is up here of like signing up, which is just like, You gave us one source of information about yourself where you came to something. Joining membership means becoming a dues paying member, then actually onboarding you as a member. And then making sure you're engaged and retained long term. And then doing advocacy and networking, meaning that you're actually recruiting other people into the org. So back to sign up. Our ideas were things like social media, social events, community projects. So this would be like the Stockton cleanup project, that we're gonna have educational events, stuff, like the political education that we already do legislative advocacy, so things like the pride five thing that we did. And then voice of the working class is a vote that we need to talk about that in a second. Once trying to get people to actually join and the dues paying members. I know that's not always easy. So one on one meetings to you know, talk to people really gauge what their interest is, trying to show them how working class unity can help them achieve what goals they're trying to achieve. Vlogging. So I said vlogging, but just trying to describe to people what it means to be a member, so they have an understanding of what it is. So they don't think it's some weird culty socialist thing that they don't identify with. I help desk on the website, which would just be if you have questions, there should be a very easy way for you to contact a real person and get your questions answered. And then sorry, recruitment drives. I think once a month or once every two months, whatever we end up doing, we should be reaching out to our entire list of people that we have on our email list, but that aren't members because asking them to either join or if that doesn't work, just like donate to the org at least because obviously they're interested in what we're doing and they may have participated in something. So those are prime people that we should be targeting. For onboarding Riley is working on a membership handbook. You know, a new member orientation. So just walk you through kind of processes will be our what it means to be a member, etc. mentorship, have a mentor and then continuous onboarding, which is just kind of dropping tidbits of information the entire time that you remember on what it means to be a member And then engagement and retention is just, you know, making sure you don't post the wrong date and posts on social media for meetings coming up the day of the meeting. Do individual outreach, member development, you know, if you, if people are getting returned out of being a member, right, like they're learning new things, they're learning new skills, that means they're gonna stay long term. So make sure we're doing that. And then for networking, just relational organizing, so contact your friends and family and then eventually we'll get swag so that way people can just so we're more of a presence in the community than just what we are now. Any questions or like additions that pop into your mind that we could add here? Okay.
I want to talk to Riley about to when he's feeling better. The I really liked the idea that a few orgs were saying over the weekend. And that was like having five core principles or whatnot, or just something to maybe for the just like the actual onboarding process, even if it's just at the beginning of the handbook on everyone's ziens. They just said, like, we're just looking at a few of them. It's just like housing is a human right or something, just something that's the they but also represents exactly like what we believe as an organization. So people know, oh, this is either agree with this, or I mean, if you don't I mean, maybe at that point, you you go to some more book club meetings, and you kind of see where you need to be to get into that pipeline.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's important. We don't have that just yet.
Yeah, we're getting it.
I will say, I guess.
Sorry. I was gonna say we have the mission in the bylaws. It's where, yeah, we can build from there. Yeah, exactly.
I will say, hearing from some of the other organs. So this is we went to the autonomous union, autonomous tenant union network, yeah. Let's go to conference. Some of their orgs were, like, have not grown for a very long time. Like, they're, they have like their initial like, you know, four or five people. And like, that's all it's been. And they've done advocacy and like, just been stuck there. And, you know, they help people, but the people don't actually join the organization. And so, I think, like, I don't know why I like obviously, just doing actions with people does not result in them joining you long term. And so I think we should always, like growing membership should be something that is a key priority for us. And making sure that we're always trying different things to make sure we actually improve our membership numbers, and not just hope that oh, well, if we get this w then people would join us like, that's just not going to happen. So either they're continuously coming on board, or they're just not going to come on board. I think so far we're doing okay. With that, but yeah. Paola, Joanna, anything before I move on,
nothing for me right now. Okay.
Um, so we need to approve this. And we can prove this verify people. So just approving that we're going to have a membership pipeline, and we're going to spend, you know, resources. So the time of steering and time of other members to develop this kind of pipeline, we need to approve that we need to approve voices of the working class newspaper, the newspaper, is an idea that Riley had and I agree with him that we should have not only a place to post like updates on what working class unity has done. So something like the pride flag or the even us going to this convention this weekend, something to post and like talk about, like, this is what we've learned this, what we're bringing back to San Joaquin County. You know, having a blog for that is great. But then having a newspaper for places for a place where maybe a tenant can post about, hey, this landlord has given me a hard time on XY and Z and other names like that will be the first result when someone Google's your name, unless you're like some corporate landlord, or just about some of the local politician and local stuff that's happening in the area, like we can talk about charter schools, we can talk about whatever us. I think having that kind of outlet that's independent of I mean, we have the record stock 20 is not an independent news source. They're funded by the local reach hassles, even if they do good reporting sometimes. And then fat city feed is literally a product of the local NGO complex. And so we would be basically the next independent source. And you know, we can reach out to people like as soon as the he voices and ask them if they actually want to publish on a news put like a newspaper platform instead of just their Instagram posts. So yeah. And then finally approving the purchase of business cards, buttons and pins or creating pins. So yeah. So if I were doing this right, should I move to waterfall? Was it moved to approve? Move to vote? Me to drop?
Well, so I'll start on the first then it would be I move that we establish a membership pipeline for the organization. Okay. And then presumably, I would say with who taking lead.
And I second is that a lab for because I'm on leadership? Okay. I wasn't sure if we had
Sao Paulo, you is power trying to you have to second everything basically today? Oh, well,
I'll offer a second on that motion. Okay.
And then we can still vote. So choose the voice votes. Called Robbie. Oh.
Right. Yes. So can we just do a voice vote? Or what is it called? Sorry, I forgot what you said. Yeah,
please. All right.
And can you guys see the presentation right now? I don't know what I'm sure. Okay. All right. So everyone in favor, say? Aye. Hi, everyone, against a nice nose. Okay. Great, thank you. And then voice
point of order, I guess it would be but in a smaller meeting like this, where we're we don't have to do everything super efficiently. You can vote but traditionally in like a bigger meeting the facilitator, they only vote if it would make a difference. So okay, just stay impartial. They don't vote unless like, if it's a tie, and they want to break the tie, or it's not a tie, but their vote would make it a tie. They can also then, you know, as long as it would change it, then they can vote. Okay. It's an important thing about being a facilitator.
Right? Makes sense. So then move to approve the voice of the workplace newspaper, which, again, will take some resources to actually put together but I think we can probably recruit a couple more people giving them that outlet, namely SUSD voices it's gonna be my big thought to them to join. So move to approve or move for a vote?
Well, you say I moved and then move specifically
to bring voice to the working class newspaper to publications
and to pay what costs it might incur. Yeah.
Digital Ocean well,
you want to make sure that your your previous
costs and the and the organizational resources it will take to actually run this Yes. Any one? Or can I get a second?
Law for a second on that?
All right. Everyone in favor say Aye.
Aye, aye.
All right. Eyes for anyone against say nay
Okay, motion carries
carries and then move to approve the purchase and creation of business cards buttons and pins for now I think the detail but they won't be individualized until a future date. So for now just be whatever your name on it basically.
And so it'll just be the logo and website or
yeah logo website and then perhaps our mission statement on the back along with a QR code to to our website or our then career where we decide to get a second aussagen
Why do you need buttons and pins for for
for like the spring like getting our name out there essentially. So if people are going to attend, like if you're going to go to a show, or just any other political event that we go to, instead of just us being kind of strangers that go to these things, we can be members of working class community essentially,
on buttons or pins would be then one step down from T shirt. Versus just get the name when we do something
basically. Yeah, so not flyers or like cards. Like you know the Uh
oh, like little fires that we had before. Yeah,
we can do those for special events. But yeah, for the general stuff will still want
something. Like I think these will cost more money than just printing some stuff out. That's why I wanted to prove it. Because the required like I just printed some at home last time, so it's whatever. But okay, can I get a second? I'll second. Everyone in favor? All right. Okay, I've had it. Thank you so much for going through that process. Next step, more fun stuff. conflict of interest policy, basically, for legal purposes, WC, you need to conflict of interest policy that states that direct or indirect conflicts of interest must be made public to the membership and related most votes much then be approved by membership. So for this, it's either if you or a family member, which goes from like your spouse, your grandparent, your parents, all the way back, it says ancestors and your descendants, and related your like brother in law, Sister in law, your sister and their kids. If any of those people have ownership of something that we're about to spend money in, then the membership needs to know. And after the membership is told, then the membership can either, you know, continue on with purchasing it anyways, because that's the only good place to get it or you know, it's fine, it's not a big deal. Or then membership golden, like deny the vote. And we have to go find another place to get this resource steering committee, we do have a document that is here, basically stating that you will just last sentences basically, we're going to last paragraph, the following ongoing relationships and interests may present a conflict of interest. This includes employers, all nonprofit and for profit corporations, where we serve as board members or officers, and the names of any undersigned family members or business affiliates. But we're only asking for relationships that we believe could potentially present conflict of interest. And so we're not asking you to use expose your whole life just because you're on steering committee. But if you're like SR happens to be on some nonprofit that we I mean, we're not going to work with a nonprofit anyways. But we're on imprinting thing or you know, some restaurant that we may go to, that we may frequent, and you should write that down, just so we know. So we will have steering sign off on all this in their signature, and they're filled out forms will be available on the forum. But for now, we just want to approve the actual conflict of interest policy. It's basically what it says here. And we want to approve that committee is going to be required to sign off on this conflict of interest form, basically once a year. So as soon as they get sworn in, they will sign the form. So I'm going to move to approve just both of these, at the same time that we adopt the conflict of interest policy, and then we adopt the requirement that steering committee has to sign off on the disclosure form in order to be on steering committee. Can I get some? Sorry,
I have a question. If we're going to approve this, because we have to add this to our bylaws, right? Yeah. So if we're gonna vote to approve the bylaws, what are we voting on right now?
Oh, later on. Yeah. Okay, well, skip the second part. Let's just approve part. We'll get to the second part next time. Well, yeah, okay. But I guess, let's vote on saying that the steering committee has to sign off on it this week, because we need to find it for the tax documents. Okay. Okay. So move to prove that we adopt the conflict of interest policy, and that steering committee is going to sign these documents, even though it's going to be prior to it being official on the bylaws. And then get a second.
Approve a second.
Can I? Everyone favor? say aye. Aye. All right. All right. The eyes ended I think, okay. I'm almost done. All right, tax documents. Shout out to Palo for doing the heavy lifting on all this. There's a whole bunch of stuff. So we have articles of incorporation our statement of information, the EIN number, and then the forms for at the federal level to operate as a 501 C four and then the taxes exemption to operate as a 501 C four in California, we are going to be submitting. I think this is the order right palette that we submit everything in articles of incorporation Statement of Information, then EIN. And then technically we have like 26 months to submit the one or two for form at the federal level.
Yeah, we have a long time, but we should probably just get it done as soon as possible.
Yeah, that's ridiculous. So as soon as we get the EIN number, and we'll get a California and like business ID number from I think the Statement of Information, then we can submit our 8976 and one or two, four. And once we get those back, we can submit the 350 A. So I'm just Chris will be in charge of this once. And we'll go over this in more detail with an after. But we went over this in steering committee. And so right now we're just going to prove that steering committee can move forward with filing all of these documents with the intention that we need to get this done ASAP. So we can open a bank account, and then start collecting dues. So approved to have steering committee, namely Chris, our treasurer, follow these documents, they will be open and available for membership, we'll post them in the membership sub forum, so anyone can look at them anytime. We might just X out the addresses of our steering committee members. But outside of that, it'll be available and then and yeah, so motion to approve these documents and for steering to move forward. I'll second. All right. Can I? Yeah. Everyone in favor say aye. Aye. And anyone against? Nope, eyes have it. All right. Thank you so much for all the boring stuff. There's one more born and never met. Okay, Code of Conduct. Okay, can you see that to switch tabs? For you? Yes. Okay, brilliant. Okay, go to conduct. So, me and fellow developed this a while ago along with the bylaws are, we can walk through it, and if anyone has any questions just speak up. But the general idea behind it is that, and we've heard it, we heard some of this from some of the groups that we went, or that we heard from at the tenant union, that, you know, they really needed to develop a process for having, like open discussion and open disagreements. So they could actually talk about developing the organization further. And we know from Sacramento, actually, Sacramento, tenant union is a hot mess, because they a few people have consolidated a lot of power and a lot of knowledge and are kind of screwing over the organization. So we tried to put together the code of conduct in a way that would avoid those things. So I'm just going to run through kind of highlights, I think at the end. So this prohibited behavior is just typical stuff. But we'll walk through everything else. So just mutual respect, solidarity, communication, normal stuff, you know, we want to promote open and honest communication. We have like dialectics and materialism. dialectics just Would you say it's like looking at both sides of a conflict. So you really want to understand how, like why the other side is arguing for what they're arguing. So if we're having a debate about Medicare, for all, really trying to understand why the insurance companies are arguing what they're arguing, and not just that they're bad, in that we're against it. For materialism, you need to work like we should recognize that our consciousness is decisively shaped by the experiences we have in the course of living and working in order to survive. And this perspective refutes the idealist notion that our attitudes and behaviors are not are not inherently mysterious, or beyond our control. So what we don't want to do is kind of have that liberal perspective of, you know, racist or racist because they're born racist, or bigots, or just that way, because it's just inherent in their minds, and there's nothing we can do to change it. There are reasons for why people are the way they are, or believe the things that they believe. And we can change those things by changing their material reality. So that's how we should operate. And then trying to integrate all of that into our decision making. So when we're actually trying to figure out how we want to grow or how we want to advocate for things, kind of take all this into account, and really make sure that we're not Yeah, we're not falling into like, idealism craps, which can make hard make it hard to organize and make it seem like you're only organizing people that agree with you already, because we know that doesn't work. constructive criticism. So there is a
for that, so since this is a code of conduct, so are we saying that, you know, you have to sign off on these? Or should we like, make it more that you don't have to agree with all of these 100%, but that you agree that as an organization, we will use these methods to move forward or something?
What is it? What would it mean to disagree? I guess. Like, I think if you are going to be steadfast in your belief that, you know, your, that people's behaviors are inherent and mysterious, then it would be difficult to organize with you. And, you know, I think you do have to always act in this way you may not, it's a code of conduct, so you don't have to believe it. But you can't come to meetings and be like, no, like, we can't do this because someone voted for Trump. They're like evil forever. You know, that kind of conduct wouldn't fly. And you can not believe it if you don't want to, but conduct yourself in that way, I guess.
Yeah, I was mostly speaking for the sake of argument. You're talking about tolerating other views or whatever? Right. But are you saying that you have to believe only this way? Exactly, or whatever? I
don't know. Well, there are some some of the things in here like you do have to act and behave in this way. Otherwise, you're kind of a wrecker. So you're not allowed organization. So yeah, so I think it is not, they're not suggestions, or this is how you need to act, essentially as the conduct. Yeah, yeah. Constructive criticism. So there is like a whole book on this. And we need to make this a part of onboarding. And just, I think on continuous onboarding, honestly. But you know, there's a difference between criticizing your enemies and criticizing people in organization. And when you're criticizing people in organization, you know, shouldn't be focused on we kind of say, like protecting, educating and fostering understanding, rather than punishing someone, would you criticism, and that your, your, your criticism should always be in a way that you're trying to further the goals of the organization. And the people, when you're in that's kind of explained here. And also, when you're when you're receiving criticism, you should understand it's not someone's coming at you. Someone's trying to improve the organization overall, by perhaps critiquing what you're saying, but your goals are the same. And so try not to lash out, you know, we say like, hold your response long enough to make sure you understand their intention, they give yourself time to understand that like that perspective, that they're coming at it from a place of trying to improve the organization and not get defensive. And also, this is a big one, I think refrained from avoiding conflict. So don't be defensive. Because if you are defensive, then I just teaches people that it can be like, dangerous, and it should be avoided to criticize you, which can prevent growth and learning. And at the end of the day, like, again, we put this in the bylaws for reason that it's crucial to guard the interests of the collective organization, above your personal and individual interests. So if you are in a space where you can't be criticized, then you know it honestly difficult for you to participate in the organization. And perhaps you need help, you need personal healing, but you should go do that before you can participate in the organization. And obviously, we should help you do that. But you can't have that come in and just totally stop us from like, doing our business and growing. For fostering culture, democracy. Yeah, just all the stuff he said before welcome opposition, which have goals and accountability. So everything we're trying to do try to have measurable goals and standards for accountability. Don't just do things because that's what we do and not really double check to make sure that we're doing the right thing. The membership pipeline is one aspect of that. We want to make sure that we're not spinning our wheels, basically. developing leadership decision making capacity, we've talked a lot about this before, basically want to delegate we want to make sure that everyone is participating as much as they can. And then leadership capacity development is big. Again, I think this is one reason. One way we can retain people and recruit people is by showing them that they will actually get something out of joining us and not just that, you know, we need them as volunteers. We actually need people to come and grow and become leaders in the organization for prohibited behavior, normal stuff, harassment, hateful comments and appropriate social behavior. Which we didn't include being like sex pets. Don't do that. You know, it's fine to like find someone to date but this is not like your dating pool. That's not why we're here people. are like for serious about, we need to change the world to like save everyone's lives essentially, then that's how you should treat the organization as a serious organization, or you're here to do work. And if you have disagreements with the core principles of the organization, if you're intentionally doing disruptive behavior, you're acting in a conservative manner under the discipline of another organization. So if we have a bunch of like, Democrats come in and try to cause us to like vote to endorse one of the candidates. That's one reason we can kick them all out. disruptive behavior, so just what is called call, yeah, including online, including in person and online. So if you're just being kind of annoying on the forum, and we do one on ones with you and ask you, like, Hey, you're being disruptive, please stop. Then, you know, you can be kicked out misuse resources. So just misuse of funds, misread misrepresenting the VCU, if you go out and say you're speaking for the VCU doing something that membership did not approve, that's not appropriate. And then disclosing sensitive information. So you know, we're not going to collect too much private information on anyone. But if you go and you spread our, like our plans, or information about members to the public or some other organization, obviously, that is not appropriate for the order. Any questions? I mean, it is it is a little tougher, and not so like anyone can join, everyone's free to join and kind of do whatever they want. But I think, yeah, just holding membership to a higher accountability standard, I think it's important for us to not kind of fall into the same trap that other left wing groups fall into. And Riley had really had much stronger opinions on just the left as being, you know, quote, unquote, weak. And kind of like weeding that out in our organization. And I think you'd agree that this goes towards that. So any questions before we move on? Okay, and others lot. So I'm just going to move to approve the code of conduct and then ensure that our membership is adhering to it. And it will be up to the membership, basically, to ensure that our members are holding to it and if they're not, then membership has to hold their fellow members accountable. Essentially. Can I get a second? I'll second. Everyone in favor, say aye. Aye. Yeah, and, I mean, I think none of our bylaws as the best steering committee is able to hold any member accountable. So I think that's a check on, on power, that we can't just kick someone out that we don't like. Basically, a majority of the membership has to not like them, for them to get kicked out. So try not to be that person. There are also
official procedures for taking care of those kinds of problems in Robert's Rules, but if we've already superseded them, and we can use them as a fallback, yeah, whatever.
Yeah. And I think for sure, just, I mean, kicking out people should be the last line right before that should be a lot of one on ones, a lot of just talking to people trying to get them to course correct. Trying to understand why they're doing what they're doing, before we move on kicking people out. But that is 100% an option. So for bylaw modifications, so we'll do this next time since we don't have the two weeks notice. Basically, the conflict of interest policy put that in for nominations committee, that was essentially that we approved that the nominations committee will form one month. So the final vote first hearing will happen the first meeting of December, the first meeting of November will be when we form the nominations committee. We will click nominations until the end until the second meeting in November. So that'll give us two weeks for nominations to come in. And then you can also nominate someone at that second meeting. And then the first meeting in December will be when the vote happens. And steering committee and the nominations committee will just be responsible for making sure that everyone knows that a vote is happening that they need to come to the first December meeting to vote on that and I think that's also like our holiday meeting anyway, so it'll be short we'll do the vote. We can celebrate hopefully the food entices people to come out and vote. The role and composition Yeah, so that was that. And legal documents was both legal documents Robbie. I don't know. All right. Well love it man.
It's the documents needed for the nonprofit designation? I know we talked about that a little bit.
Okay, that's probably it.
I don't I wasn't
the title, that we need to assign a president and vice president. Gotcha. So we in the steering committee, yeah, we decided that what was it?
We already that's already approved. So we're fine. With that at the last meeting? Yeah. Okay. Socialism one a one was. So again, we'll vote on this at the next meeting, socialism on a one that's we talked about this a while ago about doing like, shorts, YouTube shorts, for kind of these questions essentially. And so we finally have a forum post where we have these questions, if you want to work on one of them, just go and add your name. If you click on it, it'll take you down in the document. So you can work on a script there. Yeah, just informing people, once we actually have something complete, we'll come to the membership for final approval. And then we'll shoot it basically, super quick on that focus campaign, that tenant union. So WC, you, like said went to the autonomous tenant union network, the West Coast Conference, we haven't had time to compile all the information that we got, there was honestly information overload. So we'll come back at the next meeting with more information on this. But I did want to just super quickly share a video of it an event. Now, can you find it? Okay, there we are. Oh, gosh. I don't know if the audio is gonna work. But let's see. Okay. Okay. So the context for this, at the very end of one of the, or at the second day, we did a carpool, we went to this landlords house, where the landlord was not paying this woman's deposit back and was actually saying that she cost him 7000 in damages. And so he's well over the time that he had to pay her back. And so they took the carpool out to this guy's house. And this is just everyone, basically, in front of me.
This was before we walked up, right? Yeah.
So this is kind of out in front of his driveway in his house was back that building essentially. So we did end up going right up to his house, but we don't have to go into detail on all that. So I we will work on kind of compiling, me and Chris and Robbie went. So we'll kind of talk and a turn is having another meeting tomorrow night as a like a kind of get together to convene again. So I'll link everyone to that. And I think any of us are welcome to join, if you want to join that. Okay, and then partnership, Stockton community cleanup. So I've talked to Ian, he's on board, I was hoping it could be here to present but I think he couldn't make it. Or we just didn't remind him. So I was talking to community cleanup was a great organization for a while last year where they were just bringing people together to clean up random parks in Stockton, I think we could probably expand it out to Santa King County. Because not just dock parks, I need help. But they were consistently consistently bringing out like, you know, 510 15 people always brand new people, it seems like I went twice, you know, as new people every time, but in basically so that he doesn't have the capacity to you know, get all the like trash bags and the cars and everything together to like, go and set up the event and then clean up afterwards. But obviously, he has the connections and get a lot of people out there. And so I asked him if he wanted to partner with us where we'd provide kind of all the trash bags and the cleanup equipment and the transportation to bring all that stuff in and out if he could get the people out essentially. And so this was kind of our strategies on the pipeline of partnering with people who have like the idea and have the social network to put on an event but then don't have the infrastructure to actually hold it. And so we'd provide the infrastructure and our own people to go out. And then they would provide their own network of people to come out. And that's a good way for WC you to get introduced to more people. And then also enable community members like Ian to put together the kinds of events that they want to put together or have put together in the past but don't have the capacity to anymore because, you know, obviously as one person it's hard to keep doing these things. But as an as an organization we can help out and spit out split out the path to a lot more people. So any questions about stock and community cleanup? From moving on?
Well, so are we working on anything?
So I was gonna ask for approval to like work within. And then we pick, you know, one or two days, this upcoming month in July that he thinks will work well. And then we'd bring it up to, like, we'll post on it on the forum. And then we'll see how many will basically like, then help set up the event, essentially. And so their approval now won't be for the dates, because that will have to be coordinated with him. But the approval will be like, steering will work with the end basically. Or the Yeah, to find a date. And then we'll set up a date and we'll let our membership know. And if we need any help setting stuff up, we'll add make that ask our membership to basically hold these events with stock and community cleanup. So in the future, if we do have an event, sorry. If we do have an event, you know, we're we're we'll put together all the social media stuff, and just ask him to share it on his thing. And then we'll share it on our thing. But hopefully this is this will be like one of many future things where we do work like this. So I'm calling the partnership. I guess that works. I don't know how will work if membership wants to do like an event in Lodi, if he can still do like a post on load. I'm sure it'll be fine with that too. But yeah, just approval to have Stockton community cleanup. Just for more details he is against working with, like nonprofits, and he's super against working with politicians, and so on that our values are pretty well aligned. Like this is not an NGO thing that we're partnering with which we would avoid it. So this is somewhat unique that it's already set up.
But yeah, it will. So I move that we direct to the steering committee to pursue with a follow up was, can we clean up?
Okay, and then I think and also just add to that, that we have at least one or two community cleanup events in this upcoming month, within.
Okay, so I move that we direct them to pursue setting up one to two cleanup events in the next month.
Okay, and then can we get a second? All Second? Okay, everyone favor say aye. Aye. Okay, everyone against or anyone against? Okay, is that? Alright, thank you so much for that. That works. Hopefully, we can find some more stuff to do besides just this, but I think it's good start. Alright, so last slide. But basically, we have a bunch of stuff that we need ID generation for the stock ready pledge. So UPS teamsters are very likely going on strike on August 1, because UPS is being shitty, and offering very little raises over like multiple years. In terms of strike, like I haven't talked to him recently, in terms of what the one contact that we had. But I think Chris also has someone that he can we can bring in to talk to, but for strike ready pledge, I wanted to kind of generate ideas now on how we think we could help people on the picket line. already have some ideas, but I wanted to throw it out to all of you first.
Yeah, that'd be I wanted to my friend Tito works. I mean, he gets his hours are all over the place. So unfortunately, couldn't make it to the meeting. But I don't know. Maybe. I was thinking we could have maybe the social event or something. Talk to him. That's, I know other folks that work there as well. But he seemed interested in joining I just don't know how often he can make the meetings so.
Yeah, and I'm like we need Jeremy break is the guy No. Okay. Just wanted to confirm it was actually someone else. Yeah, I think that's why it's important for us to have other events and just these meetings because these meetings are like, it is where decisions get made, but they are kind of boring as fuck, and, and like, you know, at 530 I think things that we can do that I know usually ends up happening is like either bringing out manpower, or people power out to the strike out to the picket line. So whenever we have dates, we'd asked membership to go out on those dates and join them. We can make signs we can bring out food. And essentially it's kind of just rally the troops. So besides bring food, bring bodies.
If the dog is definitely water
Yeah. Food bodies water. And if we can get media attention from our end, we can do some of that. And then I think if they realize they are going on strike, then we had already approved this but and I'd have haven't reached out to him about this but helping them create media content just for them to share. For us to share and for them to share will be helpful. I don't have really anything else one does instruct support and sort of leveraging our network. So I'll I'll ask the Stockton Teachers Association and CSEA if they can send people out. We can ask the other teachers unions or any other union people that we know to come out and support they might have
good ideas of Yeah, how we can support to
Yeah. bear anything else that we can think of? Okay, yeah, I think if all of us are just, if we just asked membership, Dawson just post like whatever. teamsters get her teamsters are posting online. And I think it will be important to get out there before the I mean, take swags hopefully we have swag by August 1. So once we're on the thicker line, people know it's like WC you standing in solidarity. I think that'd be great. And if we can beat the politicians out there, I think that'd be even better. The politicians may eventually join. Alright, so don't really need to do a vote on activity approved strike ready pledge. So this is just more of the planning process for that. And I'll make a I'll make a thread in the membership section to just there have been some news articles about what UPS is doing so I'll post some of those just to inform everyone on what's happening. I mean, we can share that and then just generate ideas there and plan there. Okay, social events for the weekends. Do we want or do we know of anything that's happening? I have not had time to do any research on what may be happening in July. Does anyone know?
I know have some students some stuff but I need to get the official dates which
ah, July 1, six to nine at hatch it's the Stockton vegan market. I think it's just like a little pop up where a bunch of food food booths pop up and hang out six to nine
feel like there was some other market thing that was coming to town Jennifer still there Do you remember what I brought up? And you were like no it's sounds lame
maybe they'll go sorry can be boring like Google meeting?
Yeah, I've been meaning to because there's just so many events that hatch I feel like if we could create a presence there just by just being like hey, we'll be at all the events and eventually we'll have all the swag and stuff to hand out but table there I'm sure they'd let us table
there must be some Fourth of July events coming up anyone know of anything or?
I don't know when he celebrates Fourth of July unfortunately. I mean fortunately actually
there is the parade but I don't I mean as I guess it should be a place where like we can still hang out you know not just like a thing to go and look at something
yeah never been to that parade All I know is like usually like the candidates who are like running for election or like the ones who just show up to that. I don't know about families who attend.
Yeah, it should be I mean for the events it should either be a cool place to hang out or someplace we can like push her politics at least okay, I don't really know we should just set up at least one event that says for us so do we want to pick a weekend where we can go I know I'm gonna be out of town for one of these weekends. To do we can actually do weekday feels like people are pretty busy during the weekdays and weekends but
I mean, I like the idea of a weekend. Now,
I think I can do the the second I'm in 23rd. And third, I just can't do 1516.
I don't think I can do the weekend at the 22nd. But maybe yeah, maybe the second or the nine, we could try lock something down there.
I do want to do like the eighth and the ninth. And that gives us two weeks to to get people out. So setup. I'm in a social event at some place, you know, awesome. Oakland has a had a bunch of like, Lefty like bars, like the bar we went to on Saturday?
Why do you want to have an event so soon? Are you is it just more like people who've already joined? Or are you looking to build a little bit more, kind of get organized a little more and then have an event? So maybe you could do end of the month?
Yeah, I mean, I guess I would like just the people who are already members to hang out a little bit. And we were talking about like doing something at the end of today's meeting. But I think I mean, we still can, but I think so few people showed up that
maybe now Okay, nevermind, then yes, that was fine.
But that is a good point. Are we gonna get? Well? Yeah, we're gonna get a whole bunch more people by the eighth? Or should we wait until after the 13th, which will be like after our next big meeting? Like, that'll be our next in person meeting. or hybrid.
I mean, we could have different ones. But the point of some social events would be to invite people to come along, that might be interested or right, so.
Right. Right. So do you want to do that? Do you feel like we already have a bunch of I mean, there are a bunch of people I know that I would like to bring out already to social event do we want? But do we want to give ourselves a month to convince her friends to come? Or do we want to try on the eighth of the month is very far away?
Yeah, I mean, because I think, maybe push it well, let me see. Maybe push it to like the 15th. Or you said he can't be 1516 Yeah, sure. I'm just trying to think yeah, give ourselves two weeks to see where we're at. Because right now it seems like people are busy and sick. And we don't I guess we'll see the state of that and then go just kind of wing it. I think as long as it gives people a week or two notice they should be ready to go.
Do we so do you want this? Only we can do both? And it's like if even if he's just us hanging out? I feel like that's fine. You know, you guys Yeah. So he can do do under like lunch, dinner breakfast. Maybe like a breakfast thing or a lunch thing and then an evening thing?
Well, since there's so few of us here, should we just make a forum thread and try and communicate it or anything like that? Okay. Because you know, who knows when everyone else is or who else might be available? Yeah, that we can say yeah, we want to plan for an event but that TBD or something
find a good day. Okay, we can
do that it would be cool to find a couple of like local businesses that would be like that are kind of share similar support. Yeah. Where we can like hang up acquire something and like just in exchange that becomes like kind of a regular hangout place I don't go out to eat enough to really know that but yeah, if we can find a food place renting a place like that that would be that'd be great. That's a little anti establishment even if you run a business I know that or the the coffee place I guess we went to on Saturday they they were saying they tried not to collect sales tax at the beginning because they didn't want to tax people. But then it became unsustainable because we still had to pay taxes even though charging for so yeah, someplace like that will be cool to hang out at. Alright, so we'll make a forum post. I don't think we need to move to make a forum post. And then lastly, meet up after we want to meet up after this. And I'm down for I have not had dinner yet. But I drive out of town. So it will be us for you
Yeah. Personally, I made plans. I can't meet today, but I will leave my plans open in the future. So I can do stuff.
Yeah, I think from now on in the social media, should we just make that like a standing thing that after meetings, we go hang out? Yeah. Okay. I don't think we need to move for that. But what do you think?
No, I don't think so. Because I think people are busy. So if you let them know, hey, at the next meeting, we're gonna hang out after, then that's better for planning. And not all the time. So then, like, if it happens, I don't know, if it happens all the time. Will people continue to go? Or will they not go to the meetup anymore? Okay, I don't know, whatever up to you. I'm not going so it doesn't matter.
Since we're already only meeting in person, once a month, we could make it after that. Yeah. Okay. Um, the consensus of the group if they want to go up? I like that idea.
Yes, Robbie. That's correct. Yep.
Okay, so we'll do hangouts after Well, I mean, we gotta like, put it with this. When you announced the event, we gotta like, let people know then, like trying to think like, at a time. Yeah. We announced the event. Yeah. So like, afterwards, you're hanging out somewhere? So I think. Yeah, so for the steering committee, well, we should decide we should have decided last meeting. But as the steering thing, we need to decide where we're going to meet up for the next meeting. Like, by the first because that's when we kind of need to post about it, because that's like two weeks before. The 29th is like two weeks before, so we should figure it out offline, where we're gonna set the meeting place. And then we'll announce the next meeting. And the meetup place after that. Okay, that was all were 15 minutes late. But that's okay. Had a lot to go through this time, a lot of boring stuff. So thank you for bearing through all that. I think at this point. By the end of next, I mean, depends on how long all the documents take to actually move through and approve, I think, when I applied for an EIN for the campaign, they got back within a couple of days. So we'll be able to open up a bank account soon enough. And then steering has to figure out how we're actually going to process membership and stuff, like information and collect the credit card information. But on our way, and and yeah, we'll we'll have to set up a meeting later, Chris, and Robbie, anybody and stuff. That's good. All right. Anything else before we close out the meeting?
Just so yes. For you guys. When you do the agenda items, it is not what you like, talk about, like what how you see like the path moving forward for like, the priority campaign for tenancy means, like, are we planning to, like house attendants union, like permanently within working class unity or just just, you know, tackle those questions for the next time?
Okay, that is a good question, because everyone else has separate Canadians. Right? And if we make it a not priority campaign, do we just abandon the people that are at that point? Yeah,
yeah, it was, I think from like what you heard like it was like specific 501 C four is like dedicated to like, pennant unions only, right. It's not like, working class unity word that's not exactly like our main focus. So I was just wondering, like, what that was going to look like, because I wasn't sure like, is working class unity, like gonna do outreach and like, get all the people together, give them the information and resources and then say, Okay, now you guys go and form a tenant's union. Are we doing something more lasting than that?
Yeah. All right. You want to respond, Chris, Robbie, thanks for that.
The big thing that I heard, that I really liked was they had a campaign action that was explicitly just tenant union stuff. And then when new members join, they can say hey, I want to focus on the, you know, the tenant housing part of the campaign, or I want to focus on tenant housing campaign, and then those folks would have different meetings, but I think I see that happening maybe farther out. Because that was like most of these tenant has been around for like a year. And then they started moving into that model. Okay. So good.
I was just gonna say that. I think I'm depend on how the outreach goes or whatever that if they wanted to constitute within the group slash join the group, that would be one thing, but I think, tentatively the campaign would be to try and get them to be able to organize and to assist them and getting the stuff done, right.
Yeah, the way they phrase like, we don't want to do is just go in and like, form the union ourselves. For the purposes of like winning one campaign, like there's a big eviction effort or something. And like, we prevent that, and then we fade away. Like you don't, you don't want to like touch and go, because then the folks won't, like continue on anyways, with the with the formation of the tenant union. So I think, like, almost every one of the tenant unions, besides LA, had a really hard time getting active membership, like even Oakland, the or the call tank. Yeah, that was the Oakland group. They said that 700 members, but only 70, like in the tenant Union, but only 70 are actually active. And all the other union does seem like to a union, they were, they had their little organizing committee that did all the work. And that committee hadn't grown over time. And so they were kind of stuck with the original organizers, and they'd like go in, have a campaign, even if it's successful, the tenant union would just die over time. And so I think, and we'll talk about this more, we should end the meeting. But um, I think we're like, if it's really successful, then maybe we adopt our bylaws and change it to like kind of union into something that's like outside where two focuses. And like, we would have to build the capacity for that. And maybe until then, this is a permanent focus campaign that we keep improving, especially if it's, especially if it's sex, especially if it is successful. But I think it is really important to form like really long term, deep ties to the people that we're organizing with, and then getting them involved in other things and just 10 and stuff. And that will only happen through working class unity. So, so yeah, like, well,
but I was just gonna say that. Well, so if we do have it as a campaign, you know, the person that's heading the campaign, and that, presumably, okay, the campaign goes great, and we get a functioning kind of union out of it, we would remove it as one of our goals, but I don't know, we can still keep that Chairman or chairperson as the go between them, they would provide updates at the meetings on how it's going and what more they need, or you know what I mean?
Yeah, it'll depend on if, like, if that would mean like, we're stopping recruiting, right? Like, if, if we form like a tenant union, like a building, and we're like, are, we're happy with this, we're kind of done, then yeah, then we can maintain it and just offload it to like a partnership thing. Where, yeah, so our tenant Union, but it's not a main focus that we're spending a lot of resources on. But I think we want to keep growing. Even if we I was like, then it has to be one of our campaigns essentially. Good. You have to do a lot so much Tabeling and outreach and planning to be successful, that it has to be a focused campaign. And, yeah, if it's not successful, and we don't want to deal with it anymore, then we'll vote to disapprove and, you know, we can form a different legal body and hand it off, if that's what we want to do. But hopefully, that doesn't happen. I can keep growing if it
goes great. Yeah. Then we, like you said we can see about just making it ongoing thing in addition to our two campaigns. Yeah.
All right. I am going to, if nothing else, I'm going to move to end the meeting. So we're not so late. And I get a second to adjourn. All right. Everyone that's in favor say aye. Aye. Hi, thank you very much. Thanks. Everyone. mean, boy, okay. I'm gonna start record
