[mgj-discuss] MGJ General meeting notes 10/19

[Catherine Benedict]

MGJ General Meeting Notes 10/19/05


Discussion

Thank you Cards
We’ll have a thank you card making party Monday 10/24, 6:30pm at 4033 
New Hampshire Ave. NW. Catherine is getting construction paper and 
envelopes, Hope is bringing glue. We already have the other supplies. 
Basav already has about half the addresses. We split the other half up 
to collect.

Solidarity Statement for Helsinki demo
Hope circulated a draft and a couple of items were changed. We consensed 
to send it to the folks in Helsinki and to put it out on our listserve.

UFPJ Letter
This has to go to Z Mag on Tuesday 10/25. Edits must be to Basav by 
Thursday 10/20. Basav will contact DAMN and Justice & Solidarity about 
including their names in it. Catherine will rewrite the housing 
paragraph to reflect people’s concerns.

Planning for Next General Meeting
We decided to postpone the big strategy and visioning meeting until Nov. 
2 to allow us to have enough time to get lots of people to it. We will 
be contacting people who have been involved with MGJ in the past year to 
come to it and have split up the calls. Discussion about pulling permits 
early (see Proposals, below). We will talk about the big strategy 
meeting agenda at next week’s meeting.

Business for Social Responsibility conference Nov 2
BSR is having a conference on Nov. 2 in Woodley Park with Paul Wolfowitz 
as the keynote speaker. We will do a small street theater action there. 
We need more details about the conference before deciding on a time and 
planning the action. Catherine will do research to bring to the next 
meeting and will also start working on a flier to hand out at it. Ideas 
centered around Halloween and Day of the Dead: “unmasking” the 
corporations – a smiley face of social responsibility is hiding a 
monster mask that represents what they are actually doing (sweatshop 
wages, environmental degradation, etc.). We can also have skeletons 
representing all the people who have died. We will firm up plans at our 
next meeting.

Website Training
Peter can train us to post information on the static site while the 
actual website is still under construction. The training will happen 
Tues. 10/25 at a time and location TBA. Contact Catherine at 
catherinebenedict at earthlink.net if you’re interested in participating.

Non-Profit Status
Jeff has looked into this and has found out that MGJ is already an 
unincorporated non-profit under DC law. Incorporating would cost about 
$70 and we would have to come up with articles of incorporation, a list 
of officers and a board of directors, etc., with no real benefits to 
doing so. It seems to make sense to just remain an unincorporated 
non-profit but we should decide that at some point. There are things we 
can do as an unincorporated non-profit to clarify our status. Jeff has 
made a list. We will discuss them next week when there will hopefully be 
more people at the meeting.


Break-Out: Education Working Group

NCOR Workshops
Morrigan sent out suggestions for 4 workshops and we added two more. We 
have decided to submit all of them to NCOR but hope that all of them 
won’t be accepted. If they are all accepted we’ll have to recruit folks 
from other groups to help us. We divided up who is writing descriptions 
of each. Here they are:
Local/global connections – Catherine was supposed to write this but 
Basav thought he was supposed to so he wrote it.
Round table on what is to be done with the US global justice movement – 
Edward
Creative media organizing skillshare – Basav
Militarization and Globalization – Edward will talk to SOA Watch about 
partnering with us and will write this one up.
Immigration and globalization – we would show “Uprooted: Refugees of the 
Global Economy” and have a discussion – Basav
Non-hierarchical consensus-based organizing skillshare - Catherine
We should send these descriptions to outreach by Friday and to discuss 
by Sunday. The proposal has to be in to NCOR by Tuesday.


Proposals

1. MGJ bullhorn
Proposed: Let the Guerilla Poets borrow one of our bullhorns until they 
get their sound system fixed. (We have three bullhorns – one is at 
Catherine, Basav and Morrigan’s house, one is with Nadine and one is 
already with the Guerilla Poets.)
Result: Consensed.

2. Business for Social Responsibility action
Proposed: MGJ will do a low-key theatrical media stunt outside the BSR 
conference.
Result: Consensed. Details to be determined at next week’s meeting.

3. Permits for April
Proposed: To pull permits now for whole city (or alternatively for a few 
parks).
Result: Tabled until Nov. 2

4. DAWN action
Proposal: That MGJ support a particular DAWN action.
Result: Tabled until we have more information about the action.


Next Meeting

Basav will facilitate next week’s meeting and will recruit a co-facilitator.


Announcements

There is a childcare collective forming to do childcare for various 
groups in DC. Talk to Catherine if you’re interested in being part of it.

Nov. 7 the Campaign to End AIDS is doing an action in DC. They would 
like our participation. Details will be sent out over email.

Two other events were announced that had already occurred by the time 
the notes went out.