Meeting of 10 May, 2014

Libertarian Party of San Francisco

Minutes for Monthly Meeting at the San Francisco Public Library on Saturday, May 10, 2014

Attendees: Phil Berg, Marcy Berry (Vice Chair), Michael Denny, Francoise Fielding, Aubrey Freedman (Chair), Dan Pickell, Starchild, and William Earen.

Activist Reports: Marcy helped out at the Prop 13 Tax Symposium by printing up program guides and attending the event; she also attended a GGLR meeting.  Phil objected to a Second Amendment comment at a meeting he attended; he called the speaker on citing “facts” that offensive use of firearms occurs four times more often than their defensive use.  Starchild attended a taping of the League of Women Voters for the June elections and presented the LPSF case against Prop A (bond for earthquake safety and preparedness) and also attended an LP National Party Platform Committee meeting in Indianapolis to ensure that the Libertarian message is kept radical enough and not watered down with marketing.  He also attended a meeting of the Rothbard Circle and reported there were about a dozen attendees.  Michael Denny has been trying to work on a business deal with “screaming Libertarians.”  Aubrey has been working on the John Dennis campaign for Congress by precinct walking.  

Announcements:

Tuesday, May 20, 2014-7-9 PM-Monthly meeting of Golden Gate Liberty Revolution at Moksha Life Center-405 Sansome Street. (Aubrey noted that the meetings have been moved to Tuesdays from Mondays.)

Wednesday, June 4, 2014-12:30-3:00 PM-ABAG PCA Meeting-Joseph Bort MetroCenter Auditorium-101 Eighth Street, Oakland

Thursday, June 5-Restore The Fourth will present the “Shame on Feinstein” letter to Diane Feinstein.

Saturday, June 7, 2014-6-11 PM-Monthly social of Free Exchange at Jim Elwood’s in Parkmerced.  (Aubrey noted that most of the socials are now starting at 6 PM rather than 7PM).

Membership Report: Aubrey reported that membership was flat—17 regular paid-up and current members and 22 lifetime members for a total of 39 members.  He said that he will soon get a new updated diskette from the Department of Elections and send out membership letters to newly registered Libertarians.

Website Report: Marcy has put up on the website a webpage especially for the upcoming June election.  The LPSF recommendations on both the local and state propositions are listed and described briefly.  She updated us with the latest numbers of active subscribers to our lists:  LPSF Facebook-151 (pretty good number for us); Activist List-34 (quite low); Announce List-121; Meet-up-235; and Discussion List-103.

Prop 13 Tax Symposium 2014 & Tax Day Event for 2015: Attendance was disappointingly low (14.5 attendees), but the panelists and audience members were all engrossed in the discussion and the time did not lag.  Starchild was the MC and our panelists were Laura Wells, the Green Party candidate for State Controller, and Trish Cypher, a knowledgeable expert on Plan Bay Area and regional government.  There was a newly acquired respect for the Green Party due to strong opposition to bonds voiced by Laura and one of her Green colleagues.  One regret that was noted was that we did not tape the event and make a YouTube out of it.  We will make it a point to tape next year’s event.  Jawj has volunteered to spearhead that project, and we plan that to be an indoor speaking event with hopefully a major speaker who will attract a larger audience.  Starchild still wants to do an outdoor event in a park, which will attract more of the general population, and he is in charge of that project.

Pride 2014:  The event is on for the week-end of June 28 & 29.  Helpers are still needed to man our booth, even for short shifts.  Francoise has graciously offered to host a button-making party on Election Night, June 3 at 6:30 PM.  Aubrey will have our usual variety of LP brochures on display at our booth.  Starchild mentioned the very good but pricey pro-freedom brochure put out by the Heritage Foundation, and Aubrey said he will try to purchase a small quantity to add interest to our booth.  Dan mentioned that the Pink Pistols will again be marching in the parade and will need safety monitors to take the training, even if they can’t participate in the parade.  There was also a mention of possibly getting Terry Floyd from the East Bay LP to join us at Pride and bring his Bitcoin ATM machine, which would be a nice gimmick for us this year.

June Election:  There was a brief discussion about whether we should recommend any other candidates for the upcoming election other than the Libertarian candidate for Attorney General (Jonathan Jaech) or John Dennis (Ron Paul Republican running against Nancy Pelosi).  The general consensus was that the LPSF is best not backing any candidates that are not primarily libertarian.  The backfiring that resulted from past LPSF support of Ed Jew was cited as a good reason to steer clear of non-libertarians.

WALL Speaker Sponsorship:  The coalition of WALL, the LPSF, and GGLR invited Ron Paul to speak at the bi-annual meeting of WALL, but since Ron Paul has not responded to the invitation, WALL is now inviting Dennis Kucinich to be the speaker.  The LPSF will not be bearing any costs to have Kucinich as the speaker but has offered to help publicize the event for WALL.

Treasurer’s Report/Budget/$2K Motion:  In Les’ absence due to recent surgery, Marcy reported the balance as $2,928.41.  Aubrey reported that he has not submitted the Pride expenses yet (budgeted and collected from donations of $400), so our coffers will be $2,528.41 after Pride.  He presented a rough budget of annual revenues and expenses:  Revenues of $225 (memberships) + $663 (donations) = $888.  Expenses of $30 (website back-up) + $98 (website hosting & domain) + $240 (mail box) + $153 (voice mail) + $50 (Meet-up) + $200 (brochures/literature) + $250 (emergency for “rainy day”) = $1,021.  It was noted that we expect the mail box cost to drop since Aubrey will find another mail box that is more convenient to access and cheaper after the current mail box expires in October.  But it was also noted that the donations revenue is based on PayPal monthly donations that can stop at any time (and most of it is from one large donor), so that $663 figure is iffy.  Marcy’s motion from last month’s meeting was that we not allow our book balance (less any earmarked projects) to ever drop below $2,000, but anything above that amount would be available to use on outreach activities as authorized by the LPSF.  Starchild felt that $1,500 was a more reasonable figure, and we should not be sitting on a large amount of money when we could be using more of it to promote freedom.  A vote on Marcy’s motion was shelved until the next meeting when more members are present to vote on it.

Gun Show September 13 & 14:  Aubrey suggested that the LPSF have a table at the September gun show since the gun crowd is receptive to the Libertarian message, the table we had at last year’s gun show was successful as a joint effort with the GGLR, and it’s been a year since we had our own table there.  William mentioned that the GGLR is always fund raising when it does outreach and the LPSF should get in the habit of asking for donations during outreach efforts.  There was no opposition to the proposal of the LPSF having a table at the September gun show (again as a joint effort but this time it will be 2 tables with the GGLR, 1 table with the LPSF, and 1 table with the John Birch Society—all next to each other). However we decided that Aubrey will put out a call for donations for the gun show, but since our book balance (less Pride’s $400 budget) is well above $2K and the cost of the table is only $110, the LPSF will definitely participate in the gun show in September.