Libertarian Party of San Francisco Agenda: Saturday, October 10, 2015
Meeting Location: San Francisco Main Library – 4th Floor Conference Room
Welcome – Introductions 3:05-3:10
Activist Reports – Past & Future 3:11-3:30
Announcements 3:31-3:40
Membership/Newsletter Report 3:41-3:45
Website Report 3:46-3:55
Treasurer’s Report 3:56-4:00
November Election Promotion 4:01-4:30
Ballot Measure Arguments Policy 4:31-5:00
Meeting Location: San Francisco Main Library – 4th Floor Conference Room
Welcome – Introductions 3:05-3:10
Activist Reports – Past & Future 3:11-3:30
Announcements 3:31-3:40
Membership/Newsletter Report 3:41-3:45
Website Report 3:46-3:55
Treasurer’s Report 3:56-4:00
November Election Promotion 4:01-4:30
Ballot Measure Arguments Policy 4:31-5:00
Minutes written by Aubrey Freedman
Libertarian Party of San Francisco
Minutes for Monthly Meeting at the San Francisco Public Library on Saturday, October 10, 2015
Attendees: Phil Berg, Marcy Berry (Vice Chair), Aubrey Freedman (Chair), Cliff Nelson (guest), Ryan Porte (guest), Starchild, and Jason Williams.
Activist Reports: Marcy had an extremely busy month getting the Libertarian viewpoint out there. She presented the Libertarian arguments against props B and K at a League of Women Voters’ taping, which will be featured at sfgov.tv. She also attended an anti-Plan Bay Area coalition meeting and also the GGLR monthly meeting last month. She presented our argument against Prop K at the Older Women’s League meeting, which went well, and also presented our ballot measure arguments at the Log Cabin meeting last month. She also attended a neighborhood watch meeting on the Westside where residents were very upset about a lot of recent break-ins. Lastly she tabled at the “No on I” booth at the Castro Fair the previous weekend and noted that most folks who stopped to talk were opposed to the moratorium measure. Aubrey sent out the monthly newsletter last month and also tabled at the “No on I” booth. Phil posted comments on Zero Hedge.
Announcements:
• Monday, October 19-7:00-9:00 PM-Golden Gate Liberty Revolution-Monthly Meeting-Moksha Life Center-405 Sansome Street.
• Saturday/Sunday, October 24/25-Code of the West Gun Show-San Jose-tabling with Santa Clara LP (Aubrey indicated he may attend and indicated that others can get a ride with him, if interested).
• Saturday, November 7-7:00-11:00 PM-Free Exchange-Jim Elwood’s in Parkmerced.
• Saturday, November 14-JSA Convention-Santa Clara Marriott Hotel-2700 Mission College Blvd (Aubrey indicated this conflicts with our November meeting, so he will not attend this time).
• Young Americans for Liberty (YAL)-1600 Holloway Avenue (at 19th)-SF State University-Student Group Meetings every Thursday at noon in the Cesar Chavez Student Center/Rosa Parks Room-Outreach Tablings every Tuesday at noon in the Malcolm X Plaza (outside Cesar Chavez Student Center (Starchild noted that he’s not sure YAL is active at SFSU anymore since Nikko has graduated, so this announcement will not be listed anymore).
Membership/Newsletter Report: Aubrey reported that membership is up by 1 to 40 (22 lifetime members and 18 current paid up annual members). He finally complained to Ted Brown (LP State Chair) about the state membership records being in a shambles with no updates to the records for months. Aubrey reported sending the September newsletter to 177 people last month with 1 “Unsubscribe” request (the person moved to the East Bay), no new “Subscribe” requests, 1 bounce, and more comments than usual this time due to his article about sanctuary cities.
Website Report: Marcy reported that the upgrade to a more current version of Joomla went well with no down time, and she is happy with the results. Since Joomla was no longer supporting the old version we were on, she felt the $500 paid to JM Experts was well worth it, with our website sporting a new look and it being more mobile-friendly than the previous version. She said our website is too big for an automatic back-up, and she will look into the cost of subscribing to Akeeba Backups. There was a request to add the feature for folks who come to our website to be able to post comments, but Marcy is afraid that may open up our website to hacking and is opposed to the idea. Besides there are plenty of other avenues for folks to post comments like the LPSF Discussion List and also the LPSF Facebook, and she encouraged, once again, that our members start posting comments to these other avenues. She noted that the LPSF Facebook has 168 likes and needs more new postings.
Treasurer’s Report: Les was working today, so Aubrey gave the report. The current book balance is quite high at the moment: $823.46 (in PayPal) + $2,828.72 in the bank + another $2,000.00 in transit from PayPal to the bank + another $100 pledged for the election promotion not received yet = $5,752.18. However, so we don’t get carried away like government in good times, Aubrey noted that several committed disbursements need to be considered: $500.00 to Marcy for paying the consultant who did a great job on the website migration + $476.93 to be reimbursed to Aubrey for the post card mailing + $150.00 for the annual mail box rental = $1,126.93. He also reminded the group that we have a book balance floor of $2,000.00 (must always keep at least that much cash on hand), and he suggested that we save another $1,500.00 for next year’s events like Pride and Tax Day. That would leave $1,125.25 to work with right now for additional activity for the upcoming election.
November Election Promotion: We discussed how best to publicize the LPSF positions on the ballot measures. The best options were running ads in El Reportero, Golden Gate Xpress (SFSU school newspaper), and Guardian (CCSF school newspaper). Starchild called Marvin Ramirez, the editor of El Reportero, and discussed running the ad containing Starchild’s postcard with our ballot recommendations, but Marvin did not agree with our position on Prop I (Moratorium in the Mission) because he is part of his community and his community wants the moratorium, so he was not keen to accept our ad. Starchild will try to meet with Marvin to get him to change his mind, but that appeared unlikely. We agreed to run the LPSF postcard as an ad in the Golden Gate Xpress for $220.50 for a quarter page and run an ad in the Guardian for $150.00 for a quarter page. We discussed if we should run the ads sooner or later, what with so many voting early these days with mail-in ballots; the consensus was that it is better to run them sooner since early voting has already begun and it makes sense to catch as many folks as possible before they vote. It was agreed that Marcy will run an ad in Facebook for $100.00 advertising our ballot recommendations. Starchild requested a budget of $140.00 for copies of the postcard to put out in public places like coffee shops and stores, which was approved. He will put some type of cartoon on the back of the postcard to catch folks’ attention. Aubrey discussed sending out a second postcard mailing to reach additional registered Libertarians (first mailing was only sent to those who voted a year ago). He sorted the Department of Elections listing seeking out more high-propensity voters and found that the next biggest chunk of voters is about 1,000 registered Libertarians who voted in the November 2012 Presidential election (apparently a lot of Libertarians, just like regular folks, only vote during a Presidential election). He estimates the cost will be about $500.
Ballot Measure Arguments Policy: We ran out of time at the meeting, so this item will be discussed at a later meeting.
Cliff Nelson: Cliff presented his idea on forming a separate country or region with no government. One way to accomplish this would be through fundraising by offering a current government (with solvency problems—not too hard to find these days) a large sum of money for a sovereign piece of land. Some of our members mentioned that there have already been several projects in motion trying out this concept like Free Cities in Honduras and the Kingdom of Tonga. They suggested that he try to hook up with one or more of these groups so as not to try and reinvent the wheel.
Libertarian Party of San Francisco
Minutes for Monthly Meeting at the San Francisco Public Library on Saturday, October 10, 2015
Attendees: Phil Berg, Marcy Berry (Vice Chair), Aubrey Freedman (Chair), Cliff Nelson (guest), Ryan Porte (guest), Starchild, and Jason Williams.
Activist Reports: Marcy had an extremely busy month getting the Libertarian viewpoint out there. She presented the Libertarian arguments against props B and K at a League of Women Voters’ taping, which will be featured at sfgov.tv. She also attended an anti-Plan Bay Area coalition meeting and also the GGLR monthly meeting last month. She presented our argument against Prop K at the Older Women’s League meeting, which went well, and also presented our ballot measure arguments at the Log Cabin meeting last month. She also attended a neighborhood watch meeting on the Westside where residents were very upset about a lot of recent break-ins. Lastly she tabled at the “No on I” booth at the Castro Fair the previous weekend and noted that most folks who stopped to talk were opposed to the moratorium measure. Aubrey sent out the monthly newsletter last month and also tabled at the “No on I” booth. Phil posted comments on Zero Hedge.
Announcements:
• Monday, October 19-7:00-9:00 PM-Golden Gate Liberty Revolution-Monthly Meeting-Moksha Life Center-405 Sansome Street.
• Saturday/Sunday, October 24/25-Code of the West Gun Show-San Jose-tabling with Santa Clara LP (Aubrey indicated he may attend and indicated that others can get a ride with him, if interested).
• Saturday, November 7-7:00-11:00 PM-Free Exchange-Jim Elwood’s in Parkmerced.
• Saturday, November 14-JSA Convention-Santa Clara Marriott Hotel-2700 Mission College Blvd (Aubrey indicated this conflicts with our November meeting, so he will not attend this time).
• Young Americans for Liberty (YAL)-1600 Holloway Avenue (at 19th)-SF State University-Student Group Meetings every Thursday at noon in the Cesar Chavez Student Center/Rosa Parks Room-Outreach Tablings every Tuesday at noon in the Malcolm X Plaza (outside Cesar Chavez Student Center (Starchild noted that he’s not sure YAL is active at SFSU anymore since Nikko has graduated, so this announcement will not be listed anymore).
Membership/Newsletter Report: Aubrey reported that membership is up by 1 to 40 (22 lifetime members and 18 current paid up annual members). He finally complained to Ted Brown (LP State Chair) about the state membership records being in a shambles with no updates to the records for months. Aubrey reported sending the September newsletter to 177 people last month with 1 “Unsubscribe” request (the person moved to the East Bay), no new “Subscribe” requests, 1 bounce, and more comments than usual this time due to his article about sanctuary cities.
Website Report: Marcy reported that the upgrade to a more current version of Joomla went well with no down time, and she is happy with the results. Since Joomla was no longer supporting the old version we were on, she felt the $500 paid to JM Experts was well worth it, with our website sporting a new look and it being more mobile-friendly than the previous version. She said our website is too big for an automatic back-up, and she will look into the cost of subscribing to Akeeba Backups. There was a request to add the feature for folks who come to our website to be able to post comments, but Marcy is afraid that may open up our website to hacking and is opposed to the idea. Besides there are plenty of other avenues for folks to post comments like the LPSF Discussion List and also the LPSF Facebook, and she encouraged, once again, that our members start posting comments to these other avenues. She noted that the LPSF Facebook has 168 likes and needs more new postings.
Treasurer’s Report: Les was working today, so Aubrey gave the report. The current book balance is quite high at the moment: $823.46 (in PayPal) + $2,828.72 in the bank + another $2,000.00 in transit from PayPal to the bank + another $100 pledged for the election promotion not received yet = $5,752.18. However, so we don’t get carried away like government in good times, Aubrey noted that several committed disbursements need to be considered: $500.00 to Marcy for paying the consultant who did a great job on the website migration + $476.93 to be reimbursed to Aubrey for the post card mailing + $150.00 for the annual mail box rental = $1,126.93. He also reminded the group that we have a book balance floor of $2,000.00 (must always keep at least that much cash on hand), and he suggested that we save another $1,500.00 for next year’s events like Pride and Tax Day. That would leave $1,125.25 to work with right now for additional activity for the upcoming election.
November Election Promotion: We discussed how best to publicize the LPSF positions on the ballot measures. The best options were running ads in El Reportero, Golden Gate Xpress (SFSU school newspaper), and Guardian (CCSF school newspaper). Starchild called Marvin Ramirez, the editor of El Reportero, and discussed running the ad containing Starchild’s postcard with our ballot recommendations, but Marvin did not agree with our position on Prop I (Moratorium in the Mission) because he is part of his community and his community wants the moratorium, so he was not keen to accept our ad. Starchild will try to meet with Marvin to get him to change his mind, but that appeared unlikely. We agreed to run the LPSF postcard as an ad in the Golden Gate Xpress for $220.50 for a quarter page and run an ad in the Guardian for $150.00 for a quarter page. We discussed if we should run the ads sooner or later, what with so many voting early these days with mail-in ballots; the consensus was that it is better to run them sooner since early voting has already begun and it makes sense to catch as many folks as possible before they vote. It was agreed that Marcy will run an ad in Facebook for $100.00 advertising our ballot recommendations. Starchild requested a budget of $140.00 for copies of the postcard to put out in public places like coffee shops and stores, which was approved. He will put some type of cartoon on the back of the postcard to catch folks’ attention. Aubrey discussed sending out a second postcard mailing to reach additional registered Libertarians (first mailing was only sent to those who voted a year ago). He sorted the Department of Elections listing seeking out more high-propensity voters and found that the next biggest chunk of voters is about 1,000 registered Libertarians who voted in the November 2012 Presidential election (apparently a lot of Libertarians, just like regular folks, only vote during a Presidential election). He estimates the cost will be about $500.
Ballot Measure Arguments Policy: We ran out of time at the meeting, so this item will be discussed at a later meeting.
Cliff Nelson: Cliff presented his idea on forming a separate country or region with no government. One way to accomplish this would be through fundraising by offering a current government (with solvency problems—not too hard to find these days) a large sum of money for a sovereign piece of land. Some of our members mentioned that there have already been several projects in motion trying out this concept like Free Cities in Honduras and the Kingdom of Tonga. They suggested that he try to hook up with one or more of these groups so as not to try and reinvent the wheel.