Minutes of April 11, 2009
Members Present: Rob Power (Chair) presiding, Francoise Fielding (Secretary) recording, Jeremy Linden, Jawj Greenwald, Michael Edelstein, Starchild.
Guests: Christopher Jamette, (Independent, member of the Air Force and against the Federal Reserve), Jun Dam, Thomas Strenge, Jeff Clark, J. Dennis (Republican)
Officer Reports
- Treasurer: Marcy Berry was unable to attend but sent a report by email: There has been no change since last month. There is $2,567.71 in the bank account and $53.64 in petty cash. A $25 check for basic membership was received from Tomas Saulys and was forwarded to the LPCA.
- Secretary: Francoise Fielding had nothing to report. The Minutes of the Meeting of March 14th, 2009 were approved.
- Vice-Chair: Ron Getty was unable to attend but sent an email detailing his work on the membership lists of the LPCA and LNC with a recommendation to authorize an expenditure for membership postcards. A vote on this proposal will be addressed under New Business.
- Chair: Rob Power reported that he has resigned from the CA State Party Executive committee.
Committee Reports
- Outreach and Newsletter: Starchild reported that Rob Power has given him a disk with page layout software for the newsletter. He still needs a CD with Quark Xpress 7 for Mac OSX.
Starchild also reported that he went to a Federal Reserve protest. He brought and distributed printed materials he picked up at the protest.
Starchild encourages people to join the Yahoo Group that he set up for the Taxpayers' Union. He will send out invites to people who were members before. If a discussion gets going we will then have a pretext to start doing things in the name of the organization. Rob brought up the fact that they are an organized PAC and we should find out who is on the Board of the group. It was decided to postpone brainstorming to the Activists' list
- Bylaws: Rob reported that Beau Cain (LPCA Secretary) had not sent Rob the template he had requested and suggested we postpone until next month a vote on replacing our bylaws with a new set based on the template.
- Website and Database: The website is working. Articles and the Minutes are being posted. Rob called for anyone who is interested to contribute content.
Starchild said that he has been posting comments on San Francisco Chronicle articles on their blog. The Chron also lets you post the comments on Facebook. Starchild would like to post them on our website as well. Rob said he can only do it if there is an RSS feed.
- Membership and Fundraising: Marcy was absent.
- Initiatives: Ron Getty was absent.
- Campaigns: No report. We have no one running for office this year.
- Social networking: Rob said he needs someone to take over updating Facebook and Twitter because he doesn't have the time. There is a group called TCOT (Top Conservatives on Twitter). A group of Libertarians has split off and is called TLOT (Top Libertarians on Twitter). Rob needs someone to volunteer to be director of online social networking committees. Rob will post this on the Activists and Discuss lists.
Announcements
- Starchild announced that for those people who are not going to the LPCA Convention and are interested, there will be a protest at the Federal Reserve on April 25th.
- The next JSA Convention is on Saturday, April 25 from 1 PM to 5 PM at the Santa Clara Marriott (2700 Mission College Blvd, right off of the Great American Parkway from 101 Freeway). Lawrence Samuels needs volunteers. Contact him at [email protected] or 831-238-5058 if you are interested.
- Starchild would like to see a group go to the Supervisors' meetings. They take place on Tuesdays at 3 pm. He says you get to speak on issues that concern you.
- Rob would like volunteers for restarting our cable show.
- Jawj encourages people to apply to serve on the Civil Grand Jury. The term is from July 1 to June 30th. Applications must be received by April 17, 2009. For Grand Jury information and an application form, visit: http://www.sfgov.org/site/courts_page.asp?id=3680.
- There will be a Marijuana Policy Protest rally in front of City Hall on April 20th.
Old Business:
- Opportunities and Voter Registration will stay on the Agenda until we figure out something worth doing.
Rob has registered us for Gay Pride week-end. But that and Tax Day outreach can't be all we do.
If you are interested in something and you want to organize it speak up. We need new activities because Naturalization ceremonies have moved to Oakland and are now the province of the EBLP (though members of the LPSF can certainly volunteer to help).
- Bylaws: Tabled (See Above under Committee Reports).
- Tax Day Outreach: We will be conducting the LPSF billion dollar give-away at 1 Post Street (outside the Montgomery Street Muni Station) from 4 to 6 or 7 pm. Afterwards (at 7 pm) we will join the people from Liberty on the Rocks at DaDa Studio, 86 2nd St., San Francisco, (just a block off Market on 2nd St).
- Top -two primary (SB6). Richard Winger is out of the country and so cannot speak to us about this. We need to fight this bill so Libertarians can still be in elections. The bill will not be on the ballot until summer of 2010. In the meantime, the best way to help is to send money to the Libertarian Party of Washington (http://www.lpwa.org) which is currently fighting the same issue in court. If the bill is declared unconstitutional for them, it will get knocked out for us as well.
New Business
- Expenditure for membership postcards: Ron Getty (see above Vice-Chair's Report) has requested that we approve up to $50 a month to mail postcards to lapsed members. A motion was proposed and approved for a pilot project to allocate $50 a month for 6 months to contact lapsed members. After a postcard has been sent to a lapsed member for 3 months and he/she has not responded, the lapsed member's name will be taken off the list.
- Restricting the LPSF-Activists list to central committee members. After a vigorous discussion there was no consensus to restrict the list so it was decided to leave it open.
- "Counterproductive to interests of LPSF to join the Tea Party Rally?" (Michael Edelstein)
A motion for the LPSF to make a request for an official LPSF presence (including an LPSF speaker) at the event to be held at Civic Center from 11 am- 1 pm was defeated 4 to 1 with 1 abstention.
- Consent Calendar resolution (Rob Power)
Rob notified us of a Consent Calendar Resolution he intends to submit to the LPCA opposing the "Domestic Partnership Initiative".
- Marriage Equality for Poly Relationships (Starchild)
Starchild distributed copies of a message in support of marriage equality for poly relationships he intends to hand out at a "town hall meeting" at the GLBTQ Center this Monday April 13th from 7-9 pm. He requested a motion to label this message as approved by the LPSF. The motion was made but there was no second and the motion died.
- Policy on using LPSF Officer or Committee Titles
Because Starchild signed the above-referenced message as "Outreach Director, Libertarian Party of San Francisco", a discussion ensued as to the appropriateness of using one's LPSF title for a message that has not been approved by the LPSF.
A motion was made and approved that for any message not endorsed by the LPSF the title can be used only with an asterisk (*) stating that the title is used for identification purposes only.
Rob Power Francoise Fielding