Meeting of 13 January, 2018

Libertarian Party of San Francisco
Meeting of 13 January, 2018
Phil Berg’s Apartment

Attendance
Aubrey Freedman (Chair)
Phil Berg
Nick Smith (Secretary)
Rebecca Lau
Francoise Fielding
Andrea Compton
John Compton
Geronimo
Starchild (Vice Chair)
Michael Denny
Terence Polomy
Richard Winger
Brett Hamilton

1. Welcome - Introductions
We pretty much already know each other!

Geronimo: Known Phil since he was young.

Brett: Friend of Starchild, interested in the party.

Terence: Was a pretty solid Democrat but has recently come around and realized that the Democratic party and socialism are the wrong direction for this country.

2. Activist Reports
Francoise: Nothing to report, nothing planned.

Rebecca: Went to the SV Conservative forum for a talk about school choice. It was okay.

Aubrey: Not that much in the last month. Working on the Newsletter and planning to table to a few hours at the Gun Show tomorrow.

Nick: Been out trying to get signatures, with little success. Generally helping out with the initiative.

Phil: Catching someone’s ear in a Lyft ride at every opportunity, with some good response. Bitcoin is really helping, getting people to question the essence of money.

John: Spending too much time arguing with friends.

Andrew: Bogged down with work but getting back to it. Visiting many different counties.

Mike: Lots to talk about for politics in San Francisco. Has lots of good conversations started around Ayn Rand.

Geronimo: Talking to people, especially getting out of the bubble of Silicon Valley. Finds a lot of individualistic ideas.

Starchild: Small confrontation with the library after being required to show government ID to retrieve a lost item. Eventually got his item dropped off personally with an apology (but not from the library manager who gave him trouble), however the deputy city librarian who took care of the problem told revised the policy for claiming lost and found items so that people would not need to show government ID. Been posting a lot of comments on SFGate and SF Examiner and posted an article to the LPSF website. Working on a convention that one of the national LP members is working on in Omaha, where Ron Paul will be speaking (Roads to Freedom Foundation, r2ff.org, OmahaUnconvention.com). National Convention is coming up in July. Circulating petitions (Gas Tax Repeal, Changing requirements for Homeowners over 55 and dividing California into 3 states). Had some correspondence with Hillary Ronen about some derogatory language used against sex workers (the term "john" rather than "client"), got a fairly supportive sound. Trying to reach out to the Shen Yun / Falun Dafa movement to get them to realize that the Libertarians are allies.

3. Announcements
Gun Show - Cow Palace, Daly City on Geneva
GGLR is there today and Sunday

Golden Gate Liberty Revolution Monthly Meeting
Richmond District Police Station Community Room
461 6th Avenue, Monday 29 January, 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM

Libertarian Party of California 2018 Convention
Long Beach Mariott, 4700 Airport Plaza
April 27 - 29
https://ca.lp.org/convention/

Silicon Valley Liberty Forum
Prof Gary Wolfram from Hillsdale College
“Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?”
http://www.theconservativeforum.com/speakers/gary-wolfram-tuesday-february-13-2018
432 Stierlin Road, Mountain View, CA 94043

Scott Adams interview with Nick Gillespie
January 29 (Invitation only?)

Starchild is Teleconferencing with LNC IT Comittee
7 February at 6:00 pm
Contact Starchild for the info!

Sonja Trauss is having a campaign event soon!
(More details to come)

Santa Clara Libertarian Party Annual Meeting
Candidate for Gov. Nickolas Wildstar will be speaking
January 27, 11:30 - 3:30 in San Jose
More info: http://scclp...org/org/annual-meeting.php

Hospitality House in San Francisco
http://hospitalityhouse.org/community-arts/
Starchild and Andrea are thinking of organizing an event for Libertarians to gather at. More info to come.
1009 Market Street (@Sixth St.) - Open studio hours (when we would possibly be going) are 1pm-6pm (Mon/Weds/Fri) and 10am-3pm (Tues/Thurs).

Board of Supervisors meetings have resumed, Tuesdays at 2:00 pm. We are trying to get Libertarians to go and get on the public record. Good way to influence local politics.

4. Annual Election of Officers
Nominations:
Chair:
Rebecca nominates Nick for Chair.
Richard nominates Aubrey. Aubrey withdraws.

Vice Chair:
Nick nominates Rebecca.
Starchild nominates himself.

Secretary:
Aubrey nominates himself for Secretary, Starchild.

Treasurer:
Jawj Greenwald has volunteered herself, via email.
Richard nominates Aubrey as Treasurer.

Results (with unanimous support)
Chair: Nick Smith
Vice Chair: Rebecca Lau
Secretary: Aubrey Freedman
Treasurer: Jawj Greenwald

Everyone gives a big round of applause to Aubrey for his excellent service to the party over the years!

5. Membership / Newsletter Report
Aubrey plans to continue working on the newsletter.
21 lifetime members, 25 current paid members. (46 total)

6. Website Report
Set up a listserv to batch-email the newsletter with archiving; needs some testing before it's in use.
Paypal donation button is back and functional.
Several pieces of constructive feedback from Starchild.

7. Treasurer’s Report
Checking account in
SFFCU: $5,771.35
Paypal: $727.39
Total: $6,498.74

We’re loaded!

8. BOS Meetings Report
Meetings have restated. Starchild hasn’t regularly been going. Starchild has been putting a more specific agenda for each meeting into the Meetup description for each individual event.

9. Pride 2018
We have been at Pride for years, and we have been going under the name of Outright Libertarians. Outright is now based in Arizona. They have very generously offered to, if possible, authorize helping fund the difference that we would have to pay. Aubrey has contacted Pride and they will honor us at the same rate ($140 for the booth, $65 for insurance, $205 total). We unanimously support the decision to fund it.

Starchild makes a resolution to contact the CA LP Store to get the Pride poster printed on some items for sale. Phil seconds.

Andrea suggests that we should also participate in the San Francisco Pride parade. We don’t know how much it will cost but we will look into it.

Starchild suggests that everyone join the SF Pride coalition-- it’s free and has lots of grassroots involvement.

10. Petitions
Starchild suggests that we (the party) make a donation to the Foundation to Stop Top 2. Aubrey suggests the amount be $54 for good luck (being a multiple of 13). We vote 3 to 1 in favor.

Nick would also like to organize some petition signing events, but Aubrey and Nick will be at the gun show on Sunday to collect signatures.

The proposition for Gas Tax repeal needs more signatures, we absolutely support it.

11. Tax Day 2018
Aubrey proposes the topic of school choice for our next panel discussion. We would have no problem getting people to speak in favor of school choice, but it will be difficult to get people opposed. Starchild suggests we try to do it at a more public venue where we can reach people with differing opinions, such as at SF State.

Rebecca suggested last year that automation would be a good topic (or basic income). We think it would be easy to get speakers about this. Starchild suggests we start a “Thousand Robot March” to ‘Free the robots” in protest of Norman Yee’s robot ban.

We need to decide on a venue. Starchild suggests that Barbara West might be a good panelist.

We will follow up with more ideas on the activists list. We are looking for speakers on either side, preferably someone with name recognition. It would be nice to have the event around Tax Day.

12. Ballot Measures Report
The deadline for ballot arguments is March 15. The deadline to get in any ballot measures is March 9.

Norman Yee: Universal childcare and rent tax. Would establish a “Babies & family first fund” 1% of gross receipts on any leasing warehouse space. This is higher for commercial space, but would not apply to nonprofits.

Repeal of the ban on flavored tobacco (we definitely support it, and Starchild may be working on it).