5-19-09 NPC Conf Call Notes

NOTES from NPC Call 5/19/09 (Malcolm X b-day)

Facilitator: Jerome Scott

Notetaker: Danielle Mahones

NOTES

Agenda

• Check in and Roll Call

Maureen Taylor MWRO, Bill Bryce JWJ Detroit, Jerome Scott LRNA, Reg McGee JWJ Detroit, Marian Baker MWRO, Will Copeland EMEAC, Sarita Gupta JWJ, Walda Katz-Fishman LRNA, George Friday IPPN, Steph Guilloud PS, Cindy Wiesner GGJ, Genaro Lopez- Rendon SWU, Danielle Mahones CTWO, Sylvia Orduño MWRO, Ricardo Padres Unidos, Daryl Jordan AFSC, Rocio Valerio EMEAC

• Report back on NPC Strategy Session in Detroit (Rocio)

We had a couple of recommendations and decisions were made.

Recommend hiring Maureen Taylor and Will Copeland as Local Coordinators ASAP. Congratulations to Will and Maureen! Adopt MLG’s structural form, outline for working groups, visioning for USSF II- 1 year campaign- get more local folks into the work, i.e. seed farming, cleaning up a park as part of outreach, more visioning on building connections between outside and Detroit. Colleagues were able to come into town the day before so we met with Michael, Josue and Adrienne the day before and it was so refreshing to get the history of how the USSF I came together. 2½ day of high level discussion that added lots of clarity and strength.

• Update on PMA- Steph

Ruben and I put together a couple of calls with folks in NW, Kentucky in SW and SE. I will send out notes from both of those calls. We’ll pull together a face-to face meeting in July around the Kentucky Forum to help have mechanisms to mobilize people to Detroit but also have long lasting avenues to move forward beyond Detroit. Portland is convening in October a gathering on Environmental and Economic Crises. Will be connected to USSF II mobilization. PMA is an open process; anyone can join in.

• Staffing update- Sylvia

Maureen and Will have been hired. Sylvia working with Victor on bookkeeping to draft contracts with them. Diana and Rocio are working on draft Job Description on Communications position. We will have job descriptions by the end of the week. C-Team working on draft of hiring procedures and supervision etc. and we will share with folks. NPC accepted the recommendation on hiring on this call with no objections.

• Working Groups update (Sylvia)

Next we need people who stepped up to start meetings going. We need to get the first working groups up and running.

'Program/Culture'[ – in good shape and already meeting. Will- we are getting active participation both locally and nationally. We talked about objectives. And Culture and Program will have meetings together and separately.

Information and Technology (Tech)

Outreach WG- Sarita- I have been emailing with Tammy and we are trying to get a date set. We have to talk with communications soon for a save the date postcard. Quick update in DC as JWJ we did a debrief of WSF and Americas SF as a way to mobilize labor outreach work.

Logistics-has been meeting locally, need some national folks to join.

Communications- Byrce announced that they will have their first call this week. Spoke to Josue earlier today to coordinate.

Language Access- Still checking with folks at Highlander and TIGRA on Language Access.

Resource WG- Genaro we got 100k from Surdna for USSF, trying to set up a meeting for next week.

Evaluation Question- George: I am wondering when we want that evaluation to begin. Last time we acknowledged when it should start. Theoretically we could use first face to face meeting in Detroit. Look out for an email on this.

People in C-Team are willing to help get working groups meeting. By end of month all working groups should have met at least once.

To see notes of all the meetings happening locally and nationally a Wiki has been set up and updated. wiki.ussf2010.org

Anchors met on Tuesday and put out a “Call to All” in Detroit to have a meeting on May 26th at 5pm. We have asked all local committees to come together in Detroit to get an assessment on where things are at.

• Dates for next NPC face-to-face meeting (Rocio)

Rocio- I think another date needs to be proposed in August for the next face to face. Response was low and could not find a date that has critical mass.  ::CW made proposal to have the meeting as soon as possible with enough time to prep. And follow the criteria which is to ensure that all anchors can meet, active NPC members are present, and we thought it was important to consider the invitation to NPC to attend all or parts of the Allied Media Conference (7/16-7/19) to be able to build with them and help mobilize towards the USSF. To meet the criteria the proposed amended date is to start on July 19 at 3pm- July 21st. If not it has to be either 1st or 3rd weekend in August. Also we should re-look at June 26-28 as a possibility and send out new meeting wizard with new dates including an August date. Rocio will re-send meeting dates we need response from everyone to pick date by the end of the week!

Potential Dates for next face to face meeting in Detroit

Friday, June 26, 9 am- Sunday, June 28, 12pm

Sunday, July 19, 3pm- Tuesday, July 21, 3pm

Friday, July 31, 9 am- Sunday, August 2, 12 pm

• Inactive NPC members call follow-up (Danielle/Maureen/George)

POWER will be rejoining the rep will be Alicia Garza. St. Peters ready to rejoin. PODER will also be coming back on. Great! Sister Song can’t come back on as well as Women Watch Afrika can’t rejoin. Genaro had a conversation with SWOP yesterday- they are having a meeting to decide soon if they are coming back on or not. All new emails and reps should be sent to this committee and Josue to add or remove from the NPC list-serve.

• Int'l Council report (Cindy)

I’ll send out notes and a summary by the end of the week. Definitely in the face to face meeting we need a substantial space to discuss this. International Council (IC) met in Morocco May 6-9, Cindy was there, repping GGJ and Jen Cox was there repping PPEHRC. They did a thorough evaluation of Belem, next WSF will be in Dakar, Senegal 2011. From 2009-2010 there are 18-20 forums happening: hemispherically, nationally, thematically, etc. Lots of discussion on all of the crises-ecological, economic, cultural etc. and also a lot of discussion on building a common thread that builds to WSF 2011- maybe a common slogan- another solution is possible to the crisis from the people etc. Lots of urgency on solutions coming from people’s movements. They want all forums to dedicate a day of around the response to the crises and that there also an international connection/solidarity. The IC was excited about USSF II. Adhoc committee was set up to make the connection between the USSF and WSF in Senegal- connection of African Diaspora, also the Middle East/ North African forum, and Arab community in Detroit and Indigenous forum next March and Migrant workers forum next year- the IC wants to make a proposal to the NPC to figure out a day that’s dedicated to an international response to the crisis. Next IC meeting in Quebec in October they will do special invitation to NPC to send a delegation- Oct. 8-12, 2009 is the Quebec Social Forum and the IC meeting will be Oct 6-8 2009.

• Budget report

Genaro- don’t have an additional update. We need some local folks on Resource team.

• Next NPC call: Tuesday, June 16, 3pm EST/2pm Central/1 pm Mountain/12pm PST

Additional Note: Thanks to Danielle for taking notes and Jerome for facilitating! Reminder for any NPC working group having a meeting please send out call agendas with date/time to the NPC list-serve so folks who are interested can join the calls. We also have a new and improved Free Conference call number. The other number we have been using will no longer work as of the end of the month. The new service needs one person to punch the Host Access Code and up to 1000 people can be on the call, and no reservations are needed. There were no echos or people getting cut off on this service, so folks should feel free to use it.

Dial-in number: (712) 432-0075

Participant access code: 388105

Host access code: 564471