Agenda:
- - Roll Call
- - Report back from staff meeting (organizational chart, what we NEED) (adrienne/sylvia)
- - Checking in on NPC Volunteer commitments. Will go through NPC orgs by name for an update on volunteer commitments. (adrienne/ife)
- - Outreach Update (b/cindy)
- - Logistics Q+A - what questions or concerns do y'all have? (maureen)
- - Important dates coming up (including Evaluation meeting in the fall!) (adrienne/sylvia/ife)
- - Zionist Workshop (possibly) (sara and flo)
- - Smear Media (adele)
http://ussfdetroit.org/lastnpccall-
Last Call!
Adrienne, Ruckus Brooke, Jubilee Adele, Comms Walda, LRNA Cindy, GGJ Jamala, FRSO Terry, WILFPF Flo, IJAN Mezna, USPCN Jerome, LRNA Emily, SEN Rishi, Leftist Lounge Marisa, RTTC Tom, IEN Jen, PPEHRC Darryl, AFSC Louis, SWOP Jackie, S w/o B Kali, USHRN Mary, WILFPF Maria, CJJC Derek, People's Institute George, IPPN Michael, GGJ Sara, IJAN Eddie, AFL-CIO Treston, JwJ Genaro, SWOP
- Roll Call
- Report back from staff meeting (organizational chart, what we NEED) (adrienne/sylvia) had a wonderful and successful staff meeting at Adrienne's housse. went through organizational chart. will send out soon so that everyone will have the full chart. Lays out who is the point person for what. Reviewd major 'to dos'. one is NPC volunteer commitments. Calls were made to almost all the organizations. To review:
- AFL-CIO - have 5-10
- AFSCME - left message
- Alternate Roots -
- AFSC - Darryl will fill out and send in now
- Amnesty International
- Just Cause - have been plugging in volunteers, but haven't written up summary.
- Center for Media Justice - left message
- Center for Social Justice
- CTWO - got commitments
- Centro Obrero - got commitments
- DLOC - got commitments
- EMEAC - got commitments
- FRSO - got commitments
- GGJ - got commitments
- IEN will email form in
- IPPN - George will not be able to come. not sure about others
- IJAN - got commitments
- JwJ - will follow up
- Jubilee got commitments
- Labor and strategy ctr got commitments
- labor heritage foundation
- LRNA got commitments
- Leftist got commitments
- MWRO got commitments
- MINH
- NDLON
- People's Institute for Survival and Beyond - working on it
- POWER -
- PPEHRC working on it
- Project south got commitments
- Refugee women's network
- Right to the City
- Ruckus got commitments
- Sociologist wout got commitments
- SEN got commitments for 13
- SWOP 40 people will get in on Friday
- Praxis
- USHRN 13 will plug them in
- UFPJ
- USPCN got commitments
- WILPF 8, working on more
- Women of color united - 10, will send in info
- Please email Ife directly. Need esp for info table. Opening day need march support and marshalls. will be doing daily updates highlighting areas of greatesst need for volunteers.
- - Outreach Update (b/cindy)
Crossed the 10k mark! This doesn't include the large delegations and caravans. Optimistic that we'll reach the 15k goal, but happy to be at 10k now. for big delegations, register and send one delegate to pick up registrations. Can do starting Tues. morning. Outreach will fold into volunteer efforts.
- - Logistics Q+A - what questions or concerns do y'all have? (maureen)
Caravan: What's most strategic place to land the caravan on Tues. There's a whole mapping area. Tammy is going to be the point person. Canopies: generators? there will be one generator for the stage. No others will be allowed for the small tents. So no power in the smaller tents. Any chance of plugging into power? Probably not. Running into lots of last minute additional costs, so NPC will have to be ambassadors for changes. Open space info - let Adrienne know about needs. Not using Hart Plaza on Sat. so this is space for congregating as well. Is there a list off actions? Yes, in the program book. P 77 or 76. There's an orientation guide book with all the key info. Can send to NPC. Volunteers will get a copy when they come to orientation.
- - Important dates coming up (including Evaluation meeting in the fall!) (adrienne/sylvia/ife)
- Sat June 19, NPC meeting 10-1:00. Getting NPC plugged in and getting up to speed.
- Sat 2-5 big volunteer orientation for NPC
- Sun 4pm ICT meeting
- Sun and Tues will do orientation for medical
- Monday and Tues. asking all NPC members to be avail.
- Will be doing 8:30 orientation for volunteers throughout the forum
- A third of NPC have responded to the doodle schedule thing for the follow up NPC meeting. Adrienne will resend. Please fill out.
- - Zionist Workshop cancellation (sara, mezna and flo)
- found out that there's a zionist workshop, received 2 open letters from a number of orgs, forwarded it around. Stand with Us is a Zionist propoganda org that has harassed Palestinian organizers. Trying to rebrand Isreal as the only gay frienldy place in Middle East.
- Proposal: Cancel workshop bc it doesn't represent the spirit of the USSF, and attempts to speak on behalk of queer Palestinians. will invite tensions, doesn't represent our values, also the reason it slipped through is because the group intentionally didn't show who they are.
- Program Working Group supports cancellation and puts on table how to deal with these kinds of issues in future.
- Q: clearly there are organizations that profess to be one way, but the reality is dif. in this case, are they looking to change people's mind, or are they trying to provoke a show down? Second, the issue of Israel and Palestine is complicated, so what is Zionist or anti-Zionist. Explanation would be helpful.
- good point - what is the response and measure? Political debate. What is the relationship to Zionist. this workshop sounds like there are some racist principles involved. so not in line with SF principles.
- Q: is it possible to collaborate with an Arab group to ensure that there's not a backlash?
- no, this is like the KKK slipping a workshop through, on a security level we would ask for a collaboration in that case
- Q: what's the policy for canceling workshops?
Q: has there been any communication with this organization? Need to be careful about drawing parallels with KKK. Need to not appear anti-semitic. - zionist movement has long used these kinds of strategies - pinkwashing. To take it out of Palestinian. Eg: Tea party had a sub-org that pretended to rep rights of ethnic minorities and submitted a workshop rep these interests. - SWU probably will claim homophobia and censorship. USPCN and IJAN are concerned about giving forum.
- FYI - Call from State AFL in Michigan- over Thanksgiving he was contacted by Jewish orgs in Michigan with concerns about AFL's participation on NPC because they claimed there were anti-semitic groups on the NPC (IJAN and Palestinian Network) specifically named. I said then as a member of NPC there will be no form of discrimination. We refused to pull out of Social Forum and it's been dropped. I told them it was an open space for debate- why don't you contact organizations and talk before hand- we're not pulling out of the Social Forum because of this. I want to continue to move forward and not let the space to be taken over with people intent on undermining what we are about... So how do we do it- they are going to come anyway- so how do we handle it?
- New proposal: This is a big issue and we as the NPC we have not had a process of understanding what Zionism is-the NPC needs to understand what it means to take this position. It's not new- we did it in 2007, but we had a process. We created a mechanism for feedback and we did ask groups to reconsider their workshops. It's not outside of our process. Due to difference of opinion or levels of understanding- can we set aside 30-40 minutes of agenda to do an educational on Zionism. We did one on transgender and gender neutral bathrooms. We need to equip people with why NPC has taken particular positions. It needs to get decided on Saturday and in that discussion to prepare for the backlash. We need to be able to go through some process to not have certain orgs targeted. That's my proposal moving forward.
- discussion:
- - I think that makes sense and the reality is that not all of the NPC is going to be in agreement. Not all NPC groups are explicitly Anti-Zionist. Certain groups may not be ready to take that level of political risk due to their own constituencies etc. I don't want to fall in to a political trap of massive Zionist mobilizations at the Forum- we know there will be some regardless.
- - Is Sat enough time?
- - can we get feedback. There's facebook and twitter campaigns already happening on this issue
- - we have to be aware is that if this workshop is not canceled there are plans to disrupt the workshop- there will likely be people esp Queer Arabs and supporters. The long term repercussions is also the work of IJAN, Palestinian movement work if the NPC doesn't take a position. I won't be there Sat. We would look for local USPCN to be there for discussion but if we want to make a decision on Saturday there needs to be something that we can offer. I have received several forwards of people calling for protests and calls for its cancellation. If they are calling for cancellation- do we have a response?
- - No one has said that the workshop should not be cancelled- the question is how to do it and how to grow political unity
- - We are being asked to understand the positions of the 4 orgs that wrote the letter. no one has said we won't cancel - we just want to deal strategically with the reaction . We are asking that we wait til Saturday to make a decision.
- adrienne - I have 200 emails about this, and I am strongly in favor of canceling. It is not the case for everyone, but I am getting a lot of responses. At last NPC we stood and talked about what would we do if IJAN and USPCN was attacked, and we said we would stand in solidarity with them, and with other NPC groups. this is not coming just from outside orgs, but also from two of our NPC groups are calling for the cancellation of the workshop. The Program group who reviewed the workshop also supports it. Can we stop the backlash that is already coming to us from our allies -- can we at least announce the cancellation and use Saturday to strategize dealing with zionist backlash? (with the acknowledgement of the bias that I am being bombarded with communication on this issue right now.)
- Sara: Modification on proposal- we aren't asking the NPC to take an Anti-Zionist stance. This is a group that on grounds of racism contradicts those values. We can't feed into a Zionist strategy of dividing the movement, we cant afford to alienate Palestinians and undermine our own values; maybe we can take on drafting a very brief response- we are taking this seriously here is what we are doing to address it- responding to our allies that are most impacted is really important.
- - The letter could be stronger if there was more concrete evidence of what this group has engaged in- for political cover. Whatever hard evidence can be added to the letter would be helpful.
- - we need to find a way forward for strong queer Arab visibility in the opening so that we can turn the tide on this and make sure that we come out of this stronger. And contradicts their narrative.
- Any one opposed to modified proposal?
- no response. none opposed.
Abstension? no All in favor: work will go to IJAN and USPCN to draft where we are and that final decision will happen Saturday.
- - Thank you for bringing this up in the way that you did and to the communities that are being attacked-please don't take this as a signal that we are not standing in solidarity with you and we just need further discussion on best way forward.
- Smear Media (adele)
- AMB: This just up in last 24 hours - Channel 4 did awful piece on USSF on news.
- Adele: It isn't the first and won't be the last. this one in particular is a problem because it's the local press and they are perpetuating the stigma of Detroit. They made it look like it was outsiders coming in and Detroiters aren't involved. We need to hold press accountable and not bash something positive is coming to the city. I have a statement I'd like to draft in name of NPC. I'm forwarding it to the NPC list rightv now. If Anyone has a prob in next hour- let
Genaro- can you get stuff to our media contacts or if you need anything let us know.
- Oya: video is online and it's extremely disturbing. 100s of thousands coming to protest against Detroit. A statement isn't enough. They put out pure hatred. What else can we do? That report went out to close to 1M ppl in metroDetroit
- Adele: I agree- a statement isn't enough and any opportunity to challenge it and be on other outlets. First have convo with comms team. Because that press peope were talking too lon g and they were able to edit it to reframe. We need to make sure that people are talking with comms about good framing and concise clear sound bytes etc.
- Maria:DHS is assessing the risk which is a huge problem. Seems like we need to be really prepared to respond.
- Statement is first step.
- That is all for our last pre-forum call! See you Saturday!