Hi All. Here are the minutes from the meeting last Saturday. Please
review them, and if I made any bloopers or left something out, please let
me know, and I'll revise them. Nick, if you could please post them in a
few days, that would be great.
Minutes for May 12, 2018 Meeting of the Libertarian Party of San Francisco
taken by Aubrey Freedman.
*Attendees*: Nick Smith (Chair), Rebecca Lau (Vice Chair), Jawj Greenwald
(Treasurer), Aubrey Freedman (Secretary), Phil Berg, Michael Denny,
Francoise Fielding, Jeronimo (guest), Ali Sarsak (guest), Starchild, and
Bogdan Zavgalov (guest).
*Introductions:* Bogdan hails from Russia and talked about an active
Libertarian Party of Russia, though not officially recognized. He said
nobody trusts the government in Russia. There was a protest recently
against government control of the internet by a coalition of groups, and
12,000 people attended the rally. Ali served in the US Army as an
infantryman in Iraq. He also served as a recruiter for the armed services
and often discouraged young men from enlisting by telling them about the
hardship of being in the military. He was introduced to libertarianism by
Dr. Ron Paul. He is currently running for State Senator against two-time
incumbent Bob Wieckowski in the 10th District, which covers Santa Clara,
Hayward, Milpitas, and Castro Valley.
*Chair’s Report:* Nick reported the expected bad news that the Top Two
signature drive ended poorly with only 118 signatures from San Francisco
County. The initiative did not qualify for the November ballot, but Tom
Palzer (the organizer) said he may file again to repeal the Top Two in 2020..
Nick said the campaign was poorly organized and without funding to get paid
circulators. Nick attended the state convention 2 weeks ago, but since
several of us were there too, he saw no reason to give a report on it. He
mentioned the national convention is coming up in early July in New Orleans..
Nick got the disc from the Department of Elections of all the registered
voters in The City and used it to gleam the names of all the currently
registered Libertarians (about 2,800). He designed a postcard with our
ballot measure recommendations on 9 local measures and 1 regional measure
and just mailed it off a few days ago to 2,678 registered Libertarians
using Click2Mail. He was only going to send it to 2,500 voters, but for
the small amount of extra cost involved, it wasn’t worth it to try and
filter it down to 2,500, so he sent it to everyone, excluding the core
activists and duplicate addresses. The cost was $1,065.96. There is
another gun show at the Cow Palace next month, and it would have been good
for the LPSF to have a table there again, but the date conflicts with our
monthly meeting, so it’s not going to happen this time. Nick also reported
that folks can now sign up for the Yahoo groups Discuss List and Announce
List from our website. He also has signs for the Tim Ferreira for
Lieutenant Governor campaign if anyone wants them.
*Vice Chair’s Report:* Rebecca was elected At Large member of the LPCA
Executive Committee at the state convention 2 weeks ago. She will have to
miss the next meeting because she has to attend the LPCA Excomm meeting in
Stockton. She is attending a liberty conference in Austin next week on the
futuristic use of technology. She attended a blockchain event that she was
invited to, which includes Bitcoin startups. Report on Tax Day panel
discussion later in the meeting.
*Treasurer’s Report: * Jawj reported that we have $5,167.51 in the credit
union and $1,706.71 in PayPal for a total of $6,874.22. Committed funds
are $1,065.96 for the postcard mailing (less $20.00 from the Zoltan event
last month) and $160.00 for the Pride booth for an adjusted cash balance of
$5,668.26.
*Secretary’s Report:* Aubrey reported that membership is up by one member
from last month with 21 lifetime members and 27 regular, currently paid-up
members, for a total of 48. Two new members suddenly appeared on the Neon
state membership listing, and one member who goes back and forth between
California and New York dropped off. He again noted that the party is
offering two-year memberships now, and more members are choosing that
option. There was a commotion at the state convention about discontinuing
the additional tier options for membership, and that passed and then was
amended to allow the two-year memberships to continue.
*Newsletter Report:* Aubrey reported that the May newsletter was just
finished and includes two articles he wrote and the one that Nick wrote
regarding the Wildstar and Zoltan endorsements by the LPCA. It will be
sent out from the website with Mailchimp. Last month it went out to about
365 subscribers, but Nick is going to include many of the email addresses
from the Department of Elections listing, and Rebecca picked up about 20
new email addresses from the Zoltan event, so it should go out to at least
500 people this time. Nick said we will still be paying no charge since
Mailchimp allows for free up to 2,000 subscribers. Starchild is going to
write another article for this newsletter and website, and the newsletter
will be going out this coming Friday.
*Outreach Report:* Starchild has been busy working on the Wildstar
campaign. He did an interview with KPOO radio regarding propositions A, C,
and G (the LPSF is the official opponent in the Voters Handbook). He also
argued against Prop E at a League of Women voters-sponsored debate with
Lawrence Chung arguing for the ban of flavored cigarettes. It was taped
and is up on YouTube, but so far there have only been 16 views. He also
went to a Green Party meeting and was surprised to find Angela Alioto in
attendance. Apparently she’s trying to make friends with the Greens, and
there’s been talk of her excluding criminals from San Francisco’s Sanctuary
City policy, which she is credited with writing.
*Tax Day Panel Discussion:* Rebecca has taken over the planning of this
event, which has now been finalized. It will be held on Thursday, June 21
at the Mechanic’s Institute Meeting Room at 57 Post Street near the
Montgomery Street station from 5:30-8:30 PM. The panelists will be Vicki
Alger from the Independent Institute; Carol Kocivar, a past President of
the California State PTA; and Michael Strong who founded the Academy of
Thought and Industry. Rebecca was a teacher in the past, and she felt an
actual teacher was critical for this school choice panel, so that’s why she
invited Michael Strong. She invited her friend Allen Saakyan to be the
moderator, and he leans libertarian-ish, she believes. He has done a lot
of interviewing and posts his interviews on YouTube and has agreed to tape
our panel discussion professionally for free. His company is Simulation
and has 1,700 subscribers right now. Rebecca needs questions for the panel
to be submitted to Allen and she requested volunteers for check-in and
clean-up. (Aubrey volunteered.) It will be a sliding scale event
charging from zero to $10 for donations, and Rebecca reported that 7
tickets have been sold and $45 collected towards the $300 venue cost.
Promotion
has started, and we will try to get an education reporter there and also
homeschooling groups. Aubrey met Carol before, and he is sure that she
will bring some of her PTA parent colleagues. Jawj mentioned that she has
a membership with the Mechanic’s Institute, so we may be able to take
advantage of her discount when we pay for the use of the meeting room.
*Pride 2018*: Aubrey reported that almost everything has been arranged for
our booth at the Pride Fair next month June 23-24. For the first time we
will be there under our own name, not Outright Libertarians. He had to
register for Pride as a new organization, and it pained him to have to
choose the category “Social Club” because none of the other categories fit
our organization, and we are not a Non-Profit. Starchild had a
conversation with Mike Shipley about the court case about the baker
refusing to bake a cake for a gay couple, and he said Mike is with us in
opposing the government forcing a private business to serve a client it
chooses not to serve, but Outright prefers not to highlight that case and
make it seem like Outright is siding with bigots, and that’s why it has
remained silent on the issue. He said anyone can call Mike to discuss it
and gave us Mike’s phone numbers. Aubrey reported that the booth has been
paid for at $160 (we did not get the $20 discount that we got as a local
non-profit under Outright’s name), but on the other hand he has
communicated with Jill Pyeatt who handles the LPCA’s insurance, and it
looks likely that we can use LPCA’s insurance policy as an affiliate and
then we don’t have to get our own separate insurance policy for $65, so the
net savings will be $45 this year. We have plenty of literature and enough
of the pink brochures (written by our own Michael Acree) to carry us
through another Pride celebration. We need volunteers for staffing the
booth, and Jawj volunteered for 3 hours during the busiest hours on Sunday,
the day of the parade. Nick inquired if we need a new banner, but we just
got a new one a few years ago, and it’s in good condition, though it’s in
Outright’s name, not ours. Aubrey mentioned a button-making party before
Pride as a possible activity (he still has the button-making machine), as
we did that a few years ago, and it was fun, and we did get some buttons
made for Pride. We definitely want buttons with liberty messages on them,
not just happy faces and non-political messages.
*Activist Reports:* Aubrey presented against Prop A (revenue bonds) at the
general meeting of the Coalition of San Francisco Neighborhoods. He was
prepared to also cover Prop F (city-funded legal defense for tenants), but
Charley from the SF Apartment Association presented against that one. Aubrey
also spoke against several measures for the Log Cabin Republicans, but he
didn’t need to do much work since those in attendance were pretty much
opposed to most of the measures anyway. He could have used Starchild’s
help with Prop H and was not well prepared for that one as they had only
mentioned props A, C, and G in the invitation to present. Nick passed out
brochures on Tax Day at the BART station at Powell with Oleg from LPSM. They
did get a fair number of thumbs up, but he said maybe we can be more
effective next year on Tax Day with earlier planning. Jawj worked the JSA
Convention in Burlingame with Lawrence Samuels from Monterey County. She
reported that the kids were sweet, clean, and fresh-faced, and there was
more than enough help at the LP table, and had she known that there was
already enough help, she would have attended another liberty event that day..
She reported that there were no other political parties attending the JSA
convention, only tabling on particular issues, and the LP table had the
most visitors. Mike Denny reported that he and Starchild attended a
candidate forum for mayor today hosted by a schooling group at a church in
the Bayview, but it was horribly disorganized and started more than 90
minutes late, and they didn’t even introduce some of the candidates who
attended. Starchild said the parents were more interested in complaining
than looking for non-governmental solutions to the problem of inferior
government schools. Starchild was contacted by Laura Waxmann, an Examiner
reporter, during the state convention, regarding the LPSF’s arguments
against Prop G (parcel tax for government teachers), and both he and Aubrey
spoke to Laura on the phone listing all the reasons the tax was a bad idea,
and Laura published all the comments in her article, which unfortunately
was still biased in favor of the tax. Starchild also called in to
KALW-City Visions regarding agricultural issues and salinization to
challenge the usual climate change rhetoric and also defend
capitalism. Starchild
spoke with Adam Kokesh (running for President in 2020 under the LP banner)
regarding national LP party issues like the Arvin Vohra censure controversy
and noted that Nickolas Wildstar, one of the Libertarian candidates for
Governor, was recently acquitted in his trial for resisting arrest while
being racially profiled. Finally, Starchild wrote an Op-Ed against Prop E
in a futuristic vein complete with forcing everybody to have chips
installed and Department of Health checkpoints.
*Prop E (Ban on Flavored Cigarettes):* Starchild has been working with the
No on E campaign for months, and the campaign offered to help pay for a
mailing to all registered Libertarians in The City, with an emphasis on the
E issue. There was some discussion if this was worthwhile since the
postcard with our local ballot measure recommendations just got mailed to
all the registered Libertarians in The City. There was also some objection
to have a mailing from us saying paid by RJ Reynolds since it would look
like we are opposing E for monetary reasons and could be bought off (we
oppose the ban for philosophical reasons). In the end, Starchild got
Ignacio from the campaign on the phone and explained the situation to him,
and Ignacio agreed that it didn’t make sense to do another mailing from us,
regardless of who paid for it. But he was gracious and thanked us for our
opposition to the ban and mentioned that he’s looking for someone
associated with law enforcement who might lend his name to a quote against
E on TV.
*Endorsement of Ali Sarsak for District 10 State Senator:* A few questions
were posed to Ali to “vet” him for our endorsement. He was asked if he had
any major disagreements with the Libertarian Party’s platform, and he
answered that he does not agree with the open borders policy (one reason
noted that if too many people come to the US, how will that help the
situation in their home countries?). Starchild also asked him if he would
distinguish between his view and the party’s stance on this issue during
his campaign; he said he didn’t want to be cornered into a position on any
issue. The vote was 3 in favor of endorsement and 2 opposed. Nick checked
the by-laws, and the majority meets the requirements. Ali was endorsed by
the LPSF.
*Parting Points:* Starchild mentioned that for future elections, and
particularly the November election coming up later this year, he would like
the LPSF to host candidate forums and invite candidates so the LPSF can
evaluate candidates running for office and perform a public service by
advising the public of any candidates that are liberty-leaning or at least
less “bad” than other candidates. Rebecca noted that she is planning a
convention for San Francisco County for all the L/libertarians here. She
was thinking about having it in the Latino/Hispanic Room in the Main
Library in January, but the room is already pegged for another group.
*Announcements:*
May 19 (Saturday) *Mises Institute Seminar on the Future of Money*
8:30 AM – noon – J.W. Marriott Union Square at 515 Mason Street
https://mises.org/events/san-francisco-seminar-future-money
May 22 (Tuesday) *Going Public: Is Scaling Innovation in Government Really
Achievable?*
Hosted by the Lincoln Network
6:30 PM – 8:30 PM - AirBnB HQ at 888 Brannan Street
http://joinlincoln.org/events/2018/scaling-government-innovation
June 21 (Thursday) *LPSF 5th Annual Panel Discussion: School Choice*
5:30 PM – 8:30 PM - Mechanic’s Institute Library – 4th Floor Meeting Room
at 57 Post Street
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/libertarian-party-of-san-francisco-panel-on-school-choice-tickets-45840207294
Thanks!
Aubrey