Hi everyone,
The minutes from today's meetings are below. Please send me any
corrections/additions and I will post this to the website in a few days.
Thanks!
LPSF Meeting - 11 March 2017
Civic Center Library, 4th Floor Conference Room
Attendance:
Aubrey Freedman
Orest Bolohan
Jawj Greenwald
Rebecca Lau
Leonid Miretsky
Nick Smith
Activist Reports:
Orest: Talking with coworkers. Considering what it would be like if we
replaced elected positions (House, Senate, Etc) with random selection as
is done with Jury duty. Benefits: more individual representation; career
politicians are out of touch with what the people think. Discussing this
with coworkers is not met with understanding.
Jawj: Finished writing her spiritual autobiography for Egyptian
cat-goddess religion (Jawj is a minister / goddess). Shared her message
of freedom with this group. “You have to strike blows for freedom in any
way you can.”
(Jawj: please correct me if I am misrepresenting this!)
Rebecca: Not much activism, went to Jim Elwood’s meetup last week and
heard from some Nicaraguans who were forced off their land and cannot
return to the country.
Leo: Internet activism; debate in Facebook groups against Communists.
Nick: Joining into the conversation on Google’s free-speech mailing list
to keep the discussion civil and promote liberty.
Aubrey: Working on planning the panel discussion, newsletter and digging
through some IRS forms.
Tom Palmer is speaking at Berkeley on Tuesday, March 14. 4:30, UC
Berkeley Moffat Library rm 101. See the event information of Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/events/706160679583900/
You can attend the CA LP Annual convention in Santa Clara as long as you
are paid and have been a member for at least 90 days (or so).
Membership/Newsletter Report:
Still working on the newsletter, it will be coming out soon (articles
will follow on the website periodically). Lifetime members: 21,
dues-paying members: 26.
Treasurer’s Report:
Bank of America: $4,612.11
Paypal account: $744.53
Total balance: $5,356.64
Website Report:
Lowlights: There was some downtime after Nick spent too long working on
the website. Our quota was reached due to the increased traffic and the
website was inaccessible for about 5 days. Nick contacted SiteGround and
they restored access to the site on February 28 and raised our quota, so
hopefully this won’t be an issue again. Nick will monitor this so it
doesn’t happen again. Sorry!!
Highlights: Small visual refreshes; background image, menu layouts
cleaned up a bit, more usable calendar added, plus a “Next meeting”
notification right on the top of the page.
Change to Credit Union:
We want to move away from the big banks (we currently are a customer of
Bank of America) and support the local economy. There is some paperwork
involved. The main factor in our decision seems to be convenience. Jawj
would like for us to choose something a downtown branch so that she can
get to it easily. We are still waiting on an IRS letter for our Federal
ID number before we can open an account. We plan to have a decision on
which company to switch to or next meeting.
2017 4th Annual Panel Discussion (aka Tax Day):
Our topic will be “Sanctuary Cities”. Aubrey has been working to find
panellists\ for each side and is finding it very difficult to get
someone on the pro-side. To represent the opposition stance, we will
have Steve Frank. This will not be a debate, but will be a discussion--
however, the Republican group which Aubrey reached out felt they would
be ganged up on and don’t seem interested in participating. For the
pro-side, Aubrey considered Jeff Adachi, public defender in San
Francisco, but this was declined. We are also considering David Campos,
who has been vocally in support of Sanctuary Cities. The event should
take place in May at one of the smaller conference rooms in the main
library (Civic Center).