Hi All! Here are the minutes, finally, from the last meeting. Please review them and advise if I made any bloopers or left anything important out. Otherwise Marcy will post them to the website in a few days.
Minutes written by Aubrey Freedman
Libertarian Party of San Francisco
Minutes
for Monthly Meeting at the San Francisco Public Library on Saturday, May 10,
2014
Attendees: Phil Berg, Marcy Berry
(Vice Chair), Michael Denny, Francoise Fielding, Aubrey Freedman (Chair), Dan
Pickell, Starchild, and William Earen.
Activist Reports: Marcy helped out at the Prop 13 Tax Symposium by printing up
program guides and attending the event; she also attended a GGLR meeting. Phil objected to a Second Amendment comment
at a meeting he attended; he called the speaker on citing “facts” that
offensive use of firearms occurs four times more often than their defensive use. Starchild attended a taping of the League of
Women Voters for the June elections and presented the LPSF case against Prop A
(bond for earthquake safety and preparedness) and also attended an LP National Party
Platform Committee meeting in Indianapolis to ensure that the Libertarian
message is kept radical enough and not watered down with marketing. He also attended a meeting of the Rothbard
Circle and reported there were about a dozen attendees. Michael Denny has been trying to work on a
business deal with “screaming Libertarians.” Aubrey has been working on the John Dennis campaign for Congress by
precinct walking.
Announcements:
* Tuesday, May 20, 2014-7-9 PM-Monthly meeting of Golden Gate Liberty Revolution at Moksha Life Center-405 Sansome Street. (Aubrey noted that the meetings have been moved to Tuesdays from Mondays.)
* Wednesday, June 4, 2014-12:30-3:00 PM-ABAG PCA Meeting-Joseph Bort MetroCenter Auditorium-101 Eighth Street, Oakland
* Thursday, June 5-Restore The Fourth will present the “Shame on Feinstein” letter to Diane Feinstein.
* Saturday, June 7, 2014-6-11 PM-Monthly social of Free Exchange at Jim Elwood’s in Parkmerced. (Aubrey noted that most of the socials are now starting at 6 PM rather than 7PM).
Membership Report: Aubrey reported that membership was flat—17 regular paid-up and
current members and 22 lifetime members for a total of 39 members. He said that he will soon get a new updated
diskette from the Department of Elections and send out membership letters to
newly registered Libertarians.
Website Report: Marcy has put up on the
website a webpage especially for the upcoming June election. The LPSF recommendations on both the local
and state propositions are listed and described briefly. She updated us with the latest numbers of
active subscribers to our lists: LPSF
Facebook-151 (pretty good number for us); Activist List-34 (quite low); Announce
List-121; Meet-up-235; and Discussion List-103.
Prop 13 Tax Symposium 2014 & Tax Day Event for 2015: Attendance was disappointingly low (14.5 attendees), but the
panelists and audience members were all engrossed in the discussion and the
time did not lag. Starchild was the MC
and our panelists were Laura Wells, the Green Party candidate for State
Controller, and Trish Cypher, a knowledgeable expert on Plan Bay Area and
regional government. There was a newly
acquired respect for the Green Party due to strong opposition to bonds voiced
by Laura and one of her Green colleagues. One regret that was noted was that we did not tape the event and make a
YouTube out of it. We will make it a
point to tape next year’s event. Jawj
has volunteered to spearhead that project, and we plan that to be an indoor
speaking event with hopefully a major speaker who will attract a larger
audience. Starchild still wants to do an
outdoor event in a park, which will attract more of the general population, and
he is in charge of that project.
Pride 2014: The event is on for the week-end of June 28 & 29. Helpers are still needed to man our booth,
even for short shifts. Francoise has
graciously offered to host a button-making party on Election Night, June 3 at 6:30
PM. Aubrey will have our usual variety
of LP brochures on display at our booth. Starchild mentioned the very good but pricey pro-freedom brochure put
out by the Heritage Foundation, and Aubrey said he will try to purchase a small
quantity to add interest to our booth. Dan mentioned that the Pink Pistols will again be marching in the parade
and will need safety monitors to take the training, even if they can’t participate
in the parade. There was also a mention
of possibly getting Terry Floyd from the East Bay LP to join us at Pride and
bring his Bitcoin ATM machine, which would be a nice gimmick for us this year.
June Election: There was a brief discussion about whether we should recommend any other
candidates for the upcoming election other than the Libertarian candidate for
Attorney General (Jonathan Jaech) or John Dennis (Ron Paul Republican running
against Nancy Pelosi). The general
consensus was that the LPSF is best not backing any candidates that are not
primarily libertarian. The backfiring
that resulted from past LPSF support of Ed Jew was cited as a good reason to
steer clear of non-libertarians.
WALL Speaker Sponsorship: The coalition of WALL, the LPSF, and GGLR
invited Ron Paul to speak at the bi-annual meeting of WALL, but since Ron Paul
has not responded to the invitation, WALL is now inviting Dennis Kucinich to be
the speaker. The LPSF will not be
bearing any costs to have Kucinich as the speaker but has offered to help
publicize the event for WALL.
Treasurer’s Report/Budget/$2K Motion: In Les’ absence due to recent surgery, Marcy
reported the balance as $2,928.41. Aubrey reported that he has not submitted the Pride expenses yet
(budgeted and collected from donations of $400), so our coffers will be
$2,528.41 after Pride. He presented a
rough budget of annual revenues and expenses: Revenues of $225 (memberships) + $663 (donations) = $888. Expenses of $30 (website back-up) + $98
(website hosting & domain) + $240 (mail box) + $153 (voice mail) + $50 (Meet-up)
+ $200 (brochures/literature) + $250 (emergency for “rainy day”) = $1,021. It was noted that we expect the mail box cost
to drop since Aubrey will find another mail box that is more convenient to
access and cheaper after the current mail box expires in October. But it was also noted that the donations
revenue is based on PayPal monthly donations that can stop at any time (and
most of it is from one large donor), so that $663 figure is iffy. Marcy’s motion from last month’s meeting was
that we not allow our book balance (less any earmarked projects) to ever drop
below $2,000, but anything above that amount would be available to use on
outreach activities as authorized by the LPSF. Starchild felt that $1,500 was a more reasonable figure, and we should
not be sitting on a large amount of money when we could be using more of it to
promote freedom. A vote on Marcy’s
motion was shelved until the next meeting when more members are present to vote
on it.
Gun Show September 13 & 14: Aubrey suggested that the LPSF have a table
at the September gun show since the gun crowd is receptive to the Libertarian
message, the table we had at last year’s gun show was successful as a joint
effort with the GGLR, and it’s been a year since we had our own table
there. William mentioned that the GGLR
is always fund raising when it does outreach and the LPSF should get in the
habit of asking for donations during outreach efforts. There was no opposition to the proposal of
the LPSF having a table at the September gun show (again as a joint effort but
this time it will be 2 tables with the GGLR, 1 table with the LPSF, and 1 table
with the John Birch Society—all next to each other). However we decided that
Aubrey will put out a call for donations for the gun show, but since our book
balance (less Pride’s $400 budget) is well above $2K and the cost of the table
is only $110, the LPSF will definitely participate in the gun show in
September.
Thanks!
Aubrey