Hi All. Here are the minutes from the last meeting. If I left anything important out or got anything wrong, please let me know. Otherwise, Marcy, can you please post these to the website in a few days?
Minutes written by Aubrey FreedmanLibertarian Party of San FranciscoMinutesfor Monthly Meeting at the San Francisco Public Library on Saturday, October 10,2015 Attendees: Phil Berg, Marcy Berry(Vice Chair), Aubrey Freedman (Chair), Cliff Nelson (guest), Ryan Porte(guest), Starchild, and Jason Williams.Activist Reports: Marcy had an extremely busy month getting the Libertarianviewpoint out there. She presented theLibertarian arguments against props B and K at a League of Women Voters’taping, which will be featured at sfgov.tv. She also attended an anti-Plan Bay Area coalition meeting and also theGGLR monthly meeting last month. Shepresented our argument against Prop K at the Older Women’s League meeting,which went well, and also presented our ballot measure arguments at the LogCabin meeting last month. She alsoattended a neighborhood watch meeting on the Westside where residents were veryupset about a lot of recent break-ins. Lastly she tabled at the “No on I” booth at the Castro Fair the previousweekend and noted that most folks who stopped to talk were opposed to themoratorium measure. Aubrey sent out themonthly newsletter last month and also tabled at the “No on I” booth. Phil posted comments on Zero Hedge. Announcements:
- Monday, October 19-7:00-9:00PM-Golden Gate Liberty Revolution-Monthly Meeting-Moksha Life Center-405Sansome Street.
- Saturday/Sunday, October24/25-Code of the West Gun Show-San Jose-tabling with Santa Clara LP (Aubreyindicated he may attend and indicated that others can get a ride with him, ifinterested).
- Saturday, November 7-7:00-11:00 PM-Free Exchange-Jim Elwood’s in Parkmerced.
- Saturday, November 14-JSA Convention-Santa Clara Marriott Hotel-2700 Mission College Blvd (Aubrey indicated this conflicts with our November meeting, so he will not attend this time).
- Young Americans for Liberty(YAL)-1600 Holloway Avenue (at 19 th)-SF State University-StudentGroup Meetings every Thursday at noon in the Cesar Chavez Student Center/RosaParks Room-Outreach Tablings every Tuesday at noon in the Malcolm X Plaza(outside Cesar Chavez Student Center (Starchild noted that he’s not sure YAL isactive at SFSU anymore since Nikko has graduated, so this announcement will notbe listed anymore).
Membership/NewsletterReport: Aubrey reported that membership is up by 1 to40 (22 lifetime members and 18 current paid up annual members). He finally complained to Ted Brown (StateChair) about the state membership records being in a shambles with no updatesto the records for months. He reported sendingthe September newsletter to 177 people last month with 1 “Unsubscribe” request(the person moved to the East Bay), no new “Subscribe” requests, 1 bounce, and morecomments than usual this time due to his article about sanctuary cities. Website Report: Marcy reported that theupgrade to a more current version of Joomla went well with no down time, andshe is happy with the results. SinceJoomla was no longer supporting the old version we were on, she felt the $500spent was well worth it, with our website sporting a new look and it being moremobile-friendly than the previous version. She said our website is too big for an automatic back-up. There was a request to add the feature forfolks who come to our website to be able to post comments, but Marcy is afraidthat may open up our website to hacking and is opposed to the idea. Besides there are plenty of other avenues forfolks to post comments like the LPSF Discussion List and also the LPSFFacebook, and she encouraged, once again, that our members start postingcomments to these other avenues. Shenoted that the LPSF Facebook has 168 likes and needs more new postings.Treasurer’s Report: Les was working today, so Aubrey gave the report. The current book balance is quite high at themoment: $823.46 (in PayPal) + $2,828.72in the bank + another $2,000.00 in transit from PayPal to the bank + another$100 pledged for the election promotion not received yet = $5,752.18. However, so we don’t get carried away likegovernment in good times, he noted that several committed disbursements need tobe considered: $500.00 to Marcy for payingthe consultant who did a great job on the website migration + $476.93 to bereimbursed to Aubrey for the post card mailing + $150.00 for the annual mailbox rental = $1,126.93. He also remindedthe group that we have a book balance floor of $2,000.00 (must always keep atleast that much cash on hand), and he suggested that we save another $1,500.00for next year’s events like Pride and Tax Day. That would leave $1,125.25 to work with right now for additionalactivity for the upcoming election. November Election Promotion: We discussed how best to publicize the LPSF positions on theballot measures. The best options wererunning ads in El Reportero, Golden Gate Xpress (SFSU school newspaper), andGuardian (CCSF school newspaper). Starchild called Marvin Ramirez, the editor of El Reportero, anddiscussed running the ad containing Starchild’s postcard with ourrecommendations, but Marvin did not agree with our position on Prop I(Moratorium in the Mission) because he is part of his community and hiscommunity wants the moratorium, so he was not keen to accept our ad. Starchild will try to meet with Marvin to gethim to change his mind, but that appeared unlikely. We agreed to run the LPSF postcard as an adin the Golden Gate Xpress for $220.50 for a quarter page and run an ad in theGuardian for $150.00 for a quarter page. We discussed if we should run the ads sooner or later, what with so manyvoting early these days with mail-in ballots; the consensus was that it is better to run them sooner since early voting has already begun and it makessense to catch as many folks as possible before they vote. It was agreed that Marcy will run an ad inFacebook for $100.00 advertising our ballot recommendations. Starchild requested a budget of $140.00 forcopies of the postcard to put out in public places like coffee shops and stores,which was approved. He will put sometype of cartoon on the back of the postcard to catch folks’ attention. Aubrey discussed sending out a secondpostcard mailing to reach additional registered Libertarians (first mailing wasonly sent to those who voted a year ago). He sorted the Department of Elections listing seeking out more high-propensityvoters and found that the next biggest chunk of voters is about 1,000registered Libertarians who voted in the November 2012 Presidential election(apparently a lot of Libertarians, just like regular folks, only vote during aPresidential election). He estimates thecost will be about $500. Ballot Measure Arguments Policy: Ran out of time, so this item will be discussed at a latermeeting. Cliff Nelson: Cliff presented his idea on forming aseparate country or region with no government. One way to accomplish this would be through fundraising by offering acurrent government (with solvency problems—not too hard to find these days) a large sumof money for a sovereign piece of land. Some of our members mentioned that there have already been several projectsin motion trying out this concept like Free Cities in Honduras and the Kingdomof Tonga. They suggested that he try tohook up with one or more of these groups so as not to try and reinvent thewheel.
Thanks!Aubrey