Monroe County Green Party Organizational Meeting - August 8, 2000 Place: Monroe County Public Library Meeting Room 1B Bloomington, Indiana Time: 7:00pm - 9:00pm Attendance: Heather Drake, Peter Drake, George Brooks, Spencer Mahoney, Ken Rogers, Jeff Melton, Bob Foyut, Danna D'Esopo Jackson, Adam Lederer, Jay Mersch, Karmyn Guthrie, Joseph Osborne, Paul Colbert, Michael Berndt Facilitator: Peter Drake Scribe: Heather Drake The meeting began at 7:10pm with a round of introductions and a review of the planned agenda. * Meeting Style: Consensus? Peter gave a brief explanation of consensus. The group agreed that this would be a good style for conducting our business provided that: A) Speakers try to keep their comments brief and to the point and avoid repetition. B) Speakers are not cut off unless the facilitator senses that the group as a whole believes the speaker has strayed from the topic. If this is the case, the facilitator will give the speaker a gentle nudge to return to the topic at hand. C) Members respect speakers by not engaging in side talk. D) If consensus becomes too cumbersome, or if sabotage becomes a problem, we can revisit the issue of meeting style and change it to better suit our needs. * Meeting Frequency and Location The group agreed to hold regular meetings every two weeks. This frequency will foster active participation, but also give people time to work on the state campaign, committee projects, and other activities. As the Bloomington branch of the Monroe County Public Library permits only one meeting per group per month, the group decided to alternate our meeting location between the Bloomington and Ellettsville branches. The group strongly encouraged people to carpool to meetings. Carpool arrangements will be made informally via the email list. * Group Name Several potential group names were suggested: Bloomington Greens, Monroe County Greens, South Central Indiana Greens, Southern Indiana Greens, Monroe County Green Party. There was also a suggestion that we name the group after a prominent local geographic feature. After discussion, the group concluded that Monroe County Green Party was the best choice for several reasons. Organization at the county-level will allow our group to include people who live outside of Bloomington. Additionally, as the other political parties organize at the county level, it makes sense for us to follow suit. The inclusion of the word Party in the group name will make it easy for people to recognize that we are a political party. And, again, the name format also follows the tradition established by the other political parties (i.e. Libertarian Party). * Coordinators Several key coordinator positions were discussed and volunteers agreed to serve. A) Facilitator. This person reserves the meeting room, prepares a tentative agenda to submit to the email list before the meeting, and leads the meeting. As many people were interested in serving as facilitator, it was decided that the position would rotate. At the end of each meeting, another member will volunteer to lead the next meeting. Ken volunteered to serve as Facilitator for the next meeting. B) Scribe. This person takes notes at the meetings, prepares the minutes, and posts them to the email list. For the moment, this person will also keep the membership list. That portion of the job may be split off in future. Heather volunteered to serve as Scribe. This position, too, may rotate in the future. C) Media Contact. This person will help prepare press releases, notify the media of meetings and other events. Since multiple people volunteered to serve in this position, the group considered making the position rotate. It was concluded that this might be too confusing so one person will serve as the contact. The Media Contact will not have to create all the information for the media, but they will assist group members with proofreading, submission, etc. Jeff volunteered to serve as Media Contact. D) Legal Coordinator. This person will look into the legal requirements of the group becoming an official party and/or non-profit. In future, they may investigate candidacy issues as well. Paul volunteered to serve as Legal Coordinator. Several other members volunteered to help him as needed. A brief discussion of our eGroups web page and list followed. The group concluded that although the btowningreens web page has nice features, it is not the best "store front" for our group. The position of Web Coordinator was created to address the task of creating a better web page for the group. E) Web Coordinator. This person will investigate hosting possibilities. Ideally, we would like a host that is free and contains no advertising. This person will also construct a first draft of the web page(s). Jay and Joseph volunteered to serve as Web Coordinators. They will investigate the hosting issue and make a report at the next meeting. As they make progress before the next meeting, they will send updates to the email list. F) Email Coordinator. Peter will continue to manage the eGroups email list. Since many people already have his contact information, it will be easier for him to field requests from people who want to be added to the list rather than forwarding them on to someone else. Peter volunteered to serve as Email Coordinator. In the future, we will add other coordinators. Suggestions included: A) Campus Coordinator to lead outreach efforts among students at IU B) Community Coordinator to lead outreach efforts to other community groups C) Elections Coordinator to lead the work of finding and running local Green candidates in future elections * State Issues Ken provided a brief summary of the progress made at the Saturday, August 5, meeting of the Indiana Greens Campaign Committee. It was their second meeting. Turn-out for the meeting was light. The members present decided that it was important to begin work rather than waiting for the right number of people to get involved in the work. People who attend the next meeting, scheduled for August 19 in Kokomo, will get on with decision-making regardless of the attendance level. The minutes of the August 19 meeting will be submitted to the email list by Julie Crowe in the near future. Ken then asked for volunteers for the state committees. As an example, Mike, who is working on the Voter Registration committee, discussed their plans. They plan to organize an Indiana petition drive to get Nader in the national television debates. In conjunction with collecting signatures, new voters can be registered. Although he did not have petition information at the meeting, he will send it to the email list as soon as possible. Discussion then turned briefly to other things we could do locally to increase visibility and try to get Nader into the debates. George volunteered to write a letter to the editor to send to the local papers. Ken shared his plans to write a guest column for the Herald-Times once the question of Nader's Indiana ballot status is resolved. He promised to bring his column to a meeting to solicit comments before submitting it. It was also suggested that we issue a press release announcing the formation of our group in the near future. Before moving on, Ken alerted the group to the existence of the Monroe County Emergency Planning Committee. This group's mission is the make the public aware of chemical hazards in the county and prepare an emergency response plan to protect the environment and citizens from these hazards. It is a state agency; each county has its own committee. The committee, composed of members from various sectors of the community, meets quarterly. Their regular meetings are at 1:30pm on the third Thursday of each month at Assembly Hall in the I-Men's Lounge. Ken encouraged anyone interested in working with this committee to contact him for more information. * Visibility Projects We began with a brief brainstorming of email lists to which people could subscribe for information on Green organizing and other related issues. The lists mentioned included: btowningreens, ingreens, and Grist Magazine's weekly email digest. The links and calendar features of the eGroups page for the btowningreens list was also mentioned. Anyone can add links and calendar events that might be of interest to group members. In particular, there is a folder for links to other email lists. It was agreed that the email list is an important visibility project for our group. A discussion of whether to create two lists--one for discussion and one for announcements--was tabled for consideration at a future meeting. Members were reminded of the digest and view on web features of the list. The web page was also mentioned as an important visibility project. Jay and Joseph reaffirmed their commitment to investigate hosting and begin work on constructing web page(s) for the group. A discussion of making or purchasing t-shirts for both the Nader campaign and the local group followed. The group concluded that it would be best, in terms of both cost and speed of delivery, to try to order t-shirts and other campaign items from the national campaign rather than trying to create them ourselves. Heather volunteered to contact Kate Bryant for more information about ordering items from the national campaign. Once she receives the information, she will forward it to the list. A suggestion was made to use a web company based in California, Cafe Press, to print t-shirts for the local group. They would charge $10.99, plus shipping, for each shirt. After discussion, the group decided to put the design and printing of a t-shirt for the local group on hold for now. Producing the t-shirts locally offers the advantages of better pricing and a higher potential profit for fundraising efforts. We could also avoid steep shipping charges. Additionally, we currently have no mechanism for managing group funds. Karmyn volunteered to investigate options for local silk-screening and report her findings at the next meeting. Sponsoring a table at the Saturday Farmer's Market was also mentioned as an important visibility project. Jeff and Mike volunteered to man a table this Saturday, August 12. They will be at the Showers Plaza from 8:30am to 11:30am. They encouraged other people to join them if they were able. Jeff will try to obtain Nader merchandise such as bumper stickers and buttons to hand out from the state campaign committee. If they cannot send anything in time, he will place an express order with the national campaign or Northern Sun. Members were asked to contribute to the merchandise fund after the meeting. * Suggestions for the Next Meeting's Agenda The following items were suggested for the next meeting's agenda: 1) Report from the Web Coordinators (Jay and Joseph) 2) Report about the printing of local t-shirts (Karmyn) 3) Creation of separate email lists for discussion and announcements 4) Planning local Nader campaign activities Ken pointed out that the group needs to keep in mind our two timelines: One for activities before the November election and another for broader organizing after the November election. The group agreed that our next meeting should focus mainly on the Nader campaign because it is so time critical. The meeting closed with each person reviewing what they had committed to do before our next meeting. ********************************************************************** The next meeting will be held on Tuesday, August 22, at the Ellettsville Public Library. Ken volunteered to serve as facilitator. He will send directions to library to the email list. Members were once again encouraged to arrange carpools. ********************************************************************** Notes Submitted by Heather Drake