Monroe County Green Party Meeting - February 6, 2001 Place: Monroe County Public Library Meeting Room 1-A Bloomington, IN Time: 7:00pm - 9:00pm Attendance: Heather Drake, Isabel Piedmont, Sean "Steps to Freedom" Bagley, Jeff Melton, Milton Fisk, Paul Colbert, Ken Rogers, Kevin Sowders, Maha Noureldin, Peter Drake Facilitator: Peter Drake Secretary: Heather Drake The meeting began at 7:10pm. The agenda was approved and the minutes of the 16 January meeting were approved. * Announcements Ken reported that the G/GPUSA training in the works for late February has been postponed due to the illness of the trainer. He hopes that we will be able to connect later in the year. Heather reported that the next League of Women Voters forum with state legislators will be held on Saturday, February 17, at 9:30am at the Monroe County Public Library in meeting rooms 1-B and 1-C. All members of the public are invited to attend. * Coordinator Reports In the interest of giving maximal time to the charter discussion, there were no coordinator reports. * Adopt-A-Road The first clean-up for our Adopt-A-Road commitment will be held on Saturday, February 24. Members will meet at 9:00am to watch a safety training video and sign waivers before setting out to clean our stretch of Walnut (1st to 10th). Isabel volunteered her home at 819 S Washington to meet, watch the video, and organize our clean-up. * TV Turn-Off Week An organizational meeting to plan events for the April 23-30 TV Turn-Off Week will be held on Saturday, February 10, at 3:00pm at the home of Heather and Peter Drake (342 S Madison). Anyone interested in contributing to the planning for this effort is invited to attend. Peter has already contacted several groups to find out if they would be interested in working on this project. The Center for Sustainable Living and the Game Preserve have expressed interest. * Paper Recycling Committee An organization meeting to begin efforts to investigate local government's use of recycled paper will be held immediately after the TV Turn-Off Week meeting (4:00pm - 342 S Madison). * Introductions A quick round of introductions was made for the benefit of new people at the meeting. * Charter Discussion of the charter resumed with consideration of the fifth key value, currently listed as Decentralization. Alternatives that had been previously suggested were discussed once again, but the group was unable to reach consensus. It was agreed that it would be helpful in our considerations to know a little more about the development of the original list. Ken volunteered to do some research on the original discussions and share his findings with the group next week. At that point, the group decided to continue on with the rest of the charter. Two spelling changes were made to Article 1, Section 2. The hyphen was removed from "non-violent" for consistency. The abbreviation "i.e." was replaced with "e.g." In Article 1, Section 3, the phrase "(National Green Party)" was stricken. Most of the discussion of Article 2 concerned the application form that full members would be asked to sign indicating that they were in general agreement with the Ten Key values. Some thought it was critical that members be in agreement with MCGP values and felt that people who were in agreement with those values would not object to signing such a statement. Others felt that new members might balk at signing such a statement and that it should therefore be stricken. Several compromise solutions were offered. Perhaps it would be enough to have a simpler membership form that asked for name and contact information. We could attach the charter and thus imply that members were agreeing to its requirements. Perhaps the language in Section 1 that states the MCGP "shall strive to work toward a society in which the following Ten Key Values are respected and upheld" might be enough. The allotted time for discussion of the charter ended before a solution could be agreed upon. * Frank Ambrose Statement Jeff proposed that MCGP issue some kind of statement of support for Frank Ambrose. Ambrose is an organizer for the American Lands Alliance and local environmental activist who has been charged in a tree spiking incident for which the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) claimed responsibility. Although the group agreed that Ambrose should be presumed innocent and given a fair trial, concern was expressed that any statement we could issue would either be very watered down or more radical than some members were comfortable with. There was also some discussion of what we would hope to achieve with such a statement. Jeff volunteered to draft a statement, post the draft to the discussion email list, and bring it forward for action at the next meeting. The meeting concluded at 8:55pm. ************************************************************************* The next meeting will be held at 7:00pm on Tuesday, February 20, at Heather and Peter Drake's home. Their address is 342 S Madison. Ken volunteered to serve as facilitator. He will send a tentative agenda to the discussion list several days prior to the meeting date. *************************************************************************