Notes from January 21st General Assembly

Western Mass Social Forum
General Assembly Meeting
El Mercado, Holyoke
January 21, 2007

Fifteen hardy folks gathered at El Mercado to take the next steps toward a Western Mass Social Forum in April. Below is a summary of our conversations and decisions.

We began with introductions and then agreed on an agenda. (We agreed that at the next meeting this agenda should be up on newsprint or white board for all to see and to agree to before we begin.)

The agenda included: the goals of the forum in April, the length of the event in April, meetings of small task groups, and setting of dates for other meetings of task groups and the general assembly.

We agreed that the goals previously established for the WMSF are still relevant and that the focus in April will be Western Mass movement building and selecting/preparing people for the United States Social Forum (USSF) in Atlanta in late June.

There was resistance to seeing the focus in April as primarily the USSF as opposed to Western Mass movement building, and there was support for having Atlanta and Western Mass both included in the program for April. There was also support for the importance of making links to the national and international issues/groups in our WMSF.

It was suggested that we hold off on naming who goes to Atlanta on our behalf until April. This is an inclusion issue.

We agreed that we were aiming for a 2-day event in April rather than a 3-day event. It was not agreed whether we were aiming for Friday and Saturday OR Saturday and Sunday. At one point someone suggested that we think of Friday and Saturday for the social forum and save Sunday for the USSF. Jon pointed out that the JWJ annual meeting has been scheduled concurrently with the USSF. Perhaps there are groups who might want to do something concurrent with the WMSF.

We agreed that we would send out an Invitation to Participate (avoiding the use of the term "proposal") and we will also go to organizations to ask if they want to participate. We agreed that we would use the tracks previously identified, but be flexible and open to groups/people proposing additional tracks. The tracks will provide a context for what people want to do. Also, people may want help in putting their presentation together. The structure of the forum in April will emerge from the presentations that people want to do. Presentations can be done in any number of modes: performances, straight presentations, celebrations, actions, exhibits, etc. We did not agree on whether we were still going to use the three part model of Information and Analysis, Vision and Strategies/Actions.

We agreed that the questionnaire and invitation to participate should be part of the same outreach effort, prepared and distributed together, and should be very accessible. Emily will draft the two documents for the solicitation of proposals: 1) a Cover Letter/Invitation to Participate that will include information from the document that has already been written on what the Western MA Social Forum is and 2) the Questionnaire which will be short, and have some general questions for all, and it will have space for people to write their own questions and/or provide additional information. Emily will circulate these documents to the WMSF listserv as soon as possible for feedback. AFSC (Doug) will make copies of the Invitation package and send it out. The Center for Popular Economics (Emily) will provide snail mail addresses for the initial list of groups. (All WMSF members should review the original list of groups^×Emily will send out this list for our review--and send Doug an! y additional groups with their contact information.)

We agreed that the Program group will take responsibility for the tasks of reviewing proposals and, as needed, helping people write them.

We agreed that the name of the event in April will be the Western Mass Social Forum. Earlier in the meeting we talked about a three stage process:

Stage 1 - WMSF, April, 2007
Stage 2 - Representatives to USSF in Atlanta
Stage 3 - Full-blown WMSF, in fall 2007 or, more probably, spring
2008.

We agreed that we need accountability at each meeting, i.e., a reporting of what is accomplished between meetings. We agreed that Doug and Maya will serve as "coordinators," seeing that we have agendas and facilitators for meetings, notes mailed out after meetings, calls to people who agreed to do something before the next meeting. The role of the "old" Coordinating Committee is up in the air at the moment and no meetings are planned for it. It was clear that adding in a CC meeting along with every other week General Assembly meetings would not work. Presumably all CC members will be on Task Groups.

Task Groups and their contacts/conveners:
* Public Relations: Jon
* Program/Tracks: Emily
* Logistics: Doug
* Fundraising Events: Maurice, Shira, Justin, Marena
* Finance: (budget, bank account, overall fundraising) Nan (?)

Report for Publicity group: find out how the Publicity group should support the work of the group planning pre-forum events. Decision was made with Program Group to use the existing "Another World Is Possible" logo for our Publicity Efforts. (Does the Publicity group want to add anything to this brief report?)

Report from the Fundraising Events group: Working on organizing two performance events, one in late February and one in March. La Veracruzana has been proposed as a location. Marena has done events there with National Priority Projects and understands them to be open to doing this type of event because it is a tax write-off. Shira knows the owner and will investigate. Discussion of approaching collective businesses (including Food For Thought Books and Collective Copies) to see if they can be sponsors for these events. Maurice has gotten started on a CD project with his group, Community Against Hate (CAH). Maurice has proposed making this a Social Forum project so that the CD can be sold at these lead-up events and at the Western MA and US Social Forum where the proceeds are split 70/30 Social Forum/CAH (exact split to be determined, maybe some for artists also). Next meeting will be Sunday, January 28th at 3:00pm. It will be held at Marena's house in Northampton. The address is 73 Barrett St. (off of King St.) Apt. 2072. The Publicity group is invited to this meeting to discuss how each can help the other and whether it makes sense to merge the two groups. Email: Shira at swolf@riseup.net or Maurice at soulfighter@c-a-h.org with questions about the meeting. An reminder will be sent to the wmsf listserv.

We agreed that the next General Assembly meetings will be on Sundays--February 11 and 25, 3:00 p.m., El Mercado, Holyoke.