Announcements
6 people in attendance. (Two other events happening tonight: Amy Goodman speaking at UNM Cont. Ed. Some other people are at the FIRE awards tonight, downtown. The awards are for educators doing social justice work. Chris, a UNM grad student, and ally, will be receiving one. Also, some thing about politicians bickering live on TV.)
Aztatl, an activist who has recently been involved with (un)Occupy ABQ, was badly hurt in a car crash last week. Summer went to visit him on Thursday, when he was out of the medically induced coma but still had the breathing tube in, so he couldn’t speak. [The tube has since been removed and he can speak.]
If you want to visit, see updates, and mark down a time when you’ll visit, go here: https://pad.riseup.net/p/aztatl-support
Nothing new to report on Pam’s case. Summer hasn’t heard anything from her. Previously Pam said she would be filing an appeal to the writ of assistance (formal foreclosure order for the Sheriff) no word on the status of that.
The next major action is on the 22nd, the International Day Against Police Brutality. Though the march starts at 1p, many people will be showing up around 3p, near the police station at 4th and Roma. Event goes until nightfall, see /upcoming for details. You can help by spreading the word and bringing your friends.
Agenda
No formal agenda; be the general topic of discussion was larger goals & actions, visioning. We all felt that this discussion was necessary to carry on with a broader group. Two major points:
Having a physical presence
Loren brought up the value of having an indoor space for GA’s etc., that would also have broader use in strengthening our outreach and collaboration. He sees lots of vacant properties near campus where it might be possible to work something out with the deed-holders, eg: free rent in exchange for watching over it & fixing it up.
Though we might be able to do one-time costs, some were concerned that a sustained monthly cost (ie. rent) would be a strain, and distract from our larger goals, even if heavily discounted from typical rates.
Education
John notes that education is an important building block, especially critical thinking, which, unsurprisingly, corporate education isn’t too big on. Asking “Why?” and being able to say, “I don’t know, let’s find out.” are really key to having a revolutionary mindset. Sean also adds the importance of being able to imagine something better than the status quo, rather than just saying it can’t be done. Not sure about what form it would take yet, and John says he doesn’t quite feel ready to teach it by himself, but this is certainly a good avenue to explore.
Miscellaneous
John also brought up the importance of keeping our outreach stuff, such as the website/twitter/etc. current and knowing how to make it more useful. So yeah, some GA notes are finally getting posted again.. and we have some metrics stuff now to see how to make the site more useful (Don’t worry, we aren’t sending anything special to the FBI, or Google.)
