Minutes for March 8, 2005 Meeting

Old Business

1. The minutes for February 22 were approved as written. Several items from the minutes were added to the agenda.
   
   
2. Progress Reports
   • Midwest Peace Summit and Rally preparations: Lee informed us that the preparations for the rally are hitting some snags. The police will not allow the porta potties to remain at the circle from Friday afternoon until Monday morning because homeless people might sleep in them. They must be delivered on Sunday morning and picked up on Sunday afternoon. This increases the cost from $180 to more than $600. Also there must be an IT specialist on site during the summit to handle problems, so this is another $400 cost. There are no additional local people volunteering to plan and work on the summit or rally. Also, colleges in the surrounding states are not responding. People who are staying for the summit should look into group rates for inexpensive motels. The organizers are going ahead in spite of these difficulties. They anticipate at least 700 people for the rally.
     
     
   • Bus for the March 20th Rally: Paul announced that the ND administration and some faculty associated with peace groups on campus have given students organizing for the summit and rally a lot of grief. He believes they do not want students participating in events cosponsored by off campus groups. There was flack about posting the flyer for the bus trip to Indy. The bottom line is that the ND students are going to the protest in Chicago on Saturday, the 19th. Only a handful will come down to Indy on Sunday and none of them will take the bus. Given that the rest of us could guarantee only a few seats on the bus, we decided to cancel it and arrange to car pool down to Indy.
     
     
   • Tax Day plans: These are proceeding. Nothing new. Peter and Glenda Rae will try to get people to sign up for shifts at the post office from 6-midnight on April 15. No one volunteered as a result of Zae's email to the Peace not War folks at Saint Mary's.
     
     
   • Weekly letters to Congress on the web: Still no progress. Peter will get to it soon. The web site main page has been redesigned by Kay with input from Zae. The paragraph about the mission of the MPJC is now on a separate page with an "About us" link from the main page. The new logo is also on the main page and there are a group of buttons on the top left as well as at the bottom, linking to other pages in the website. It was suggested that we put a search engine on the main page so folks can find a topic which is buried in the letters to Congress or in the minutes.
     
     
   • Banner: We decided not to cut V's in the banner, but to keep it in the trunk if the wind was greater than 20 mph. We also decided to sew a slot along the bottom so we can insert a heavy pipe to keep the banner taut when we are holding it up. Pam said she could do the sewing if we get the material.
     
     
   • Volunteer speakers publicity: Zae passed out a draft of this brochure and we thought it was fine. She will put the finishing touches on it and print some copies. Also, the anti-war brochure is in rough draft form. She hopes to have it ready for the Peace summit.
     
     When discussing the volunteer speakers project, we brought up the desirability of having a couple of press contacts that we could give to local news organizations to contact when they needed an MPJC response to a breaking issue. Zae and Ed C. volunteered and were approved by the group. The two would like to have more discussion of potentially controversial issues, so they could give the range of MPJC opinions when asked by the press. We decided to discuss how we feel about the reinstatement of the draft, and also immediate pullout of troops from Iraq on the listserv and also at the next meeting -- sort of topic of the month. Other topics will be identified at the next meeting. Peter will alert the list serv folks about the topics for the next meeting.
   
   
3. Procurement subcommittee report: Rey has the white magnetic ribbons for cars that say "Bring the Troops Home Now." We decided to sell them for $4 apiece or 3 for $10. They will be available for the rally on the 20th and also at the vigils. We thought that Ellyn would want to be repaid for the $100 cost of the ribbons.
   
   Glenda Rae reported that we have $188.89 in the bank and $34.85 in cash. There were only two responses from Zae's eloquent appeal for donations on the list serv although these were very generous and more than doubled our bank account. Zae may try to shame more people into supporting us.
   
   

New Business

1. Listserv Etiquette: Peter passed out copies of our "Zero Tolerance for Flaming" Policy. This was approved about four years ago. We decided not to promulgate it again, since we want to encourage discussion, particularly with our topic of the month program. The jist of the policy is to state strong critical opinions about issues, but do not state critical opinions about individuals.
   
   
2. Next Quarter Student Group gathering: Zae will see if the Saint Mary's student group wants to host the next gathering in mid April. It should be billed as a student action day and focused around organizing for some action. Washington High School has an anti-violence group and may be interested in participating.
   
   
3. Other topics and Issues
   • Bush demonstration: There were between 200 and 300 anti-Bush demonstrators outside the Athletic Center at ND on March 4th, when Bush was here to push social security reform. All the press was there and we got good coverage both in the paper and on TV. There was a lot of chanting and shouting of slogans. There were a good number of students, especially from Saint Mary's. we had the banner, the vigil signs, and helium balloons to get our message across. Folks from Fort Wayne added to the spirit. Kathy was interviewed and got her message out very clearly. When the folks emerged from the Bush talk, things got very ugly verbally, at least on the part of the Bush supporters. The police had to separate the two groups. Paul congratulated everyone for pulling the protest together in three days.
     
     
   • Educators to Stop the War Conference: Paul attended this conference in New York along with 500 others. About 1/3 were students, 1/3 were high school teachers, and 1/3 were college and university teachers. Paul attended the high school session to tell them about our efforts in South Bend. Others reported some successful counter-recruitment efforts on the part of students which were freaking out the military recruiters.
     
     
   • Glenda Rae handed out flyers about the Homeward Bound walk for the homeless on April 17. We decided to walk as a coalition and carry our banner. If you want to pledge money to support programs for the homeless, contact Glenda Rae at 287-7715.
     
     
   • Today is International Women's Day and is celebrated in most of the world except in the United States. Paul wished all the women present a happy women's day, and mentioned it commemorated the 20,000 garment workers who marched for suffrage and against child labor on March 8, 1908, in New York City.
     
     
   • USA Today had an article on how recruitment goals are not being met, and on the rise in counter recruitment. The army admits that it has 6,000 deserters from the Iraq war.
   
   
4. Next Meeting. We will meet at 1036 N. Niles on Tuesday, March 29th. It will be announced via the List Serv and at the weekly vigil.