Agenda

All times are approximate, and Chair may change the order of items as appropriate

Meeting Minutes

Chair: Anthony L.
Notetaker:  Tiffany S.

• Call to order at 7:32
  • Review community agreements
  • Land acknowledgement
    • Today is Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Day of Awareness
    • Event: https://www.instagram.com/p/CcCA3wRpKg5/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

• • Ben P. motions to adopt the agenda, Gordon B. seconds. No one opposed, the agenda is adopted at 7:36
  • Roy Z. motions to adopt last meeting’s minutes, Erika B. seconds, no one opposed, the minutes are approved 7:39
• Socialist Feminist Section Update
  • Kara: Every year The National Network of Abortion Funds hosts the annual Fundathon as one of the largest and most exciting national grassroots fundraising campaigns there is. It is an opportunity to organize people into the political act of redistributing wealth and ensuring abortion access. DSA has participated since 2016, and raised nearly $250,000 for abortion funds around the country.
  • This year Las Vegas DSA is participating and raising funds for Nevada’s own Wild West Access Fund. We started the campaign in April and we will continue to raise money until June 5th. We set an initial ambitious goal of $6500 (the amount needed to cover at least 10 abortions in NV) and we hit that amount today! We’ve set a new goal of $10k to hit by June 5th.
  • We want you all to donate money if you’re able of course, but even more we want to see members participating in the fund-a-thon. This means reaching out to others – friends, family, coworkers, etc – and asking them to donate and talking about abortion! You can sign up on our webpage to participate in the fund a thon and you’ll receive your own individual unique link to raise money. We currently have a leaderboard going and whoever raises the most by dollar amount and by number of donations will receive prizes!
  • The majority of those participating thus far both in planning for the fund a thon and raising money are women and we want to remind our male comrades that abortion and reproductive justice isn’t just a womens issue and we encourage you to step up and start talking about the importance of reproductive freedoms with those in your circles as well.
  • As part of our fundraising for the fund a thon we’ll also be holding a trivia night on 5/21 – it’s a $5 entry and all money raised will go straight to the WWAF! There will be plenty of questions and prizes hidden underneath questions so you don’t have to win anything overall to have a prize – so far we have around 20 prizes to give away that night! We encourage everyone to join and play and don’t worry if you aren’t able to pay the $5 we won’t turn anyone away. We’ll also have opportunities to raise more money like you’ll be able to pay to pull the audience or call a friend for help with an answer if you donate more! We want to have a fun night while raising money for a much needed cause! All instructions for the night of the trivia will be given that night so just show up and be ready to have fun!
  • And last but not least, the SocFem section will be starting Jenny Browns Without apology on Tuesday 5/24 and we’ll be meeting weekly to discuss the readings – there’s a link on the registration page that goes over what parts of the book are for which dates. If you want to learn more about the struggle for reproductive freedoms especially from a capitalist lens and steer clear of those NGO and neoliberal talking points, please join us!
  • Look out for this months poli ed event as well as that most likely will be on reproductive justice
  • LVDSAs socialist feminist section will be taking steps to push back against the eventual roe decision – sign up to receive updates regarding events and actions and also there’s an option to sign up to be more involved in helping us plan for these events as well, which we encourage as many of you as possible to do!
• Treasurer’s Report
  • Email lasvegasdsa@gmail.com for the report
• Housing Justice Priority Update
  • Sarah: Housing is in crisis right now. High move-in fees, lots of evictions. Governor has started a Home Means Nevada initiative with American Rescue Plan funds to create more affordable housing in the valley. There are no specific actions we’re taking in regards to that right now but we will update if that changes.
  • We are still working on organizing tenants through canvassing and research sessions. We are asking people to fill out our tenant incident report form.
  • We want to continue our eviction defense canvasses.
  • A few stewards have been at capacity for the past couple weeks, if we are going to continue the canvasses, we need to find folks who are willing to lead the canvasses. Email lasvegasdsa@gmail.com if you are an experienced canvasser interested in leading the canvasses.
  • We have a campaign meeting on May 10th where we will start debriefing the priority in the run-up to our local convention
• Community Aid Priority Update
  • Tamara: Had a fairly good Sunday Solidarity where we served around 35 people. It’s getting warm, so we need things like shades, tarps, tents, sunblock, shoes. We will be bulk buying hygiene items with chapter funds so please focus on other donations first.
  • Hendershare was canceled this month due to Tamara being sick but if you’re interested in getting involved and you’re in the Henderson area, email lasvegasdsa@gmail.com
  • Community Aid will also be starting to debrief and prepare for local convention
• Electoral Priority Update
  • Roy: The priority has been working on a voter guide for several months researching current electeds and primary challengers. Who are they getting money from, positions they’ve taken on record, any legislation they champion. We are now at the point where we’re going over the information collected as well as reviewing the  solicited member feedback on any electeds they thought we should recommend or not recommend and why.
  • Voter guide philosophy: In a primary election, we feel that voters have more opportunity to vote for who they truly believe in, as opposed to a general election where many of us feel forced to pick the least-harmful candidate.
  • The bourgeois Democrats will encourage you to vote for the “safest” pick, which was the same argument that they used during the 2020 presidential election. But we understand that what is “safest” for the Democratic establishment to do is to maintain the status quo. This means re-electing candidates who will continue to ignore a plethora of issues, including the climate crisis, rising rent and home prices, ongoing police violence, and a pandemic that disproportionately affected people of color. We do not believe that these Democrats have earned our votes.
  • We made this Voter Guide to be an example of the kind of standard that we believe the working class should expect from our elected officials. We assessed the policy positions and financial history of candidates running to represent residents of Clark County. We prioritized recommending candidates who did not receive endorsements or funding from police unions, land developers, mining companies, or other major corporations that use their money to buy favorable policies.
  • “No recommendation” means that we do not have a specific candidate that we believe stands out above the others. On the other hand, the recommendation of voting for “None of these candidates” means that we suggest bubbling in that option on your ballot. This voting option is unique to Nevada statewide elections, and we use it in instances when we feel that the candidates available are not suitable for a vote.
  • In some cases, we also include the typical number of votes needed to win the primary election for each position. We hope that this demonstrates that many of these seats are winnable by a working-class candidate, not just the elite.
  • Anthony: You can provide feedback on the draft using this form: https://forms.gle/yyCFj36PVh2fWTYQ9
  • Ben: In the event that “none of the above” wins, what happens?
    • Anthony: the candidate who gets second wins.
  • Gordon takes issue with the recommendation in CD1
    • Worked on the town hall with the candidate and feels that the candidate was unfair and flippant in the Slack message they posted cancelling the town hall at the last minute and accusing the campaign of acting in a biased manner.
  • Anthony: The next step is ratifying the voter guide. Early voting starts on May 28th. Our next general body meeting is June 2nd, so we have two options on how to get this ratified:
    • Option 1: We schedule an additional meeting in late may just to ratify the voter guide. The benefit is people can make amendments, discuss the guide. Possible downside is if we don’t make quorum, we won’t be able to vote on it and will need to wait until June 2.
    • Option 2: We send a ballot via email with a voting window, if enough votes come in to hit quorum, we will use the results of the ballot. Downside is people can’t make amendments or have discussion.
    • 3 people prefer option 1, 15 people prefer option 2
  • Maurice wants to know how we can interface better with the state party that we took over
    • Anthony: Sign up for Left Caucus! LC’s proposed county platform PASSED AS-IS last week’s County Convention and the STATE convention will be here before we know it! Sign up today and help keep the state party in our comrades’ control! https://www.leftcaucus.com/join-left-caucus/
• Future Hybrid General Meetings
  • Anthony: We are considering holding the 2nd annual convention in July in a hybrid manner. We’d like to hold a hybrid meeting in June before convention so we can fine tune the process. Our meetings will always have a virtual meeting for accessibility reasons, but also members who don’t like zoom and prefer in person meetings, so we’d like to move to hybrid format to accomodate as many people as possible.
    • Casey: Will there be someone operating the technical aspect? Would be willing to volunteer.
    • Brendan: In favor of this move. As long as there is a virtual option!
    • Minnie: As one of the people who is likely to be a remote participant, the biggest concern is the quality of audio in the room but believes we can do it. In favor
    • Sarah: Strongly in favor of doing hybrid meetings.
    • Trinity: Echoes that audio quality is important. Lives rurally so really relies on the virtual option.
    • Maurice: Very much in favor of in person meetings.
• Upcoming 2nd Annual Local Convention
  • Anthony: Convention is in two months. We have been operating on a priority model for almost a year after we adopted new bylaws last May. Every year at our annual convention we elected a new Steering Committee as well as choose new priorities. We have a survey to see what members are most interested in pursuing so we can start writing priority proposals to vote on at convention. We are also looking for members interested in writing priority proposals. There will be training and guidance provided. Next Thursday there is a training on how to plan strategic campaigns. There will also be brainstorming sessions to talk about priority ideas. Half the brainstorms will be virtual and half in person. Share your ideas on future priorities: https://forms.gle/A5zQfJ2C97VcXSJ69

• Upcoming Events
  • Find all the events by visiting https://lvdsa.org/events
• Open Comment
  • Ben: Would like someone to explain what happened last Saturday in the Democratic party
  • Gordon: Last weekend was the Clark County Democratic Party convention. During the convention, we adopted a platform. The platform is the single most progressive platform in Nevada’s history, possibly in the nation. We are looking to replicate that at the State convention
  • Erika: National Lawyers Guild’s reproductive justice committee wants to talk with other orgs like DSA and WWAF to push legislators to make Nevada a safe haven state. Will coordinate with socfem about ideas
  • Gordon: Wants to clarify that while there are a lot of DSA folks that have been elected to the Democratic party leadership, the party is not a subsidiary or wing of DSA.

• Meeting is adjourned 8:39