Agenda

Meeting Minutes

Chair: Anthony L.

Secretary: Minnie

• Call to order at 7:03pm. 

• Steering Committee rules are reviewed for guests.

• Agenda – Roy proposes removing item about Land Acknowledgment and trusts Aimee’s judgment. Aimee is working on it and waiting on response from Victoria. Aimee agrees to remove from agenda. Encourages others to reach out with ideas/suggestions to improve this process. No other proposed changes to the agenda. Agenda is adopted with unanimous consent. 

• Last meeting’s minutes are adopted by unanimous consent.

• Action items from last meeting

• • Shaun – SEIU meeting space – for all day it is $100. Email process to request the space with day/time. 
  • Aimee – meeting with Sister Prudence at the Nunnery on Weds. We are good to use it on 9/1 and are good to run hybrid. In person, we’ll get into negotiating about price. But they are very open to working with us financially. 
  • Roy – SC meetings added to the calendar.
  • Anthony/Aimee – people are using the Paypal donation links as we intended. Aimee will add some instructions in Slack. 

• Treasurer’s Report

• • Email lasvegasdsa@gmail.com for current report
  • PayPal says IRS records don’t match our org name. Aimee will work on figuring this out.
  • We had fraudulent charges on our bank account a week ago. All to Lacoste.com. All over $500, multiple, totaling over $8,000. Very scary, it was caught quickly by Anthony. Aimee immediately jumped into action and  started a dispute as charges were still coming in.  It took a week but it was resolved as of Saturday. Talked to AFCU, getting new cards sent out. All the money is restored. Now we have a card guard where we can turn the cards on and off. 

• Abolition Stewards

• • Shaun N motions to nominate Casey L and Ephraim Z as abolition priority co-stewards. Aimee seconds. 
  • Discussion – Shaun N – They are both longtime members. Casey has legal experience. They are both aware of the responsibilities. It’s important to have a person of color in this role. Sarah – have we assigned SC members to be advisors or liaisons?  Shaun – no, we don’t have that officially this year. Sarah – I support both of them as stewards. I think it’s important that we make sure that we have a SC member following it consistently. Anthony – previously there was a priority liaison in the portfolio. We learned that there were some downsides with having specific people in charge. Now we have the slack channel where everyone can talk together collectively. But if you’d like to suggest a change. Aimee – would be happy to talk about it. The advisors didn’t really work out well. A lot of the work fell on the advisor. Aimee – speaks in favor of Casey and Ephraim. Would have been good to have a woman, but no one stepped up. Good to have people of color and queer folks represented in leadership.

• • 8 in favor, 0 opposed, 1 absent. Motion passes.

• Regarding Members In-Good Standing and Quorum

• • Anthony – we had this discussion at the last meeting. It seemed that it should be any member that has constitutional voting rights. Tiffany pointed out since that meeting that our own bylaws define a member as “any person is a member of LVDSA who pays dues to LVDSA.” The suggestion here is this refers to our members in good standing only. Minnie – I would like to bring this to the membership at some point. But I agree that it sounds like our bylaws suggest it is the narrower one. Roy – I think we should punt this to the next SC. Anthony – I think I like the more expansive definition. Sarah – Is it true that people can immediately renew their dues at the GBM if they learn that their dues are out of date? Minnie – Yes. Sarah – Then I think we are offering enough possibilities. Roy – I don’t think we need to make the threshold any lower. I think we have enough opportunity to participate. Anthony – Does anyone disagree with the idea that a voting member is an up to date member in dues or dues waiver? This makes our quorum 45. No disagreement.

• Sunday Solidarity

• • Shaun – Justin N is interested in helping to bottom line Sunday Solidarity. A very reliable, long time member. We have been reaching out to folks for donations on our 1:1 member engagement calls. 
  • Aimee – Rahman is also interested in supporting and helping Justin in making Sunday Solidarity happen.  Another reliable, long term member. Rahman has shelves that we gave to the community center that they didn’t want so we have shelves for the storage space. He has a close relationship with Masjid Al Sabur. Aimee is still happy to do the purchasing with the card. Wondering if we should call it a Mutual Aid Working Group instead of Sunday Solidarity. This would make it a little more broad. 
  • Anthony – procedurally we could create SunSol as a special project. Alternatively we could create a working group. We need to set a specific term and decide what to dedicate in terms of resources. Roy – From a digital management perspective, it would be easier to create a working group and keep SunSol as an event. Shaun – excited about working group facilitators Justin and Rahman. Someone donated kits – toothbrush, toothpaste. Asked William McCurdy for money for SunSol. Invited him down since this is his district. Any objections? Anthony – let’s deal with the motion for the working group and leaders and then deal with any other question.
  • Anthony and Aimee both speak in favor of having the stewards come back later with a budget.
  • Justin N – Thanks Shaun for reaching out to me. I’ve wanted to do more. I agree that we should probably get a handle on what our monthly expenses would be and come back with a proposal including for Thanksgiving and Holiday Solidarity. Do we take an inventory at the end of each one to see what was most requested? Yes – Aimee, Shaun, Minnie, Tamara can all provide info. 

• • Shaun motions to create a Mutual Aid Working Group, which will oversee mutual and community aid events like Sunday Solidarity. Justin N and Rahman F will be appointed to act as stewards of this Working Group. Aimee seconds. 8 in favor, 0 opposed, 1 absent. Motion passes.

• • Returning to the question of inviting McCurdy to SunSol. Anthony – goal is to highlight the issues. I appreciate that you know that it’s not his event, etc. Does anyone else see any concerns with this? Sarah – I want him to understand the work that we’re doing. I don’t want him to use it as a photo op or get something out of it for himself. Aimee – I don’t want him to turn it into an advantage for him. Roy – It would be prudent to have someone prepped in case he tries to do a stump speech or GOTV. Make sure someone is available to shut that down. Shaun – He won’t be coming to the September one. I would volunteer to prep him beforehand. Aimee also offers to help with prep.

• Neighborhood Stability Update – Culinary has announced that they will not seek legal recourse for the ballot measure being denied. The neighborhood stability group did meet this weekend. Because of the timing, they’d like to submit a resolution to be voted on at the GBM. We are being asked to accept it late. We had some proposals we gave over to Culinary which were declined. They think the best course of action is to end the campaign and will submit a GBM resolution to that effect. No one in SC is opposed to accepting the resolution late. Please give Klaire some appreciation. She has done a lot for this and is very deflated right now.

• General Body Meeting Preparation

• • Agenda items – Priority updates, new working groups, treasurer’s report, ratify new policy addressing conflict
  • Aimee – should I do more with finances than what I’ve been doing? Anthony/Roy – something visual would help. Aimee – I can do one quick slide. 
  • Sarah – interested in doing a Disability/Accessibility section or working group. I would like to advertise that at the GBM. How much stuff is already on our agenda? Anthony – there is room for a call for this. 
  • Anthony – Sean Y, do you have a “nuts and bolts” planned? No. We were going to do a Restorative Justice one at some point but not ready yet.  Anthony – can we do one on sections, working groups, other formations? Sean Y – Yes. Formations will be in September and then Restorative Justice in October. 
  • Aimee – Land acknowledgements need to be meaningful and actionable. Couple this with someone speaking to the chapter about ICWA. Perhaps Ez or Tami Tiger. Shaun N is helping me to get someone to speak on that. This would be for the October meeting.
  • Anthony – any suggested guest speaker for September GBM? 

• Meeting Spaces for Hybrid Meetings

• • Shaun – covered SEIU at the top of the meeting. $100 for the SEIU space for all day. Can fit 30-40 people in an office I know of. This would be free. Would work for GBMs and other meetings given the size. Anthony – could this space work for the Deep Organizing training that Val wants to do for the chapter? It is 1 hour. Shaun – Yes. 

• Executive Session – regarding active grievances
• Meeting adjourned at 10:30pm