Agenda

Times are approximate and subject to change at the Chair’s discretion.

Meeting Minutes

Chair: Anthony L.

Secretary: Minnie

Call to order at 7:05pm. Steering Committee Rules are presented. Agenda is adopted unanimously. Minutes from the 7/18/22 meeting are adopted unanimously.

Steward Candidate Meetings

• Klaire, Lisa and Skyler are here for steward candidate meetings. All candidates are asked to review the Campaign Steward Roles and Responsibilities. 
• Klaire – Interested in Yes to Neighborhood Stability campaign. Interested because it’s a good progression from the Housing Justice Campaign last year including canvassing and getting people together in community events. Housing is a human right and everyone deserves that rent stability. North Las Vegas can domino into everything else in the valley. Q from Anthony – Do you live in North Las Vegas? Klaire – No.  Anthony – thinks it would be good if one of the stewards lives in NLV. What is your capacity to be on the ground to do canvassing – when and how often? Klaire – I have an open schedule these days. I am mostly free to do canvassing on Friday afternoons and weekends. Anthony – What skills do you hope to have in a partner steward? Klaire – I’d love to work with someone who has more experience. Lots of lessons from Angel last year. Would be helpful to have someone to help with writing canvassing materials, event marketing and outreach. Canvassers need to have training and I’d like to have a lead on that. I think I could do more leadership compared to last year rather than depending on others. I also like that it’s short term. Klaire – What about the appeal? Do we know the status on it and how will we work around it? Anthony – The work of still preparing talking points and graphics should happen to keep us on time. That way when the appeal ends, we can be ready. If the appeal doesn’t pass, we’d have to connect with Culinary to see how we can plug in. Klaire – What is the SC’s capacity to assist? Roy – I look forward to showing up and knocking doors. Anthony – I want to be an organizer taking an assignment and hopefully have my house be a base of operations. Minnie – I want to knock doors and I live in NLV. Klaire – How could we do trainings on de-escalation and canvassing? Anthony – Angel has offered some training. Tiffany offered training too and did canvas training  for the Bernie campaign. Roy offers too. I don’t think we’ll need to bring in external people. Klaire shared that they did attend the regional organizing retreat this weekend. 
• SC deliberates and Minnie motions to appoint Klaire as a steward for the Yes on Neighborhood Stability Campaing. Anthony seconds. 6 in favor, none opposed, 3 absent, motion passes. 
• Lisa – Interested in Ecoscocialist/Desert Power priority. My background is in environmental stuff. It’s what I love. It’s my insane desire to save the environment. Can I work with someone to determine agendas, figure out the priorities, develop a campaign etc? Anthony – we hope to partner you with another steward but we will offer support. Aimee – Link the running agenda to the Steward roles document. Let’s make a whole group of resources for them. Do you feel like if you had a partner, you’d be able to ask them to help with attendance/security, be comfortable doing it? Lisa – yes. There’s a lot in the priority, figuring out how to manage all of it is going to be a challenge. Minnie – Asking for help, which is what you do now, is exactly what you could and should do. You’re very open about communicating what you need and that is a key thing. Listening to you talk about the priority makes me feel excited because you are clearly analyzing it in a way that we need, like “are we going to stay on track, do we have the people to approach this?” Remember that you can always come back to the general membership and say we need an adjustment or a tweak.
• SC deliberates and Anthony motions to appoint Lisa as a steward of the Desert Power priority campaign. Minnie seconds. 6 in favor, none opposed, 3 absent, motion passes.
• Skyler – Interested in two priorities but most interested in Desert Power because I care about ecology, environmentalism and doing stuff locally around such things. I’m interested in Neighborhood Stability too but I live on the complete other side of town from NLV and it doesn’t seem practical that I’d be in canvasses. Interested in water conservation, educational events, and finding a targeted campaign that is actionable and that could engage membership. I’ve experienced mobilizing internally and externally as former chapter leadership and I understand the priority campaign structure. Lots of experience facilitating meetings. Fully used to priority campaigns being led by non-elected leaders. I understand how to make motions and bring controversial topics to the general body meeting. Do any SC members have a vision of the monthly workload? Education component and something achievable/winnable. For me it looks like 2-3 things a month including the priority meeting. Anthony – some priority meetings met every week last year and it wasn’t good. People fell off, there was little progress. No mandated meeting schedule. Sean – Poli Ed can support educational events as well. Anthony – Just need to meet the steward responsibilities. GBM’s are first Thurs of every month. Skyler – Work can interfere sometimes but I’m usually done by 7/7:30pm. Anthony – only one steward has to give the report. And a written report will suffice too. 
• Natasha motions to appoint Skyler as co-steward of Desert Power priority. Minnie seconds. 6 in favor, none opposed, 3 absent. 

Portfolio Reports

• Sean – Political Education Update: We will be presenting our Direct Action night school on Wednesday. We haven’t decided on a date /topic for the next one (you can submit suggestion here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSffDwQok_M_68IvH9SIUUdvDLae26J61oGXssKLxuBF4jDpBQ/viewform). Assuming the agenda is approved, I will be inaugurating a series of Night School: Nuts and Bolts presentations at the GBM. Each presents an overview of common chapter procedures together with an overview of our justifications for using it and common criticisms so that members can understand and evaluate our processes more critically. Future presentations will be by Tamara (on grievance processes and restorative justice) and Reggie M. (on project management)
• Natasha – Making posts, sending emails, would like to start up the airtable social media request form to put requests in one place. Would like to have a group of people to be able to call on.  Roy – Do I just forward events to you as soon as I have them? Natasha – If they’re on the website, they seem to have graphics already then you can absolutely let me know.
• Roy – Everything on calendar that’s been asked of me. Fixed some broken links. I’d like to expand the group of people–especially Tiffany– that have access to things on the calendar to help with that.
• Anthony – For security role, I have two weeks of new member screening to catch up on and will do that this week. I hope to start working on in-person security items in the next 30 days, including reaching out to the national red rabbits.
• Minnie – Getting things ready for the GBM, which includes making spreadsheets talk to each other to confirm membership status upon sign-in (with Tiffany). Needs support as she learns the tech tools and prepares for our HGO election.
• Aimee – modified Paypal to business account. This will help with having a donation button and a separate pathway for good/services for merch. Haven’t closed out venmo yet because we can never use that name again. Updated account signers. 

Financial Status Report

• Email lasvegasdsa@gmail.com for report

Discuss Proposed Fiscal Policy

• All comments/suggestions were accepted. It’s pretty specific. We do have to be tight about this stuff. Wonder about policies and procedures around Merch because it gets very confusing. Anthony –  What about the purchasing resolution? Aimee – That is still in effect. This is additive.  Kara – what about for SocFem? Should I not be purchasing and getting reimbursed? Aimee – What is realistic is what will work. If there’s something we can purchase ahead of time, we should try and we can figure it out. But if we can minimize reimbursements, we want to. 
• Aimee motions to adopt the proposed fiscal policy. Sean Y seconds. 6 in favor, none opposed, 3 absent. 

General Body Meeting Preparations

• Try to give every SC member a role at least for the first meeting so the members can see our faces
• Will use a google form and do manual STV voting without using opavote because only 2 HGOs are being elected. Sean Y and two others to count votes. Anthony will continue chairing. Minnie will continue taking notes. The member sign in spreadsheet will indicate current members. 

Next Meeting 

• Aimee – wants to hear from the new SC members
• Roy – this is the only thing on my calendar most Mondays so it’s ok 
• Anthony – I’ve talked to a bunch of folks about this. It would really be good to get together in person to get to know each other a little more, communication styles, etc. One idea was to go to bi-weekly SC meetings. Every other week we could have an informal working meeting without votes/business. We could do member outreach, social media policy, etc. Will still need to meet next Monday 8/8. 
• Sean Y agrees to work on finding a time for SC to meet

Upcoming Resolution for Addressing Interpersonal Conflict and Code of Conduct Violations

• Anthony – Must have a proposed resolution by August 10th. Must be approved at the next GBM and this will give us some time to get member feedback and input from the newly elected HGOs. Also need to address discrepancies in the current resolution and national processes. 
• Aimee – How much does Resolution 33 govern individual chapters because it seems like a bit of a mess. Anthony – R33 is very specific and if we don’t follow it and a member appeals it could result in a reversal. to have  Kara – adds in the chat that there is legal protection related to R33 because it’s related to harassment. 

Annual HGO Report

• Tamara – The three HGOs collaborated on this report. There were six official grievances this year. Four of those went to disciplinary action. Had multiple one on one call ins. We tried a talking circle at one point. We’re still on the fence about how successful or not successful that was. Still looking for non-punitive actions for our code of conduct or interpersonal issues especially. We need grievance officers who represent the diversity of the chapter. This is what helps members feel more comfortable reaching out. A lot of the issues we come up with have to do with misunderstanding the policies, implied authority (what the chair is or does), what certain roles do. We can protect the chapter by proactively educating the membership. This also helps the HGOs understand what is harassment, misunderstanding and bad faith. An important part is being able to identify when a bad faith actor enters the scene. We have to take a good faith approach but we don’t really have a procedural way to identify to the SC that this is a bad faith actor or a “wrecker” situation. Conflict resolution only works if both parties enter into it willingly and in good faith. 
• Anthony and Sean Y describe the “Nuts and Bolts” that will start this week at GBM. 

Executive Session

Meeting adjourned at 9:45pm.