UNC Charlotte Students for a Democratic Society

Here are the notes (may be missing some as some calls were hard to hear) **at the bottom I have outlined some parts that we should move forward on, if possible over the email list**

Roll Call:
Couldy - Sprinfield, MA
Megan - Pace
Daniel - Hunter
Alex - Philadelphia
Chapin - Alabama
Kosta - UNC Chapel Hill
Kati - UNC Asheville
Brian - Ohio State
Madeline - UMN-TC
Tracy - UMN - TC
Siciliy - Detriot
Mary - Portland, OR
Sam, Eric, Dave, Babken - UCLA
Monty - San Diego
Josh - Bay Area
Eric - Detriot
Max - NYC
Tim - Detriot
Michael - UNC Charlotte
Jess - UNCC

(sorry if I got your name or affiliations wrong,
since we want to get to know each other please correct me on the list)

First we discussed about voting process for the
phone call, we decided that instead of one vote
per caller we would have one vote per call,
except in cases where the SDS chapter had more
than two members on the call. Thus each chapter
had up to 2 votes. From there we would strive
for a 2/3rd majority because we want to try to
get as many people on board as possible.

Secondly, Max talked about the process and what
we need to do to move forward and the challenges
we are going to face. In his past experience,
conferences of this size have taken up to a year
to plan. But we do not have a year, and thus we
need to work to move forward together. One of
our major challenges will be that the people on
the phone call (and on the listserve) and those
that want to be involved in make decisions on
conference structure and major items relating to
the group, but the group has no decision making
process. Thus we need to just work with those
challenges and work to be as transparent and open as possible.

Then we moved on to discussion of PROCESS
PROPOSALS. There were two, both laid out for the
group, and thus I am not going to retype. There
was much discussion about the two proposals, and
it was summarized and dealt with in 3 main parts:
1) A permanent set of people (spokescouncil*)
that would remain the people on decisions all
along, or a rotating spokescouncil* that will
change each week to allow all to be involved.
RESOLUTION: all agreed that it would be best if this group remains static.
2) A spokescouncil* based on a representative
from each of the 5 regions, or a spokescouncil*
based on the working groups that had been in
Madeline's proposal. There was debate about
having 2 people from each region (increasing the
spokescouncil* to 10), but it was finally
RESOLVED that there would be one spokesperson
from each region and one spokesperson from each
working group that would be in charge of larger
political questions like curriculum and delegates, etc.
3) The last question was regarding who makes
decisions, the spokescouncil* makes final
decisions, or its the spokescouncil's* job to get
as much input as possible (i.e. contact chapters
outside the conference listserve, etc.) and bring
it to the larger group (i.e. those that are on
the conference calls. This was also discussed a
lot, many questioned the what the "larger group"
would be, which was interpreted as those that
have chosen to be on the conference calls. I
want to remind people that we can work to make
that "larger group" larger by possibly making
personal calls too. Anyway, so this was RESOLVED
with a majority vote for the spokescouncil
brining proposals to the group conference calls.
* I put the asterisk next to spokescouncil
because its one of the words/titles for this
group put out there but I don't really care
what's its called and we didn't totally decide...
-- it should also be noted that I really trimmed
the discussion to the specific points and then
gave the resolution, if people feel like there
are parts of the argument or have questions about
the discussion and why it was resolved one way
please either direct the questions to the list or
me, I did take complete notes but am lazy and
don't want to type each person's
questions/clarifications and responses individually...

We then had a brief update/proposal from Josh
about fundraising. A group has started some
serious fundraising for the Action camps, and
they would like to propose that we fold the
fundraising together because there are a lot of
large issues that need to be done and could be
streamlined. So instead of working to create a
foundation to receive money for both things there
is one larger foundation and a larger fundraising
plan will begin where we will work to fund raise
for both action camps and the convention as larger SDS projects.

HERE IS THE THINGS THAT WE NEED TO MOVE FORWARD ON:
1) There was little/no discussion on the groups
as Madeline put out in her proposal on the
call. People on the list generally spoke in
favor but the curriculum group was contested. We
need to move forward and start getting people
signed up on the working groups to start
addressing all the knitty gritty things that need
to be worked on over the next 2months. I will
work on reposting the list and people can respond
with what group(s) they want to be on. I will
try to keep a list from the emails to help our
call on next MONDAY move forward smoothly.

2) There was a proposal that all the regions work
on figuring out their regional representatives in
the next week. There wasn't much clarification
about how exactly that would move forward. I
will only speak from the Midwest that we had 6
people on the call from 3 chapters, thus we have
some working out to do between us. I will talk
to Madeline from UMN and see what her take
is. For those that are concerned about not
wanting to be the one representing the region, I
would suggest that you work on nominating or
asking for nominations… Just a thought.

Good work everyone, and thank much to Kati for
moderating a challenging phone call!

And also notes will be posted to the google-list.

Tracy Molm
Univ of MN – Twin Cities SDS