INFO: People should show up to Unity Corner at UCR as early as possible on Jan 19th. There will be workshops and a general assembly to begin the day.
Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/220867971332277/
Proposed agenda:
Introductions
1. Do we know the exact location of the Regents meeting on UCR campus?
2. Discuss diversity of tactics on UCR campus and other campuses for Jan 19
3. Messages/Slogans/Signs for the events
4. OUTREACH Strategies
5. Transportation to UCR from other UC campuses
Joan: Welcome to the call
Occupy Education relate to Regents meeting
When, where
Diversity of Tactics
Sloganing
Outreach
Transportation
Joan from UCSD, CC district in SD, lives in LA
Keep a running list of people who want to talk and hand signals
1. get on stack, #1
2. to agree hit #2,
3. disagree #3,
4. direct response #4,
5. point of process #5
Introductions
Kelly: UCSD Sociology Grad student
Liana: organizer in Bay Area (couldn’t catch org.)
Hoku: based in LA (on call with Liana)
Desiree: graduate from UCR, working with community (couldn’t catch org)
Stardust: Communication work group with occupy education northern CA.
Nicki: SFSU adviser, member of academic professionals of California
Lisa: Cedar City, Utah, listening in, tiny group, between Vegas and Salt Lake
Leslie: Occupy SD, organizer with events committee, wants to be in solidarity with occupy colleges
Michelle: Skyline community college in Northern California
Nikolai: UCSD Sociology grad student
Samuel: Occupy Clairemont and UC Alumn, trying to find out what’s going on and see if people are interested in a people’s collective university in the occupy–Joan is going to put him in touch with Occ. LA and Occ. Philly–wants to see if anyone anywhere else is interested
Eli: UCR recent alumn, organizer with union, wants to get things going for the 19th
Kimberly King: Cal State faculty and member of fac assoc., with the people’s collective university at Occ. LA, wants to expand occupy education to include CSUs and CCs
Natalia Abrahams: representative from occupy colleges and UCLA alumnus
Ivan Evans: UCSD Sociology faculty, president of UCSD faculty association. Two major interests 1) get as many faculty to UCR, working on a bus that the fac assoc. will pay for and anyone can board, 2) great value on Thursday is not just making statement against UCOP and UCR protest policies but that different activists and orgs are going to be coming together from different locations. He wants to work on a permanent structure to activate in the future. Interest comes out of a meeting that he attended in Berkeley 3 wks ago–so cal group complained that a bay area network was speaking for the whole state, so south needs to get as organized as other hubs in nor cal, which is the great value of Thursday. Need to turn this into a permanent organization. Asks others to make clear what orgs they represent so he can meet with them to form a permanent org that they can give a name. Nor cal group is now called Occupy Education Northern California. He’d like a name like Occupy Education Southern California
First: where are the meetings on the campus?
Eli: peeps on ground at UCR organizing for about 6 weeks. They know where the meeting will be. Campus will be on lock down. Sealing off a guranteed exit point for regents out of building. Students at UCR suffering retaliation for organizing. Trying to be really careful. People not calling for outright shutdown because of fear of retaliation, but that’s the plan. One day. They’ve been in dialogue with occupy LA, Cal, every UC campus, and other reps from colleges, public sector workers, and other groups. Basic idea is to get as many peeps on the 19th. Good chance occupy UCR encampment will begin the 17th. Forum and civil disobedience training on the 18th. Peeeps who are wiling to get arrested should come on Wed. night. Trying to coordinate with broad range of groups.
Joan: If peopel are gonna go to the protest, do you have an address or location or way into campus?
Eli: Convergence point: traditionally at Unity Corner–up university ave., hard left, turns into canyond crest–900 university ave. busses gonna be dropping people off–union will reimburse up to 3k for transportation, but not just union members can get transpo.
Liana from BAM(?): regents meeting at highland
Direct response: Eli: Second that point from Ivan, peeps have been talking about this, thought there was a conference call proposed for a working group to discuss that very thing. Hoping to have a potluck at the end of the day at UCR to talk about these things. Can share info for the call.
Joan: Did propose a meet up at MLK Park in Long Beach at 1pm for this
Stardust: Also at meeting in Berkeley. Aware of efforts by the organizers in Nor Cal to publish an open letter in So Cal. Basically, everyone up north is concerned about full representation throughout the state, wants to be working statewide, including central and other regions, to be a strong unified force. Committed from communications point of view. Proposals to have work groups include peeps from all over the state and bottom-liners from different regions. We need to work regionally and statewide
Point of process called on Joan by Joan: we were discussing report backs about the regents meeting. If there is any more functional information about plan on the 19th chime in. Unclear about time to show up and what students have planned
Natalia: read occupy colleges and familiar with different groups, not sure if we’ve reached out to UCLA and may be a great avenue to get more people and will give contact info to the group
Desiree: Wanted to talk a bit more about what they’ve been planning. Like Eli said, they’ve been in touch with other campuses. Peeps arriving as early as 7 and will stay till 9 and 10 on the 19th. If we have peeps come out for two days, the turn out will be lower, so want to focus on the 19th, which will be easier for students to come out from campuses around the south. Gonna begin with an open mic to be creative and let people give testimonies and speak their mind from a variety of campuses and groups. Will be right in front of the meeting hub. Will have a rally and will have a civil dis training the night before and there will be more detailed information there.
Eli: Desiree covered it.
Joan: Questions?
Liana from BAM: Trying to get clarity. Is the plan for Wed. night civil dis planning? Not sure that planning for arrests will help out for the next day, because peeps will be more reluctant to come out the next day
Eli: Is the question, what is the CD training gonna be or is it only gonna be on Wed. night? Clarify
Liana: Was the plan for Wed. nigh to have CD and get arrested?
Eli: Wed. evening is a CD training for those who are willing and able to get arrested to make sure that people who cannot afford to get arrested (e.g. undoc.) are able to avoid getting arrested.
Stardust: Request–if someone could summarize the details of what peeps need to know to participate in the action and post, then they can help do publicity and get peeps to join the action
Joan: there is a facebook group. Can someone get stardust the information? Eli agrees and Joan will give him Stardust’s contact info after the call so he can send the info
Natalia: wants the information as well
Joan will send it to entire group and will add it to the notes
Kimberly: Cal State University. Thinks the question is resolved. Wants clear description of time, place, etc.
Joan: will send the info in the email. Peeps asked to get there as early as 7am. There is a local meet-up spot at unity corner.
Ivan: Are we still taling about the sked for the day on Thurs.? The basic plan is to get there as early as possible since workshops will begin as early as 7am. Join in and contribute. What happens after workshop stage at 8am or so, do we march on campus or go somewhere or stay in one place? What is the practical sequence?
Eli: The idea is that peeps get there as early as possible. Public comment needs to be signed up for ahead of time. Only about 80 people allowed. People there early to participate in the workshops. No march. Centralized location where the meeting is at. Wed. is meetings. Thurs. is vote. Outside plan: open mic, GA, soliciting speakers for the program, having a meeting today to plan and generate material. After workshops, move to a program on the outside. Inside: public comment and at its close establish a people’s assembly and open up the meeting and invite them to participate and take over the meeting space to make a public discussion and depending what goes on on the inside, they will need support from the outside crowd. Keep it energetic outside to build a crit mass to support whatever is going on on the inside.
Desiree: Eli pretty much said it all.
Leslie from Occupy SD: you guys mentioned transp and occupy SD would like to arrange a ride share since we’re down here and a lot of people are low-income or don’t have a car
Ivan: No information on the bus from UCSD. Is waiting on that information and will pass it on to Leslie
Liana: Question: Regents are going to be taking some sort of vote, but their agenda didn’t say anything, so what are they gonna be voting on?
Eli: We dont’ know what they are voting on particular. Would be surprised if they don’t try and pull something otu of the woodwork. They are hush hush and they are trying to get information. THinks it’s irrelevant what they are doing and more what they represent as part of the class struggle
Joan: move along. Straw Poll: interested in diversity of tactics on other UC campuses; messages slogans, signs; outreach strategies. Most interest in outreach, less on messages, and least on diversity of tactics. Gonna move onto outreach and then on to smaller discussions of other things. If you have an outreach strategy, press 1. You should know that there will be in the email the facebook event, currently about 1k invited but only 50-60 guaranteed to attend. Eli has agreed to send out functional information about the protests to send through networks
Des: Wants to talk about facebook group. Liana made one. It confuses people. Agrees with having different events to invite peeps statewide, but for the other group to say shut down 18th an 19th will confuse them about what’s happening and the message will be lost and they won’t be able to shut down effectively.
Kimberly: From Occupy LA and Cal State, would like to encourage peeps when they organize events they think of it as all of public education. Remember success of March 4th event in 2010. Knows it’s not that kind of an action, but it feels as a CSU person that the UCs do their own thing and workign together would take more of their issues into account and make a bigger difference. will work with her union and students to get them involved. Wants more emphasis on common causes. Not sure if March 1st day of action will go through.
Eli: Couldn’t agree more. There are a lot of peeps in the UC system who would like to break that trend. The union he’s with is a good place to bridge those gaps and has been trying over the past year.
Michelle: In Nor Cal, leader with CC district in San Mateo. CC district is unrepresented like k-12 and we should try collectively to get more of their participation. She is willing to work with anyone on a day of action on March 1st or 5th (4th?).
Natalia: Basically agrees with everything being said and that this is why in part they started occupy colleges to connect joint actions. March 1st is in the works and occupy ed northern cal and some ny schools are involved. Everyone is welcome. Try to support smaller actions like the UC Regents and bigger actions. Smaller breakout actions for smaller problems
Stardust: Quick follow up found open letter from Nor CAl to So Cal: Doodle poll for a meeting to get organizers to talk with nor cal organizers to make it more participatory. Who can he send email letter to?
Natalia: has nor cal contact to send letter to whomever
Joan will connect them
Nikki: All for solidarity and working together across the board. But, wants to emphasize that the focus is on faculty and students and doesn’t want to overlook contributions of staff, her union is a staff union Academic professionals of cal.
Joan: Agrees that staff are undervalued and are very important. One outreach then is to reach out to staff to be part of events. One of hte things we need to leverage in outreach strategy is the violence tha thas been occurring (berkeley and davis) so part of the strategy should get some of those students to come speak at the events and people would want to hear from them, and another strategy is to reach out to parents who are facing increasing econ hardship, but doesn’t know how to do that
Liana: Having Cal and DAvis who have been brutalized speak. Ivette Foarka, probably seen in Colbert video as small Asian woman hit first. Has been very involved with occupy cal and member of Bam. they hvae a lawsuit against police and admin representing 20 something students and 20 somethign otehrs. Ivette would be interested in speaking
Joan: ask liana to reach out to her
Liana: will talk to her today and will get in contact with people doing facebook page
Ivan: Most of the points he wants to make have been made. Too much attn. given to UCs. We need to represent all higher ed. Master plan refers to three integrated levels. Urge all speakers to make this point on Thurs. This will be the theme of his remarks if he gets to make the. Most impressive things he saw in Nor cal meeting was involvement of k-12 peeps. We should also not forget unions, get as many involved. Question: Is there anyway, how exactly will a future meetings of people represented in this call now take place? Should we thinkg about getting togethter to form a hub of a network with a name? We should act as a State, but it’s easier to organize in regions that act together. Interested in a regional hub in So Cal. Is this call a step towards that goal and will Joan be part of that?
Joan: Overloaded with interoccupy, but doesn’t preclude hosting these calls. She will convene these meetings and we don’t need to stop with regents meeting organizing. Will poll on starting a google group. Networks built regionally are more brittle than more stratified across a larger area networks, because so few people follow through. If you reach out to bottom-liners across a bigger area, you’ll get more done.
Leslie: Agree with point
Stardust: Outreach: There si a sight called occupyu.org main item is a directory of uni occupy gorups in california and occupylist.org that is a directory worldwide and can be used to reach out to groups in your region
Natalia: Suggestion to propose that if there are regional groups that they delegate someone to report back to occupycolleges so everyone can know what’s going on in true spirit of transparency. She also ahs contact with AFL-CIO studnets gropus which are great for mobilizing
Joan: we need ot frmulate some kind of open email to forward along to different groups
Nikki: Wanted to talke about outreach to parents. No greater vehicle in early start to talk to parents abotu all these issues in general, but only get them engaged when we talk to them about early start. What are they telling incoming freshman about early start. Unions are good for outreach. Reaching otu to them as individuals and parents, especially those using early start.
Joan: Approaching 1 hour 11 mins. Next topic is messages, slogans, and signs. Two people showed interest. Letting people agree to share contact information or not. Will bcc those who do not want it shared and will cc those who do. Email etiquette in the movement. Keep it short and direct or it won’t be responded to. Thanks everyone for being on the call and opens up for last minute announcements. Thirty seconds
Liana: Thinking about what people said about putting shut down. Good defense is good offense. Got charges dropped because of public profile?
Ivan: Accidentally put himself on the bcc list but is proud of affiliation and wants to be public
Eli: Thanks everyone. In regard to shut down, agrees. This is a decision come to through consensus at UCR and it should be respected. Inaudible. Peeps should not promote what they want to do, they should organize, but it is counter-productive to call for shut down on both days because there aren’t enough peeps and should concentrate on the 19th
Samuel: put him on the cc list
Joan: that is the end of the call. thanks for the effort. fruitful. will lead to good results. email with notes from call will be sent to everyone. Kelly will clean up notes and will make sure that contact info in relation to their association
