Agenda
Declared Absences: Claire M., Marli K
Undeclared Absences:
Consent Agenda
- Approve Agenda
Michael motions to approve by UC
Sam 2nds
Motion passes
- Approve Previous Minutes
Far motions to approve by UC
Michael 2nds
Motion passes
Reports
No major changes. I now have full access to our bank account, and can see every transaction in detail. More robust report out on Sunday. $86k in bank account, about $7 in Pay Pal. Going to start looking more heavily into CD for $40k in reserves. More on that when I look into it.
Gary: Do we have a Square payment processing account that we can link up to a Square reader?
Michael: Not that I’m aware of, perhaps through Pay Pal, but not off the top of my head.
Gary: I wanted to sell posters at the market, maybe have something set up for that.
Good flow of tickets, particularly design and mass text. New apprenticeship program announcement soon.
Sam: Chapter EWOC merch store? Questions about where our contingent is. Buttons, etc.
Michael: Store requires getting access to the password. Others requested getting new shirts in, we just have to track down who has the login credentials. It’s on my agenda.
N/A
Social on the 15th. Electoral board reading on the 19th. Updates will be posted on red bug. New member orientation coming up. Seed swap at GMU regional library. On 31st, we have a Single Payer health fair. Arlington is now a trans sanctuary city. Section 7 is now gone.
Far: Trans sanctuary is a huge deal; BAWG has been working on this for a huge time. Section 7, our work via ICE out of Arlington has also been a long time in the making. Local police can now no longer collaborate with ICE. A big day for Arlington.
Gaithersburg city elections and general election work; Another organizer and I will be the main boots on the ground, collaborating more with the chapter once the candidates we hope to elect get chapter endorsement. June GBM in downtown Silver Spring. If anyone wants, they can give a plug for Pride events. For our steering committee, we moved the election date closer to the new year. A one-month period will exist where the old and new committees are co-existing to hand off the work.
We now have a fully functional branch comms committee. Most members are relatively new to the chapter. Great to have them involved in our operations. We’ll be working on a weekly branch newsletter. The next meeting is 8:00pm tonight. If they haven’t already connected with chapter publications, that will begin soon. New steering elections on Saturday. May monthly GBM. Candidate discussion on May 28th, candidate application will run from this Saturday to the 28th. Will be accepting applications for the branch election committee soon. I did have a question on setting up an OpaVote; do we have the ability to do that? If not, we have a template from my work. We also have more details about the Chesapeake Baysox game. A group deal for the June 14th game. We need at least 20 attendees for that deal; $12-13 per person. Need to inform the Baysox by May 25th.
Tim: Branches can use OpaVote, you can reach out to me with help for that.
Sam: We;ll be having a meeting about that collaboration, including with Woody. Please pass that message along.
Ralph: Will do.
Last saturday, we had a YDSA council meeting. Unfortunately just me and Montgomery County YDSA. More of a 1:1 with them discussing their campaign, still productive. I made some recommendations, such as just focusing on one campaign. I mentioned there’s an organizing training; if anyone knows any YDSA folks, it’s a great resource. It’ll be on Monday. You can ask me for the link. Hopefully we’ll have another council meeting next month. Montgomery County YDSA likely won’t have the capacity to have a rep on Campaigns Council. Hopefully this summer we’ll have more time to plan the implementation of all that. UMD YDSA is thinking of YDSA national convention. We’re not sure about funding. What sort of funding MDC DSA has for helping with that. We know there will be some scholarships for YDSA national, unsure of how much it will cover. We’re trying to figure out how much people can contribute themselves. I reached out to AU about a joint fundraiser but they seemed to be sending one person who’s already in Chicago so they may not need funding, but I’ll check in with them again. What funding do we have for travel and lodging expenses if we need it?
Tim: We have a little bit of money left in the YDSA fund, I can look into that. We can definitely use our Action Network to help fundraise.|# 7:05 pm - 7:20 pm|
Old Business
What isn’t planned so far? We need volunteers to get hybrid equipment over there. I’d rather not chair again this time if possible.
Bakari: I can chair, I haven’t chaired one yet. I can also be there to help set up the tech that’ll be especially important this time.
Sam: GBM mass outreach text goes out tonight.
Tim: Anyone available to pick up the tech from the storage unit?
Sam: I haven’t been to the storage unit before but I could do that if it would be helpful.
Tim: Do you have a car?
Sam: No.
Tim: Let me think a little harder then. If you and someone with a car could do it, that would work. We now have a combo lock so it’s easier than ferrying a key around.
Far: I have access to a car. I also have not been to the storage unit. Maybe he and I can handle that.
Ben: I can walk someone through it if they want to meet me at the storage unit.
Tim: Anything else here for basic logistics?
Far: Openslides? Anything we need to consider for the proxying situation?
Julia: Not sure if this is part of the announcement.
Patrick: Included in the announcement, I can update that if we need to change for proxying situation.
Ben: Openslides is not yet set up, it’s easy and I can do that with someone and set it up if they want. For proxying, we’ve typically allowed people to just give them their login info.
Julia: I can learn OpenSlides.
Far: As am I.
New Business
Carl can fill in some of the gaps. We had a conversation with Claudia and Claire about this. Carl has been serving as our media liaison and email account, we need to have a conversation on how to relieve him of that and have one of us take that on. We’re trying to look at training up people to be more media trained on issues; more stuff about press releases. The idea is to have a media training type event at the next joint CC/SC meeting.
Carl: We’re looking to have the comms department take over official media liaison. Not sure if there’s training from national. Make sure people know how to use press releases rather than doing them willy-nilly.
Far: That’s coming up for working group leaders to become more press trained.
Patrick: SC role, now Adcom with steering comms portfolio cooperation?
Carl: It was more happenstance that it became a steering position; the role of the comms portfolio is more up to how engaged steering wants to be.
Joe: I believe it would be a comms portfolio project. Let me look back at our messages and I’ll update you all about it.
Revision to timeline we’d previously passed. Part of the reason this is necessary is that we need more time to work through the endorsement process and deal with delays in questionnaires. This would make the online June GBM resolution a first read, July GBM a second read. We’re drafting the weekly update blurbs and I’m writing the ticket to update the website so I’ll have that all ready to go.
Tim: Have you begun reaching out to candidates already?
Bakari: Yes, Gaithersburg city council, Frankie, and we’ll be contacting the other people running in the race knowing that they have a chance to seek our endorsement.
Bakari motions to pass by UC
Joe 2nds.
Passes
Tim: We still have another one at the end of the year, right?
Bakari: Yes, the one for the 2026 primaries didn’t change.
This resolution updates the questionnaire. Changes made to the working group sections after speaking with CC about it and WG representatives. They suggested changes, we incorporated them into the questionnaire. There’s an addition of bodily autonomy questions, some WGs had edits to the language, emphasis on different parts of their program.
Bakari motions to approve by UC
Joe 2nds
Motion passes.
Pubs board’s yearly elections are coming up. Myself, Julie, and Claudia are term limited and can’t run again. NOt sure about the others. We were originally going to have elections in April but we didn’t want to cause confusion about SC and delegate elections. We’ll provide a roster for everyone who’s eligible, and will publicize that to SC, CC, publications channel, to make sure we didn’t miss a;nyone. We’ll keep that open for two weeks, a weeklong nominations period, then have a vote in the first week of June. Then, we’ll have the internal vote for a week. Just letting SC know because we’re trying to get the word out about it. Trying to utilize the full roster list tomorrow. I don’t think we’ll need OpaVote. The board voted to approve approval voting of five people run with a 50% threshold, ranked choice if it’s more than five. We’ll also have notices go out in the weekly update.
This is about Red Bug. I didn’t mind hosting it last year but I’m asking for a reimbursement for last year. Will request reimbursement for the last four months, about $120. We’re transferring ownership to the Washington socialist account, we need an additional site plan for $23 a month, about $276 a year. That’s something of an increase. I wanted to see if that’s in bounds for coverage or whether I needed to go through another process for us to increase our budget.
Michael: Adding it to the web flow for next year is easy; what’s the final dollar amount for this year?
Gary: Just $120 for last year which I covered. For the rest of it, it would be $276 a year.
Michael: And that’s on top of the $276 we’re already paying?
Gary: Yes. They have a nice engagement system and for sites with a large CMS collection, they make you pay for two separate design systems. Total yearly for both sites would be $552.
Michael: We have $1900 in discretionary, end of year seems fine, I’m on the fence about $552 for web dev. That would be more of a question in November for when we begin constructing a budget. I like red bug and we rely on it.
Gary: Agreed. For Washington Socialist we’re running out of room due to how many articles we write. We’re running out of CMS there. For next year, we have to think about whether we want to continue with this design or not. We’re paying a bit more but can make great looking websites with few design skills. We’re not above fundraising for this if we have to. I want to make sure we either get this in the budget, or reconsider the cost. Can I submit a reimbursement request for the chapter? For the web flow payment process, I think we already have a card on file. I think I can easily remove that.
Tim: For that I think we’d need some kind of reso since it’s over what the treasurer can do, but we can pass that by Loomio and change the card.
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Nakba Day march endorsement (Nell G.)
Far: I’ll be motivating. Thursday is Nakba Day, 77 years since the ethnic cleansing of Palestine began. Our walking tour is that weekend as well. Part of national DSA’s Nakba week. This event is PYM’s march. It does conflict with our GBM. I don’t think there’s a contingent. Some folks from IWG may want to go. I think this is more to highlight this event. I also want to shout out the walking tour and other Nakba related comments on Slack, I may add this to that list if that’s ok. We’re building solidarity with PYM now, co-endorsing and promoting each other’s events. March begins at the Washington memorial.
Julia: On conflicting with the GBM, I do agree with it being a formal contingent. If there’s any risk, it would be better to have a formal contingent than not. But I’d be on board with endorsing this.
Far: I agree. What I was getting from Nell is that there isn’t a plan to turn out major people for the contingent. Maybe have some structure around that, a signal chat, or an AN link.
Julia: Signal chat would be good, up to WG leadership.
Bakari: Could be an AN but if we’re not doing that much active turnout for it it may not make that much sense. WE could just say “react to this message if you’ll be at the march today.” Unfortunate about the conflict, it’s good to be in solidarity.
Bakari motions to approve by UC
Tim seconds
Passes
There are provisions from national for allowing for a motion about STV Hare. Whatever the result, we should make sure we abide by those requirements.
Bakari: If I remember correctly, there was a slide in our previous convention’s slideshow that outlines those things. 10% petition, 15% motion. I think we go into that so people know the context for it and allow people to ask questions and get on stack with POIs. We go into the vote and introduce what the process is.
Far: Is there any consideration about when that shows up?
Bakari: Probably just chapter business.
Tim: There’s going to be a vote and if 15% of the people have to vote yes on Hare for it to pass. It has to be an election style vote. But that’s pretty feasible on OpenSlides and we’re all prepared for that to happen.
Far: Sounds good, I just didn’t want procedural issues or concerns with national to be a problem.
Carl: My understanding is that there is a provision that we just get it automatically; if they didn’t have 10% of the chapter, we’d leave it off the agenda and we’d have it anyway and leave it off the agenda, or am I misunderstanding the rules?
Far: I’m unsure about the current state of the petition, I think that’s what you’re referring to. Yes, I think that would be the default if we didn’t take any action, I think it’s good to have the vote.
I took a seasonal job in Brazil from June 2nd to August 9th. As of now, I’m making sure the roles I play can be done while I’m gone. I’ll try to vibe it out the first couple of weeks to see how much I can do virtually/asynchronously. I will keep you all updated. I want this to be public knowledge. I’ll be between 1 and 3 hours depending on where you are in Brazil and daylight savings.