35 people attended WESPAC’s Town Hall Meeting on Thursday, December 11th. People brought alot of issues to the table and gave an update about what they were working on. Several people expressed an interest in ending the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and not expanding the war to Iran. Folks were interested in working on criminal justice issues, racial justice and also economic justice issues. Daniel Strum came up with some great suggestions for restructuring WESPAC committees:
"There are 3 necessary ongoing duties that need to be done to keep the group organized and moving forward:
1. A documents person who will maintain a library of the minutes and other docs the group creates. I would say that this person could also be responsible for facilitating the creation of agendas for each meeting.
2. A scheduling person who reminds the group of up-coming meetings and deals w/ scheduling problems. This person could also be responsible for making sure that at least one member of the group will be attending the larger activist coordinating meeting.
3. A taskmaster (or as we call it in Adalah, a nagger) who periodically checks up on people to see if they are doing the things they have volunteered to do and if they are having problems, tries to find help or another person to take over the task.
I think that both meeting facilitators and note takers should be rotating tasks since both positions impart a certain amount of power and simultaneously change the character or ability of the person to participate in a way similar to the other members.
Daniel Strum"
We will try and implement these great suggestions. Thank you, Daniel!
Here are some photos from the meeting: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nirainjana/sets/72157611356755445/show/
