Minutes of General Meeting - Apr 06 2006

Location: The Beehive – Via Marghera 8, Rome, Italy
Date: 06 April 2006
Time: 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM

The second General Meeting, open to current and prospective members of USC4P&J, was attended by the following people:

Objective :
To discuss upcoming events as well as forming committees and finding volunteers to cover the ongoing activities of our group, a new outreach initiative and questions/comments on our group.

Upcoming events
First on the agenda was a discussion of upcoming events. Michael Uhl, a veteran of Vietnam and anti war activist, will be in Rome for about a week at the end of April/beginning of May. Several events will be organized to take advantage of his presence. Our group in particular will be responsible for organizing a talk on April 29. This also happens to be the date of the national demonstration against the war in New York City and plans for this event include a live connection with the protest march.

We were also contacted by world-class bike racer from the U.S. He will be cycling the length of Italy and this time he is "cycling for peace." He will be passing through Rome, and though he won't be stopping we are looking into organizing a group to welcome him and support him in his efforts.

Volunteer Activities
Next we talked about assigning various tasks to volunteers. We asked for volunteers for film presentations, which includes preparing a handout for the film, a brief introduction the night of the screening, leading the discussion after the film and a write up for our web site. Films were assigned as follows:

Apr 12 Hotel Palestine – Stephanie
Apr 26 Hidden in Plain Sight – Kathy
May 10 Brothers and Others – Chérine
May 24 What I've Learned About US Foreign Policy – Peter
June 07 The Peace DVD - Becky

Gene also offered his continued availability to organize "movie nights" to see films at the cinema when there is something relevant to our group

We also talked about forming a pool of people available to work on the weekly news bulletin. Each member will be responsible for collecting news stories and writing the bulletin on a rotating basis. Gene, Ryan, Stephanie and Becky will initially form this pool. Marco also offered to add related Italian news items.

Another pool was needed to attend the weekly meetings with the Rome peace groups. Again each member would attend on a rotating basis and report back to the group what was discussed and decided in the meeting. Stephanie, Ele as well as Giuliana and Barbara, who were not able to attend our meeting but who had already volunteered, will form this team.

And finally, we asked for volunteers to write our more or less monthly letters to the ambassador. This also led to a discussion of what we want to accomplish with these letters and it was decided they serve as a way to air our concerns and doubts with a representative of our government in Italy. Peter and Kathy will cover this.

(Please note: we still have plenty of volunteer opportunities if you are interested. Contact us at: volunteer@peaceandjustice.it)

New Outreach Initiative
We discussed a new initiative aimed at informing Rome residents about our group and activities as well as current issues. The idea is to set up a table on squares in Rome, more or less once a month. Trastevere was noted as a good location as it is home to many students and English-speaking residents. Flyers would be prepared on current issues in English and Italian, as well as flyers on our group, the film series, etc. The possibility of starting on April 15, Tax Day in the U.S., with a focus on military spending was mentioned, though it is not certain we will be able to organize on such short notice.

Questions/Comments
Our connection with Democrats Abroad was brought up and this was fortunate since there always seems to be some confusion about the two groups. Stephanie explained that they are indeed two separate groups. There is overlap but the main distinction is that Dems Abroad is a political party and we are a grassroots organization. There are some who are involved with both groups, and there are also members of each group who want nothing to do with the other. The rumor that USC4P&J got started as a reaction to Dems Abroad was also addressed. This is untrue. USC4P&J was initially formed to make our voices heard on issues of U.S. foreign policy.

We also talked about the Israeli Palestinian conflict and the need to debate it more as well as find alternative Israeli voices. Some felt this was expanding too much our focus while most felt this was an issue that deserved attention, being one of the most influential in U.S. foreign policy. It was decided to look for an occasion for a debate, but with care to represent all sides of the issue.

The idea of sending a solidarity statement to Combatants for Peace, an alliance of ex Israeli soldiers and Palestinian freedom fighters was also mentioned. We met some of their members on March 18 and their media launch is on April 10. All were in favor of sending a statement of support.

Ele, who works with a local radio, asked for contacts for a series they are doing on activists in the U.S. The focus for now is on labor and immigrants rights groups.

Next meeting: In approximately 1 month. An announcement will be sent to the mailing list.