Minutes of General Meeting
September 12 2006

A General Meeting of the U.S. Citizens for Peace and Justice-Rome was held on Tuesday, September 12th at the home of Kathy Ford. Twelve members attended the general meeting (see list of names below) and engaged in active discussions of the items on the agenda.

Those in attendance were: Barbara A, Marilee, Elaine, Patrick Barbara O, Julienne, David, Gene, Maria, Kathy, Marco, and Stephanie.

The meeting was chaired by Kathy, David took minutes.

1. Stephanie at Camp Casey: Steph reported on some of her experiences while participating in Cindy Sheehan’s demonstration/camp outside the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas. She noted the increasing anger in the U.S. over Iraq, immigration, gas prices, etc., and the changing political views of her own parents with respect to the Bush administration. Steph mentioned that she had been recently interviewed about events in the U.S. movement (Camp Democracy and the Declaration of Peace) by an Italian radio news agency.

2. Upcoming events: The group discussed participating, possibly having a USC4P&J table, at the International Community Fair to be held at John Cabot University on Saturday, 16 September. Steph, Gene and Julienne agreed to take charge of these plans (they were too late to organize a table but ended up handing out USC4P&J flyers at the fair). The group raised the idea of participating in the “Evening on the Campidoglio” sponsored by the Rome Democrats or even organizing an alternative to it outside the event because of the high cost. In the end, the members made no group decision on this event.

3. Eyes Wide Open Film Series: Gene and David (Ilona being absent) presented the list of films proposed for the fall program by the film committee. After some discussion, the members agreed on six of the 11 films proposed for consideration, including two on the Iraq war, one on American politics, one on Israel/Palestine, one on the environment and one from the conservative point of view.

The group also agreed to screen the films every other week on Wednesdays at 19:00 (subject to agreement with the Linux Club), beginning on 4 October with “The Big Buy: Tom DeLay’s Stolen Congress”. Steph agreed to produce a flyer and members agreed to make every effort to publicize the new film series in local media, by word of mouth, etc.

4. Mexican Elections: After a short break, Maria commented on the turmoil surrounding the Mexican elections, basically saying that despite the protests of the losing candidate, Lopez Obrador, she did not think that the election had been stolen.

5. Declaration of Peace: The group discussed organizing a demonstration for the Declaration of Peace outside the Colosseum. Marco agreed to get a permit for the demonstration and emphasized the need to include Italians. Steph, Marco and Kathy volunteered to serve as an organizing committee.

(Note: following the meeting, the group then decided via email discussion to instead go to Colleferro with local Italian groups for a protest at a cluster bomb factory)

6. General Meetings: The group agreed to hold future USC4P&J general meetings once a month, and with advance notice to the members.

Next meeting: Mid October, exact date to be announced. Join our mailing list for updates.