Minutes of General Meeting - May 17 2006

Location: The Beehive – Via Marghera 8, Rome, Italy
Date: 17 May 2006

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

Stephanie
Arash
Giuliana
Marco
Chérine
David
Nick
Becky

Objective:
To discuss upcoming protests in Rome, forming a film committee for our documentary film series, letters to authorities, another tabling event and questions/comments on our group.

Upcoming Protests in Rome
Stephanie gave a report on the meeting by Italian organizers held on May 15. Several of the organizers had attended the European Social Forum in Athens. The declaration of the forum called for a week of mobilization from 23 to 30 September 2006 for complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, against the threat of a new war in Iran, against the occupation of Palestine, for nuclear disarmament and to eliminate military bases in Europe. This week of action in Europe will coincide with major events in the U.S.

All European countries are called upon to start organizing events as a lead up to the September week of action. In Italy, these will include two protests in June.

The first will be on the June 2 holiday to contest the military parade and call for withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Events will be organized throughout Italy, with the largest in Rome. The idea is for a protest march in the center of Rome, with stops along the way to "occupy" bridges over the Tiber.

The second protest will be on the occasion of the vote in parliament to refinance the Italian missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The exact date is not yet known but should fall in the last week of June. For this protest, a national demonstration will be organized in front of Palazzo Chigi.

Film Committee
Next we talked about forming a committee to organize the fall and spring seasons of our Eyes Wide Open documentary film series. Volunteers are needed to identify new films, contact filmmakers, organize the schedule, etc. David offered his support for this committee, as did Chérine, who will also help us to find more films from the Arab world. Gene and Ilona, who were unable to attend the meeting, had also expressed an interest in this committee via email.

Committee members will be supplied with a list of a few films that have already been identified, ideas for where to find more films, how to contact filmmakers, etc.

Letters to Authorities
We talked about our "group" letters to authorities, including the pope and the new Italian prime minister, Romano Prodi. We discussed more the best method to go about writing these letters than the actual contents. The first attempt at using the forums did not go very well, with few people commenting the letters. We discussed the possibility of instead forming small committees of those interested in a particular letter, whose members would draft the letter together with the coordinating committee. It was decided that if indeed the forums prove not to be useful for the collaborative writing projects, we will move to the committee method.

Flyering Event
In light of the two upcoming protests in June, we decided to put off our next flyering event until July. We will decide at that time the issue(s) to cover.

Misc
We talked about Kathy's participation in the delivery of the Don't Attack Iran petition in Washington D.C. and how different it is for us here to participate in protests. In the U.S. demonstrators always have to deal with counter protests. As U.S. citizens speaking out in Italy, we instead receive applause.

We also talked about how important our voice is in Italy and how Italian groups count on our participation in demonstrations here.

And to give more visibility to the numerous protests organized around the U.S., we discussed the new "Activism Spotlight" section of the web site. Eventually, once this section covers several weeks of activism, we plan to translate it to Italian and publicize it with Italian groups and web sites.

The rest of the evening was spent discussing politics and chatting over dinner at The Beehive Café.

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