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Post by ellyrobson on Mar 11, 2009 11:17:54 GMT
this is a thread for the posting of general meeting minutes on the general board!
should be generally quite useful to have all minutes in one place.
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Post by ellyrobson on Mar 13, 2009 13:19:58 GMT
(rough) Minutes to CGS discussion 12/03/09
BUSINESS
Newsletter to send out – working groups to produce bulletin – Education and events – Jessica. Other working groups email Elly at cambridgeoccupation@live.com. This newsletter will go out to academics, our mailing lists, blog, groups and the university authorities. It needs to be done as a matter of priority!
Discussion about the forum.
ISSUES
How do we relate generally to conflict.
Humanitarian vs. Challenging the university.
Political affiliations – are we a political movement?
REVISE QUORACY (we were quorate during this discussion).
Proposal – lower quoracy.
Two levels of quoracy for different issues? Lower quoracy, 24 hours for raising concerns.
Below quoracy for the last 3 meetings, but must still keep acting.
Email lists can raise concerns. But best to get people to meetings. Anyone who raises objections should come to the next general meeting to raise them in person, otherwise same people may make the same objections again across the internet.
Consensus vs. Vote – what system are we using? Useful to have a system whereby abstentions and disagreement can be noted.
But consensus also essential. A combination of the two, just as in the occupation?
Proposal – quoracy at 18, minutes sent out immediately after meetings, action pending 24 hours to raise serious objections, no action until this timeframe over – if 6 seriously object then suspend decision. Objections can be raised after 24 hours and any decision can be overturned at the next general meeting.
Only in an emergency situation where immediate action needed do we not follow this. (AGREED)
For things like mass direct action, much higher quoracy needed – use our intelligence as to which decisions need mass group assent.
STATEMENTS
Silence is political – what do we do about issues we don’t agree on?
In instances it has been assumed that we do agree on these issues by either non-cgs or even ourselves.
Cannot cover ourselves against all slander – some people will wilfully misunderstand our position. Eg. Claim that we wish to wipe out Israel.
NOT an ‘official’ statement, as this suggests we have an unofficial position. Rather, a ‘collective’ statement, as we do all have individual positions.
Do we need to have collective opinion?
The point of a position is to counter assumptions. Reactive? In the occupation, we were exposed and forced to react with statements. Necessary now?
Will be misinterpreted?
What statements are we making about Israeli suffering? Why do we condemn the Israeli government, democratically elected, and not Hamas? The answer that it’s democratically elected isn’t enough.
We condemn the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza and the occupied territories, not the Israeli government overall.
Need a sense of proportion and nuance in any statements we issue. Must not just water down to condemning all violence everywhere.
More conversations needed. Political or no? A collection of opinions on the blog, showing wide range of individual thoughts?
Need to indicate points of commonality – what do we support?
What about the labour, LGBT, feminist movements in Palestine, oppressed by Hamas. It is important that the international solidarity movement does not ignore these issues. Important to make actual political points.
Complexity of Hamas.
Statements or not? What do statements mean?
MORE TOPICS – throw out
Political discussions - should they be separate to general meetings, which deal with actual action points. Not just moving towards a proposal, which can shut down debate due to need to pass proposals. Need to make safe and open space for political discussion. This can prevent factionalism and promote our strength – diversity.
How to communicate outside meetings / increase participation.
What do we campaign for? All conflicts? Should we be taking action on other issues?
Israel /Palestine conflict – direct British impact on the conflict. Thus can apply ourselves to situations where our government is involved just as our university was. Need to remember that as Cambridge students we do have the power to make the university change its behaviour – eg. Ethical investment.
Need to focus on where the university, global conflict and us intersect.
SYNTHESIS OF TOPICS
Political discussion – factionalism, safe space
What do we campaign on? Which institutions/bodies are our focus – Israeli government, British government, University? (obviously not mutually exclusive).
Communication.
Action vs. Statements. How does discussion inform our action? Should we be focussing on what we say or what we do?
OPEN DISCUSSION
Unifying politics – solidarity. Socialism is the unifier to achieve our aims.
But for other people, religion. Diversity of perspectives essential.
Forum – open forum allows individual view points, while wiki makes a ‘collective’ view point. Open forum to let them see our range of opinion and discussion.
Gaza – our unifying issue. But how do we relate to this. We all come from different backgrounds. CGS is about gaza. But membership of other parties is part of our reason for participating. A space to bring our experience and ideas into. Though must acknowledge diversity - not all here for the same reason.
Other places except gaza. But gaza is our focus for now – already a lot of work!
Common criticism that we could do more for all conflict – Response - if we had more people we could! Join us!
The name CGS – BBC gave it to us. Do we want to rethink?
What is this meeting for? Politics? Discussion of Hamas, discussion of our focus as an organisation? No agenda for the meeting.
But this is a one off – long overdue, in response to a lot of different questions.
We need a space for political discussion.
PROPOSALS
P – have a discussion within CGS about Hamas – with no decisions, but just a space to discuss. (AGREED)
P – Talk about national movement (AGREED)
P – disclose what other groups we are members of.
P – that we have regular discussion, with no decision making power, once fortnightly in order to talk about issues, political and other, surrounding CGS. Well publicised. Any proposals thought of in this meeting can be taken to the general meeting for consensus. No action coming directly from these discussions. (AGREED)
P – General meetings more regular – weekly, but hopefully shorter. Important – regular room bookings and ability for people to reschedule arrangements to attend. But after 6 o’clock important. (AGREED).
P – Forum. Public, but not anonymous (people must sign in to write). (AGREED)
Does anyone want to be secretary of the email account? Elly has prelims next term, right at the beginning, so well placed to continue, but if anyone else interested, get in touch!
Where will we have meetings? A variety of venues with price in mind.
When? Sometimes change the day to enable people who can’t make one day to make some meetings.
Beccy will work out when – an online doodle poll just to find out the best days?
Delegate room booking to individuals.
Wiki – good for articles. Put up minutes for the meetings there.
Important that we use the forum to continue discussion during non face-to-face times, eg. The holidays. Even if web interaction not our favoured form of interaction, or we are really busy, in the times when we are physically unable to meet, must use the forum for discussions. Can flag up events and new discussions on the mailing lists, but further discussion should happen on the forum.
Are the 8 week terms designed to stifle student activism?
NATIONAL MOVEMENT
Next big discussion of the national movement the meeting run by occupations nationally. April 18th, probably in London.
Who will we send as a delegate?
6 or 7 people interested in going. Not a delegate system – go as individuals who were in the Cambridge occupation.
MORE
Direct action training – Saturday, 1.30, Cafe project
Facilitation training – 7pm tonight (13th March)
Newsletter
National occupation meeting – 18th April
1st May – gig
No borders demo 21st March (?)
P – Please can people send notifications of EVENTS to the cambridgeoccupation@live.com account, titled ANNOUNCE and then the subject. Then elly can synthesise all the information, instead of having it all floating around in disparate gaza-gen emails. CHEERS.
Well done everyone. This has been an incredible term.
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xl269
New Member
Posts: 7
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Post by xl269 on Mar 13, 2009 17:19:09 GMT
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benny
New Member
Posts: 6 
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Post by benny on Mar 13, 2009 17:19:52 GMT
Just a quick addition. In relation to our new system of decision making, we also decided that if complaints via the net caused a motion to be suspended and taken back to a second general meeting, the decision made at that meeting will be binding regardless of further email complaints (although of course future general meetings would still be sovereign)
SO IF YOU MAKE AN EMAIL COMPLAINT, MAKE SURE YOU CAN COME TO THE NEXT MEETING TO RESOLVE IT.
peace & love
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Post by eleftherios on Mar 14, 2009 0:14:52 GMT
Hi, I have just posted on the wiki the minutes from the previous general meeting. The one that was on the 5/03/09 written by Ria.  |
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Post by eleftherios on Mar 14, 2009 0:18:08 GMT
Elly I think it is much better to put the Meetings on the wiki rather than on the forum. Actually, that is what we said that we should do yesterday I think. The forum is for discussion the wiki is for information.
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Post by digger1 on Mar 15, 2009 17:48:48 GMT
Minutes need to be on the wiki. I have a problem with these minutes but i can't alter them. I think we agreed that the forum would be public but I'm sure it should read. " should be public but anonomous"
I don't remeber agreeing that on a public forum people MUST have their names in the user name.
I'll happily send round my name on the e-mail list so people know who I am but i don't agree people should have to put their names in if they don't want to.
This is not paranoia it's about the principle.
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Post by ellyrobson on Mar 25, 2009 15:06:10 GMT
hi guys,
sorry, the minutes definitely should have gone up on the wiki straight away... i also definitely would've done that if i hadn't broked me leg!
but i don't see a problem with them being up here as well, i need to refer to them quite a lot when writing about things for next term on the forum.
digger1, i'm pretty sure that we agreed public but not anonymous - it is what was written in the minutes. if enough serious concerns are registered about this (see the minutes for this system) we can check at the next general meeting. It seems we may well need to define what 'anonymous' means in any case.
Other things that may need to be discussed are whether we should remove the karma, exalt, smite functions - see testing 1,2,3 thread for more discussion of this.
Personally i do think we need to be careful not to micromanage in general meetings and perhaps we should make a more formal group of people who are admins of the forum and are mandated to moderate it (obviously not heavily!). I don't think these things are our most pressing concern - they are about efficient admin which is fairly simple and we are working our way through most of these things as we go.
I would really like to see people writing on the working group pages, such as events and education etc. This is what I think is really important to us acheiving concrete support for those in gaza.
ps. ximin, really like what you've done with the wiki, the general meeting minutes are really clear and easy to read, and loving the CGS symbol!
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