By Kate Zaidan, National Council Coordinator
This year’s National Council Meeting took place in Yellow Springs, Ohio at Antioch College directly following the Activist Training Camp. We took over yet another building at Antioch. This time it was the Radical Library, home to Antioch Radio and a whole lotta zines and other fabulous reading material. Unfortunately, we were too busy to really delve into the library. This meeting was pretty small in terms of attendance, but we did manage to get a whole lot done and set ourselves up for what promises to be a truly rocking fall semester.
We definitely had a lot to hash out after the Activist Training Camp. We wanted to devote a lot of time to fully exploring what we could do to make SEAC events safe spaces for everyone, regardless of race, class, gender, abilities, or age. This stuff is never easy and definitely led to some conflicts, but regardless of how hard it was, it was a topic we could not afford to avoid.
One of the best things about this meeting was that the folks that were new to SEAC took a really proactive role in giving their input. I’m really glad to know that these amazing people are getting involved.
All in all, I think this was a great meeting and I am really looking forward to an exciting and productive semester.
Cheers!
Kate Zaidan
National Council Coordinator
Friday, August 6
Began at 5:00pm
The first part of Friday’s meeting was spent reviewing what the National Council is, the way the meetings are generally structured, laying ground rules and reviewing (and creating some new) hand signals.
The agenda committee created an agenda that night based on the following goals:
I. Anti-Oppression Discussion:
Introduction
The anti-oppression committee had been having conversations over conference calls about contracting an organization called Changework, a group that would work with SEAC over the course of two years to help combat the institutional and personal racism perpetuated by SEAC. Representatives to the anti-oppression committee brought this idea to the National Council meeting for further discussion and to decide on the next steps to take. Contracting Changework will cost between $10,000 and $15,000 over the course of a year and half. This money would not come out of SEAC’s current operating budget, but would be fundraised through grant writing and other means. Gonzalo Perez, an organizer with a group called Envirocitizen, has worked with Changework through Envirocitizen and was available to answer questions.
Why Changework?
- The ATC, and other events shows that we don’t have the knowledge or experience to do anti-oppression work effectively.
- Forms of oppression other than racism were addressed well, yet anti-racism work was significantly lacking.
- We talk a lot about developing an analysis, yet little on implementation.
- We failed to creating safe spaces to make people more comfortable, we weren’t well enough prepared, and we’ll be stumbling over ourselves if we don’t have an analysis that everyone can agree on.
- Without a common analysis, we can’t come up with a common plan.
- We’ve been trying to do this ourselves for the past ten years and haven’t been successful.
Concerns about Changework:
- Funding (Changework costs the equivalent of roughly one half of SEAC’s yearly budget.)
- Not utilizing the channels we’ve already established in SEAC or trying to do the work ourselves
- Classim is perpetuated by this proposal (by assuming that the money is just out there)
- Using this money to fund Changework instead of staff pay or travel scholarships that could help address classism.
- Not enough people in this conversation to make such a large decision
- Lack of focus on natural environment
II. SEAC Chapters and the Relationship to SEAC National
We began this discussion by doing a go around of folks involved in local SEAC affiliates (currently or in the past) and what a relationship to SEAC has meant to them. The responses were used to focus an outreach plan around main connections with SEAC. They included:
- Conferences
- Campaigns
- Trainings
- Mission and Organizing Model
Suzanne gave a presentation of her 8-point draft outreach plan. This plan is not official or finalized, but will be used to frame any outreach plan that we make.
Accountability issues come up with concerns about the ability of our outreach coordinator to follow through on this plan, and a disagreement between Jason, Suzanne and Kate about how to handle these accountability issues.
V: National Council:
Coming out of the fundraising conversation was frustration by the state of our decision making body. Our National Council has been an extremely fluid body of individuals, with a wide array of commitment to the organization for several years. Some of these individuals are involved to the point of being on most or all the conference calls while others are not. This situation creates confusion about who should be included in making major decisions.
We took some time to list everyone we believed to be invested in SEAC and use that as our interim decision making body until our National Council was functioning as outlined in the policy and guidelines.
We also planned a National Council Conference Call (based off the group that we listed off on this list) to address accountability and transparency between the working groups and the National Council. We also made a plan for a plan to build the National Council.
VI. Roles:
The National Council conversation prompted us to think about the roles that each individual in the meeting plays in SEAC. We took about an hour to each hash out our roles within SEAC and expected amount of time to be involved. Many of us found this exercise to be extremely helpful and we committed to approaching others in the organization to do the same.
III. Speakers Bureau:
Major decisions about the Speakers Bureau needing proposals are: age guidelines for speakers (emphasis on youth), division of money (sliding scale payment for speakers), using www.campusactivism.org as a tool, breadth of topics to be covered on the speakers bureau, criteria for anti-oppression analysis (should all speakers be trained?)
IV: Fundraising:
Our fundraising discussion first went over our financial state as of now. Jason prepared financial documents for this year and several years past; Kaitlin prepared an incomplete budget for SEAC as well as a sample budget and sample fundraising plan. We used these documents to assess our current and potential financial situation. We also spent a significant amount of time discussing the role of the fundraising coordinator and what we would like the fundraising coordinator to be doing.
We capped the fundraising discussion by doing quick brainstorms for each of the five categories (membership, donations, foundations, sales, speakers bureau). These brainstorms will be formatted into an overall plan by the fundraising committee on the first call, in addition to the general action ideas listed below.
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