MPJC 11/27/07

from the Macalester Public Knowledge Base

1. Introductions Everyone introduced themselves (if you could be an animal, what would you be?) 2. Welcoming Committee Visit Karen from the Welcoming Committee brought the WC’s most recent letter to Radicals, wanted to put a face on the WC and get everyone involved in organizing against the RNC. The WC is mostly concerned with provided logistical support. Go to www.nornc.org for more info. 3. Report-back from Trustees Dinner It was good to have a presence, but its unclear what will come out of it in terms of a campaign. Varied reactions from students and trustees. Trustees suggested that we could bring brochures or make a speech at their meeting and “be very prepared and really professional” in order to get their support. Someone talked to an investment banker about divestment. People seemed nice and seemed to agree with some of us. Concern that framing the conversation around “institutional stance” was somewhat divisive for anti-war students. More time spent arguing with students than dialoguing with trustees. 4. Moratorium Report-back The webmaster for iraqmoratorium.org wants a report-back from our general strike to post on the net because we registered our event with them. BRENDAN will write it and email it from the macpeace.justice@gmail account. 5. Occupation Report Michael spoke about Naomi Klein’s Disaster Capitalism. Basic thesis is that government “takes advantage of shock “ to enact anti-democratic reforms, and that neo-liberalism in particular is enacted through shock. The subject of the book is the Iraq War, but places it in a historical context in which it’s unique but not exceptional, beginning in Chile in 1973 with the coup, when coercive neoliberal reforms spread to other South American countries to oust progressive movements and democratic governments. World Bank, IMF impose neoliberal reforms on China, Poland, Europe, Eastern Russia, South Africa, etc, saying that “we’ll only give you loans if you privatize everything” waging war on the public sphere. In terms of Iraq, Klein talks about idea of “economic shock therapy,” which allows for the rise of the “private-security-disaster-complex,” arguing that the line between the government and the private economic sector has completely disappeared. Companies increase profits through direct payouts by the government after the war started—war profiteering is its own emerging economy/market, and the mercenaries industry alone has received 4 billion dollars since the war started. That war booms the private economic sector and sacrifices social services. Klein writes that Iraq is meant to serve as a regional model for the transformation of foreign governments into our own image (like Chile). Bombing campaigns in this war have been massively larger than in the first gulf war, using sensory deprivation on a mass scale as a means of obliterating information and communications resources, isolating the Iraqi people. The trashing of museums palaces, serves to erase national history and collective memory in order to “start anew.” The head of the Iraqi transitional government ignored the democratic movement within the country when the war started. Iraqis were left to sit there while foreign workers reconstructed the country through American conglomerates, which produced the insurgency. Much of what we call “the insurgency” actually provided basic public services that the government was not providing such as trash pick-up and food. 6. Proposal: Meeting Procedures Long proposal. Read-through. Amendments: agenda coordinators will change quarterly rather than semester-to-semester, extended vibe-checks will occur quarterly with a more frequent option rather than semester-to-semester. SOPHIE will send out final with amendments to discussion listserv. Assigning group roles tabled for next meeting. 7. Proposal: Open Forum “Proposal for an Open Forum to figure out what we can ask of the Macalester administration concerning the war in Iraq. This would be an open discussion and workspace on Tuesday, December 4th at 6pm in the Art Gallery. This will also be a place to start planning towards making these demands. The format will be break out sessions with an SDS member in every group taking notes. There will be a committee formed to plan the structure and facilitate the event.” One member raised a concern that this proposal is the wrong place for us to be going as an organization, trying to get the administration to do anything. Another member said that the main reason to pose things in terms of Macalester taking an action is raising consciousness, getting people to think of us as part of an institution, and taking a stand as a community. Demands could be about divestment, about canceling classes for a day, etc. Another member said that there is a very low expectation that the demands will be met, but the act of making the demands and their consequent rejection could take things further in terms of collective action and occupying a building. One member voiced personal dissatisfaction with the idea of lobbying the institution saying that there is nothing to be gained by utilizing the institution here. Another member said that we need to respect a diversity of tactics, meaning that if some people are interested in lobbying the institution, then they should be able to—this isn’t a place to try to all agree on a tactic, but to enable one another to work on projects that we are interested in. Another person liked the idea of the proposal but its important to have building on the momentum of the strike, so that there would be more student actions now before finals. Someone said that it’s important to phrase the proposal and day in a positive light rather than being about being against the administration, especially after Rosenberg’s letter about not imposing views on people—they think that this argument is very present in people’s minds. One member agreed with B-Ros in terms of making people feel that theres is a power structure over them imposing political viewpoints and we should not involve ourselves in the administrative hierarchy. One member said that this discussion needs to be had, but that the debate over taking an institutional stand against the war isn’t relevant to discussing the proposal. A member said that we should have discussions about what are our priorities. Another said that this is the conversation that the forum would facilitate. Another member said that we don’t need to have a single focus, and that others should propose actions as well. A suggestion for tactical groups could get tactical groups back together. Concern that its important to not have the same tactical meeting again. Should be two different meetings to have tactical groups meeting up together, and this open forum. Call for consensus—no consensus. Straw poll to see who would be interested in working on this project—7 were interested. Still no consensus. Reached consensus on delegating a group to meet to talk about whether or not it’s a good idea which has the ability to reach consensus on it and implement it. This group will meet on Thursday at 8pm in the infoshop. 8. Divestment Discussion Macalester has investments. There has been a pan-American divestment movement that asks institutional investors to get rid of their stock that’s complicity in the genocide of the Sudanese government. About 50 different universities have done this and the idea is to pressure companies into changing their behavior. It’s been working and the movement has been growing. There’s been talk about using that tactic with regards to the war in Iraq which would entail a lot of research and negotiating with the administration. Some investors say its better to be making money off of shitty companies to produce “global citizens” to take down those bad things eventually. Idea of shareholder advocacy: if we have more than $2000 in Halliburton stock for example, we can write letters to say we want Halliburton to do x and government will send that proposal to all of Halliburton investors who vote on the proposal which has sent strong messages to management and has made them change their behavior sometimes. We can also find out about how Mac has voted on similar initiatives in the past and follow up on those. It’s not very transparent what we’re invested in, and it’s pretty difficult to find out. Talk to SANDY for more information. 9. Continued Strike Extended-Vibe Check We read through the group evals from the strike, and finished the conversation from last meeting. 10. Announcements -SDS members are coming to the cities for the RNC, and Brendan has been point person for this. He wants us to have conference calls over January about what SDS needs from us for the convention. He’ll send more info over the listserv. -Don’t send duplicate emails to announce and discuss list because everyone on the discussion list is definitely on the announcement list. -Anti-racist allies meeting Wednesday 9pm infoshop. -Street protest tactical group Thursday 10pm 2nd floor cc to plan future demos, etc. -Infoshop collective meeting Thursday at 9 in the i-shop. -Performance art/public spaces group is meeting Thursday at 4:30 in the co-op. . -Meeting about what we’re going to do next on Saturday at 11am upstairs in the campus center, which will be an informal conversation about proposals—EVERYONE NEEDS TO EMAIL THEIR TACTICAL GROUPS about this meeting so they can participate. -Meeting to put together next zine is next Monday at 8pm in the infoshop, come if you want to contribute. 11. Check-out/Vibe-check 12. Next time: Facilitator—Daniel, Sadie (if you have a proposal or an agenda item for next week, make sure to email it to scox@macalester.edu) Note-taker—Brendan, Time-keeper—Michael.