[Educationforall] EFA Meeting Next Friday, 2-26!

[Kelly Mayhew]

Hi All,

I hope everyone has had a fantastic, restful and revivifying weekend!

I'm sorry Jim and I had to leave Friday's meeting early--I know we missed a
great deal.  I've gotten some reports, so it sounds like though it was a long
and stressful meeting, it was ultimately pretty productive in moving things
closer to some solidified--and very powerful--events on March 4th.  As Arnie
notes below, coalitions are always tricky since there are often so many
different perspectives and strategies.  That you all have come this far is
incredible and I think that's what we should focus on for now.  For the
meeting after March 4th when it's time to debrief, Arnie's suggestion of a
discussion about organizing and coalitional politics is a great one.  

Since this will be the LAST big meeting before the Day of Action, I proposed
to the coordinating committee that for ONCE--just once--the education portion
of the meeting be suspended.  That way all the time can be spent on nailing
everything down for the huge events taking place on March 4th.  As faculty
advisor, I want to make sure EFA's efforts are hugely successful and
supported.  This is an amazing coalition of groups and events and the issue
at hand is the cuts to education and social services that are affecting
everyone so tremendously.  This is an impressive state-wide, student-driven
event that should really start waking people up.  I, for one, am fired up.
And very invested in the success of these efforts. 

SO...in the interest of solidarity-building, I'm going to bring a bunch of
food in on Friday so we can eat together and not let our blood sugar get so
low.  And I'm asking that the coordinating committee share the agenda with me
ASAP so it can get out to you all early this week, and that it includes all
the committees people signed up for so everyone can come to the meeting
prepared to present what they worked on so the group can approve it.  The
committees need to either meet or be in email contact with each other to get
their work done.  This is especially important for the group working on
speakers.  From what I've seen, there are now way too many speakers for the
Teach-Out, but it looks like a lot of the additions could be moved to the
4:30 rally at the Governor's office.

Thank you everyone for your work.  Only 11 more days until MARCH 4th!

Kelly



-----Original Message-----
From: Arnie [mailto:arnieds at cox.net]
Sent: Sat 2/20/2010 11:02 AM
To: educationforall at lists.aktivix.org
Subject: Re: [Educationforall] EDUCATION and the EFA proposed agendafor
fridays meeting 12:00pm R-115
 
Yeah, there was alot of tension surrounding the meeting, some I  understood,
most went over my head. Maybe for the next meeting we can devote the
educational part to a discussion of general techniques of organizing a
democratic coalition, how to have a good meeting, the personal is political,
consensus decision making, Robert's Rules of Order, something that will give
us a chance to air some gripes in a way that seeks general solutions for the
future. Coalitions are always tricky because you end up standing together
with people you can't stand. And I kinda doubt the problems are going to
suddenly go away on March 5th, so we're stuck with each other, and need to
make the best of it.
In any case, let's get a draft of the next agenda now, so there are no last
minute surprises.

Here's a Group Dynamics blurb I helped write for an activist drummers group
a few years ago:
http://puppetista.org/drums/dynamics.html


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