Attendees: Srihari,Varma,Prasanna,Jawahar,Sreekanth,Dinesh
Background:
Govt of Andhra Pradesh has put restrictions on rice export to other states. Loksatta party believes that this is driving down the price for the farmers of AP. As you know farmers are deeply impacted by the lack of price, and they are not even getting their cost.
Loksatta has demanded the State of AP to remove these restrictions. If this demand is not met, LSP will lead the farmers from AP to Karnataka on Feb
17th, and farmers will sell their rice. Since
selling rice is illegal, there is a high possibility that LSP leaders and farmers might get arrested.
In yesterday's Save Farmers call, PFL has have decided to support this event in whichever way we can. Below are various things we discussed. We will have another call on Wednesday to iron out the details.
Action Plan:
- Supporting events in BA, LA: We have decided show support from overseas by conducting couple of events. We should try to take inputs from media people to make sure our events are covered in India. I think the events this weekend would be too short of the notice to get any people. I think we should do these on 18th-19th weekend. We can at least project them as responded to LSP call. Prasanna will take the ownership of
the
Bay area event. He will pull in others as needed. Srihari, Varma and Sreekanth will collectively take the ownership of LA event.
- Media support: We will use all of media contacts to make sure both LSP event and PFL events are covered properly. Dinesh will take lead on this.
- Donations: We would like to raise donations to make the LSP event successful. The money raised will be used to 1) buy AP rice in Karnataka 2) Transportation for farmers/rice 3) publicity of the event
Action Items:
- We need to clearly identify how money will flow for above identified areas (may have to talk with LSP) - Prasanna
- Create a draft to send email blast to all PFL contact - Srihari