Fwd: February 2015 Liaison Report by Kirby Urner / Portland / West Region

[kirby.urner]

Forwarding from Portland AFSC APC archives:

On Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at 10:58:35 AM UTC-8, kirby.urner wrote:

CONTENTS:

May Day Planning

The Role of Listservs
The Role of BDS (Boycott / Divestment / Sanctions)

==================================================================

May Day Planning:

Portland has enjoyed a festive May Day atmosphere in the wake of Occupy, one of the largest in the nation. 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/afscportland/15609167131/  (map of Occupy Portland / OPDX)

Our labor unions supported Occupy and moved it to the ports, where a lot of the action is.  AFSC has participated in May Day planning for many years, at the staff and volunteer level.  My own role has been minimal however, until this year, when I joined Fundraising Committee.

MAYDAYPDX.ORG had not been reserved as a domain name for the May Day Coalition and yet the other branding, on Facebook and Blogger, was using these call letters, so as a token of friendship and institutional affiliation, I used my geek connections to quickly snag said domain name for safe keeping, whether we choose to use it this year or not.  The Media Committee would need to take it over in that case.

I suggested a scenario to AFSC staff whereby we could in-kind donate inexpensive-to-us hosting i.e. backing up said domain name with some service, and thereby give our Freedom School youth some experience learning the minimal HTML / CSS it would take to run the web site every year. 

The design would be simple:  a main theme and our sponsors.  The art would come from other sources most likely e.g. this year we've been approach by an art colony JustSeeds.org in hopes of contributing to the fame of their artists.  The Pacific Northwest Social Forum likewise featured creative and impactful issues-focused art.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kirbyurner/sets/72157648099151141/ (PNW Social Forum)

I threw together a quick mock-up of the idea, in no way intended as an actual end product. 
https://www.flickr.com/photos/afscportland/16394439081/  (conceptual art)

The website I was testing will have expired by now.  A 501(c)(3) should take it on.

The Role of Listservs:

Quakerism is not about supporting Ludditism and listservs have been around for a "long time" (since 1980s), and (some) Quakers have used them for a long time (see Appendix).

What I've discovered about big city Meetings is Friends often never get to know one another outside of committee meetings, whereas activists working on projects, such as my mom (Carol Urner) are in touch with counterparts several times a week, or even daily. 

Listservs allow between-meeting communications to flourish in an archived manner.  I've set one up for our revamped Peace and Social Concerns at Multnomah and it's going gangbusters, in cahoots with a home grown Quaker Roots 2 (NPYM), a program we're test piloting instead of recycling Quaker Quest (FGC). 

MMM-PSC is the Google Group.  At the NPYM level we're probably going to go with a Mailman implementation instead (see Appendix).

The Role of BDS (Boycott / Divestment / Sanctions):

I've been tweeting as @thekirbster about some BDS rules of thumb, such as "remember if a target of your boycott complies with your demands, to lift the boycott".  Some activists get lazy and go around demonizing X or Y, not paying attention if X or Y changes course, which can backfire. 

Case in point:  Greenpeace had a boycott going against Trader Joe's, which then shaped up.  Greenpeace was good about letting us know.  I stopped spreading news of the boycott and led by example, shopping at Trader Joe's again and telling people I was doing that.

The other thing to remember:  it's not all or nothing. 

Example:  I support the NavAm cause to rename the Redskins to something less offensive e.g. WhiteScalps or something.  However I do not think that means AFSC should do not business with FedEx, a Redskins sponsor. 

Rather AFSC or another BDS-aware NGO could say:  we do 40% of our businesss with #FedEx and would gladly increase that to 50% if #FedEx would simply say: they recognize and respect the viewpoint of those who think of "redskins" as a racial slur, however FedEx itself doesn't think that way and proudly promotes Native Americans to top management all the time. 

Redskins is a badge of pride in other words as NavAms are among the principal shareholders in FedEx, why not?  That'd be a good outcome for them I think: more NavAm representation on FedEx shareholder radar.

These thoughts are uppermost in my mind given May Day planners are well aware of BDS as a strategy and may bring it up during meetings.

Kirby Urner

@npym_it

@thekirbster

@psf_snake

======

APPENDIX:  BRIEF HISTORY OF LISTSERVS (from recent NPYM IT Committee correspondence):


From: kirby urner <kirby...@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 11:58 PM
Subject: Re: Please help IT Committee w/ a mail list
To: NPYM Secretary <sec...@gmail.com>
Cc: Margaret Coahran <mcoa...@frontier.com>, Marty Crouch <fri...@martycrouch.com>, Georgia Foster <mur...@wavecom.net>

Excellent.

I'm consulting with Clint regarding possible hosting services, with candidates such as Greengeek and 1and1.

"Listserv" has become generic, at least in my writing, like kleenex for nose tissues, but started out a specific project:

http://www.lsoft.com/corporate/history-listserv.asp

Other projects aimed at doing the same job:

majordomo:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majordomo_%28software%29

mailmain:  http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/

And then more recently companies such as Yahoo and Google have offered free hosting using their own listserv infrastructure.

We're talking a well-known 1980s technology that solves lots of problems associated with clumsy / harder-to-manage email CCs.

I've used mailman a lot within the Python.org ecosystem (lots of listservs associated with the Python computer language user and developer communities).

Quakers have had lots of listservs over the years but I don't think there's precedent setting one up for something so mundane as administrative record-keeping.

http://www.quakerinfo.com/qeu.shtml

Kirby

On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 10:21 PM, NPYM Secretary <sec...@gmail.com> wrote:

Kirby,

I have a list of everyone who gave me directory data for 2014. Many are the ongoing keepers of the data, while for some meetings, the task passes with the clerkship. I made notes next to some meetings regarding this, when I was made aware of it. You may still choose to inquire with M&O for every meeting, but it may be faster to contact the folks on this list directly. See attached. I can assist with these calls if you like. Just let me know. I also have an email group for them created in gmail, separable by smaller WGs and larger MM/PMs 

BTW, the contact person for Dillon basically said that they would like to not be bothered with NPYM things. Anyway, MGOF said it was ok to use their data directory for their WGs, but as you can see, sometimes worship groups choose to send their own updates despite what their MM believes is up to date. 

Linda