DNC Board Meeting Minutes - June 21, 2012

DNC board meeting

June 21, 2012

Present: Roland, Jenn, Harold, Ann, Wendy, Ivan, Dave H

Guests: Jacek, Dave D

Agenda

-      Street market discussion

-      1-way committee reports

-      DTES Not for Developers

-      Taskforce

-      Tenant organizing

-      Police and copwatch

-      LAPP

-      Committee discussions

-      Board business

-      Treasurer

-      General meeting

-      New business

-      Closing

STREET MARKET

Roland

-      Had a meeting with the city and it appears that they don't want to give us a special events permit anymore

Ann

-      We had a good-cop bad-cop thing with the city. The police said that there are well-known dealers there, I argued with them. Roland played reasonable guy.

-      If the city wants to give us 62 W Hastings then we could take it and use it as our space.

Wendy

-      If we bring up that we could move to 62 W Hastings then that's all the city is going to push us to

Jenn

-      I heard that the church on the park has been complaining about our market more. That they are threatening us.

Roland

-      We offered that church more space around their door and they said that's okay

Dave

-      Today Ivan and I were at a meeting with the city over the LAPP about communication. Maybe we could use the LAPP to support the Street Market.

Ivan

-      We need to separate out the details from the general principles and problems of the market.

-      Can the committee send the board reports on the meetings with the city that are objective and not about opinion? Then others can contribute to the struggle.

Dave

-      My papers got stolen last weekend and I lost a lot of documents, including sign-up sheets.

-      I'll white out one that was used to make a blank one.

Roland

-      Could the LAPP take a position in support of the market?

Wendy

-      Only if it's really important. It might be opening a can of worms because other peoples non-LAPP projects will get pushed too.

DTES NOT FOR DEVELOPERS

Ivan

-      Actions we have decided on: Rubble action Tuesday, meeting Carnegie 12:30pm; Ongoing civil disobedience discussions with member groups; Preparing for Sequel presentation centre action.

-      Need to talk about the specific dynamics of what demands and what to do about our “Boycott Gentrification”. I think we should do some meetings on what to do about restaurants etc.

-      We decided to change the structure of the coalition to once-a-month coalition members meeting to set general direction

Harold

-      We also decided to organize a townhall on the anti-gentrification fight in San Francisco, sometime in July

Wendy

-      Can we add to the rubble action for the city to buy the site?

-      And maybe there's only energy for the coalition when there's actions to be done.

Harold

-      It's true that there's less energy when there's not a crisis but if we don't have discussions at lower points then we won't be prepared when things do happen.

Richard

-      Where would we put the energy from the coalition? We could put it into a raise the rates campaign

Dave

-      All the preparation work we're doing, civil disobedience, discussions, etc, is important to sustain and maintain. We don't want to just move from crisis to crisis.

-      This is basically an anti-gentrification campaign

Ivan

-      I think we're starting to form a general anti-gentrification campaign, after just working on Pantages for the last year.

-      Next steps are to carefully define our arguments and demands about gentrification by working with the community

Wendy

-      Sounds good. Keep the energy of the community in mind when planning actions; if there's big monthly actions that demand a lot of participation then it might be draining.

TASKFORCES

Ivan

-      The SRO taskforce is finally going. The first meeting will be Friday, 2pm at the Wonder Rooms. The focus of the three meetings for each of the six buildings are Standards of Maintenance; Safety; and Rights.

TENANT ORGANIZING

Ivan

-      Balmoral lunch this Sunday, 12noon at Balmoral bar. Focus will be on conditions and rights in the Balmoral and Regent. Who wants to come? (Dave D)

POLICING AND COPWATCH

Ann

-      Jenn went on CKNW and it was very good

Jenn

-      We're getting targeted by someone named Greg Renouf who has a history of targeting prominent women of colour especially. He is writing articles attacking us. I called him and asked him to lay off and maybe he'll listen.

-      Ruth Meta also wrote a letter to the city critical of us.

Ivan

-      Should we tell Ruth Meta that she's not welcome to work with us? She wrote a letter to the city attacking me and Wendy and DNC.

Ann

-      She's mentally ill and will go after us harder if we criticize her or block her.

Wendy

-      Maybe it's better, tactically, to ignore her and let her go away. (AGREED)

LAPP

Wendy

-      All kinds of planning going on for the LAPP. Some of it we're involved in and some of it we're not. We might be losing control over some of the dynamics here.

-      We have to remember that we're looking at March 2013 as the time that the LAPP is going to council. We should be preparing for that meeting as a target. We need to prepare outside of the LAPP too.

-      We have been saying that we want 100% social housing for singles on welfare, but maybe we should all go walk by the 58 W Hastings spot and look at the mix they have in the PHS proposal on that site.

Dave H

-      At the communications meeting today Tom was going red in the face with anger because he thought he was getting criticized about us being excluded from the planning of meetings.

Ivan

-      The city is running ahead of us and doing planning without our involvement. We only get to have a say when we discover what we're doing. We're going to have to fight them for a say all the time.

GENERAL MEETING

THEME: Non-violent civil disobedience

Harold

-      The things we talked about are “Why civil disobedience,” as well as rights, legalities, and some exercises.

Ivan

-      The coalition was thinking about doing discussions on why we could do this now, the dynamics of what we're up against and fighting for. Also to do some exercises and scenarios.

Wendy

-      I really like the songs that VANDU is singing and I think we should import them into DNC.

LOCATION: Dodson (if we can get it for free)

NEW BUSINESS

BOARD MEMBERS

Wendy

-      We need to talk about dwindling board members.

Ivan

-      We said we need to contact the people who have not been coming and get their intentions. We still need to do that.

END DRUG PROHIBITION

Dave D

-      About 14 years ago there was a four-day conference in Oppenheimer under tents and people came from all over the world.

-      We're moving towards doing another event like that at Oppenheimer again in on September 22^nd. Aiyanas is looking into getting Deborah Peterson Small, a good speaker from the states, to come for the event. We want to organize breakout groups and themes to take on.

-      We are asking CCAP to do it, but if that doesn't work then maybe we'll ask DNC. You get a discount rate to book a park if you are a non-profit.

Richard

-      It's good timing. We're getting hurt down here. I know Sarah Blythe from the Parksboard and should be able to get the park.

Harold

-      DNC should take this on in whatever way we can. We should get regular reports from the Drug Prohibition coalition and stay on top of the issue.

FUNDRAISING

Roland

-      There is a woman named Naomi Bartz who has offered to do some fundraising for us.

Ivan

-      We have met her, she seems decent. She is from Chicago but seems to be on our side.

CLOSING

-      Dedicated to Rodney Schek