Minutes of KWPeace Potluck and Meeting, 26 October 2017

Meeting Announcement: KWPeace Potluck and Meeting

Introductions and what’s happening in our groups:

  • Laura Hamilton, Divest Waterloo; Food Not Bombs; Food Justice and Climate Action … now working on helping St, John’s Church form a co-op. They will be beginning to have community dinners starting Saturday, December 9, by donation. There will be cooking during the day with Syrian women cooking and others joining in, and then a dinner in the evening. Laura is also trying to get the Chemical Valley Project here.
  • Kathy Scott, Fairvote Canada …Fairvote is gathering signatures on petitions regarding proportional representation. November 10 another petition will be presented to Raj Saini. Fairvote is wanting to connect with other social justice groups because proportional representation is the best way to get environmental and social justice issues recognized / dealt with.
  • Jim Sannes, Unitarian Church Action Committee, the Council of Canadians, and the Animal Alliance Party. UCAC Is working with One Stop to help establish homes, And with the Mill Courtland community centre. Jim’s partner Ellen Pappenberg may be running for the Animal Alliance Party. The C of C is working on water issues, Fairvote issues, and Pharma care at this time.
  • Mo Markham, KW Animal Save, Kitchener-Waterloo Climate Save, Fairvote, Nation Uprising , and the Green Party. Climate Save is working on getting the documentary Sea of Life (re oceans, coral reefs, what humans can Do to stop the destruction) Into as many schools in Ontario as possible, and maybe the Princess as well. KWAS has done demonstrations at Queen’s Park and here in Kitchener re the 5.3 million dollars that the provincial government has given to Conestoga Meat Packers recently (the slaughterhouse where we hold weekly vigils), and the millions in subsidies given to other meat-packing plants and butchers in the last couple of months. Nation Uprising is a new group that is trying to gather as many environmental, social justice and animal rights groups together to lobby the federal government around the billions of dollars in subsidies it gives to animal agriculture, despite the environmental impact.
  • Dwyer Sullivan, Educators for Justice, Crossing the Borders Program, International Peace Day, Christian Peace-Makers, Conscience Canada, Camp Micah, and he works with the Catholic school board through some of these programs.
  • Gehan Sabry, Cross Cultures Magazine, and the Commemoration of the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination / International Day of Peace (which Gehan hosts every year). The next day will be held on March 21, 2018 at City Hall. Gehan Is also trying to persuade the bureaucracy to cooperate and get a plaque (or something) to say that we are a respectful community that accepts everyone. She is also part of planning a peace concert.
  • Diane Frederick, Amnesty International. Their Write for Rights campaign, which they will be doing again on December 11, has been very effective. They are seeing more and more people being released through their letter-writing campaigns. They meet the first Tuesday of every month, and everyone is welcome.
  • Bob Jonkman, Fairvote, Green Party, Waterloo Region Nonviolence. The Greens are running two candidates locally, and there are two more to come. Waterloo Region Violence has an event coming up on November 15, An Inconvenient Truth About Money. There will be a speaker, and they will talk about usurious loans and how detrimental these are to society. Also, on November 1st, there will be an event called Making It Easier, about establishing or acquiring funding from the province to get storage space etc. for nonprofits.
  • Tamara Lorincz, a new member working with Simon Dalby at CIGI, and working with the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace. Tamara Is looking at climate environment, and the impacts of militarism on both of these, and the billions spent and to be spent on Canadian militarism. On November 1st there will be an event, Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, and November 2nd there will be a roundtable at the Basili school. Tamara had a lot more to say, but I’m afraid this is what I was able to get down.

Discussion re our cancelled event:

The discussion was brief re our KW Peace event being cancelled. It was felt that when we plan another event, it needs to be the entire group planning. The purpose of the event was to help people understand what was happening with local peace groups, but in the end it would have been mostly us talking to each other, because There weren’t enough other people signed up.

There was discussion of doing an event at City Hall on a Saturday when Food Not Bombs is there anyway, and have Food Not Bombs provide the food. Still calling it Perspectives on Peace, Laura will look into getting Geoff Young(???).

We also talked about maybe hooking up with the international day of elimination of discrimination, and looking at how war divides communities and people. We discussed having Tamara come as a speaker, and bring environmental and poverty and peace groups together. It sounds like this is what we will do, and we will plan this together at our next two meetings. (Maybe in addition to a spring Saturday at City Hall?).

Money:

Expenses were high re the cancelled event, and several people were out money, approximately $300 between Barb, Laura, and Gehan. Dwyer has said that he will offset the costs through a fund he has from one of his organizations. We are very grateful!

We discussed the fact that we have no central point of fiscal control. KW peace as an organization does not really exist. There was a suggestion that we look into getting a bank account, so that money wasn’t coming from individuals.

  • Dwyer Sullivan will look into this, likely with Libro Credit Union, and has agreed to be in charge of our money; we give him the authority to deal with our money, and signing Authority.

There was also a suggestion to ask each organization to put in $10 so that we have a central Fund, and we can open a bank account at one of the credit unions.

We must pay website costs. Indie Serve generously donates our website costs for hosting, but we still need to pay for the domain name, which is $33 plus tax per year.

Meetings:

We will have meetings in January and early March. Bob will do online surveys to find out which dates are best for people.

Calendar:

Any organization whose information isn’t getting on the calendar can email Bob, or log in and put it in yourself. Ask Bob to reset your password if need be. Bob will make the calendar look more like a Calendar, or make the calendar more accessible, as he is able.

Roles:

  • Meeting chair and secretary: Mo Markham
  • Treasurer / money guy: Dwyer Sullivan
  • Setting up meetings, booking room, calendar, emails, computer stuff: Bob Jonkman
  • Need a back-up systems administrator. Bob will ask Isaiah if he can do this.

Please blame Mo and then email Bob if there are mistakes … not everyone. Thanks!
Mo
Previous Organizational Meeting: KW Peace Meeting Minutes 30 August 2017
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