Meetings galore

This has been a week for long meeting, haha. On Tuesday, we had our Annual Meeting, where we decide the issues we will be working on this upcoming year. On Wednesday, we had a staff meeting.

At our annual meeting we talked about the U.S. Social Forum, our new CORROC support group
(for parents whose children have been taken away by CPS), our new Revolutionary Reading group (which will help members with their reading and on their way to getting their GED), a workshop we're planning next month called "Theatre of the Oppressed" (more later), our Fairwell Fundraiser for Jennifer, electing new members to the Board, and new issues we want to tackle next year. Needless to say, we have a lot of stuff going on!

Due to its increasing popularity, we will be keeping on with the CORROC campaign. WIT found some success in its alliances with the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and the Minimum Wage Campaign (yay legislation!), so we will be moving on to different issues. These issues must be decided by the members.

Some of the issues people came up with were - Food Justice (it is impossible to lead a nutritious lifestyle on food stamps), Restoration of Voting Rights (Only in Kentucky and one other state, felons voting rights are not automatically restored upon release from prison), Predatory Lending (i.e. Rent-a-Center, quick cash places that prey on the poor), the Quality of public schools, and Housing and Tenants Rights.

Food Justice and Quality of Schools are the top two issues we will be focusing on, in addition to CORROC. We will also be working on Tenants Rights and Predatory Lending in small ways that are TBD.

At our staff meeting, we talked mostly about the USSF, which we will be leaving for next Tuesday! In short, I have a lot of work to do before then... and while we're down there. I'm going to be the go-to person in Atlanta, so I should probably have some clue what's going on. I won't have internet access while I'm down there so expect a long post once I get back, July 1. I'll write again before I leave, since I don't think I've talked about USSF much and it's kind of a big deal...

Well, I guess I better start getting to work now, haha

Bonnerlove!