PAA Meeting Minutes
March 11, 2010
Convened 7:10 p.m. Leisure Learning Unltd.

Attending:
Robert Graham Bart Boyce
Jon Axford Don Cook
Bill Crosier Ted Weisgal

Everyone's welcome at the monthly meeting for the Progressive Action Alliance, usually the second Thursday of each month.

Preliminary agenda:
* March 20 End the Occupations rally
* March 20 Senate District Conventions
* Green Party Ballot Access Petition Drive
* Partner organization for next month
* Film/social gathering?
* HPJC Spring Conference on Localism - May 1
* Health Care reform update
* and other topics the group cares about...Come a little early if you'd like to visit with others before the meeting starts.

Where:
Leisure Learning Unlimited
2990 Richmond Ave., Houston
(about 1/4 mile west of Kirby)
6th floor, room 10
Free parking in front of, and behind, the building

When:
Thursday, March 11
7-9 PM

Bring a non-messy snack to share, if you wish.

If you vote in the March 2 primary (or during early voting), be sure to come back to your Mar. 2 voting location (not an early voting location) for your precinct convention.

Precinct conventions start at 7:15 PM, or after the last person in line has voted, and are a great place to educate others about issues you care about, and get resolutions on them approved and sent up to the Senate District (SD) conventions and the state convention, so they'll get noticed by a lot more people.

Go to our resolutions list http://paa-tx.org/resolutions and pick out resolutions of interest to you -- just click on the titles of any of them. Download the pdf versions that are formatted for printing, and bring several copies of each to your precinct convention. If you want to write your own resolution on a topic we did not cover, refer to our Resolution-Writing Guidelines (see link at http://paa-tx.org/resolutions ) for suggestions on how to write a good resolution that is likely to be passed.

Some additional resolutions are also on the Burnt Orange Report web site http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/10038/2010-tdp-resolutions-thread -- please see these too.

If you don't vote in the primary, you are eligible to sign petitions to help get the Green Party on the ballot in Texas this year. For at least one state-wide office (Comptroller), there's no Democrat on the ballot, so this is not even a conflict for any Dem. See http://hcgp.org for details.

A PETITION TO PRESIDENT OBAMA FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS ABOLITION

We're working with United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and the Houston chapter of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) to help collect signatures across this country by January, to present to President Obama before the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferaton Treaty Review Conference. If you are reading this on the PAA home page, click on the "read the rest" link below, or the title of this article, for details and to download the petition.

Event Description:

See minutes here for Carol Christian's insightful tips for writing letters to the editor or guest editorials: http://www.paa-tx.org/node/3238

At the next PAA meeting, we can get some great tips and techniques for writing effective op eds and letters to the editors. Carol Christian, a Houston Chronicle reporter, has agreed to come help us learn more about how to write LTE and op eds that get published. Just bring the background information and data for an issue and some paper and pens and/or your laptop computer if you have one.

Event Sponsor:
Progressive Action Alliance

Lee Loe has finished putting together a "Palestine-Israel Notebook" -- an 8-page publication similar to the Iraq Notebooks http://paa-tx.org/node/670 we distributed a few years ago. It has stories and photos about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Gaza, conscientious objectors in Israel as well as the US, and the world-wide peace movement for the middle east.

In this message:
1. Thanks
2. Hope
3. The Future, What We Can Do
4. Summary

1. Thanks

First, I want to thank all of you who helped make phone calls, do literature drops, canvas voters, distribute/put up signs, donate money, and do all the other work that isn't glamorous but which contributed to the election victories in this historic election.

We hope you'll want to add your events to the PAA and the Houston Indymedia online calendars to make it easy for others to learn about them. Events on the PAA calendar show up automatically in the upcoming events list in the right column of our home page. Also, we place events entered here in the middle column of our home page as the date for the event gets close, to give it more prominence. In addition, we include these events in our "Upcoming Progressive Events" e-mail sent to our announcements list from time to time. However, if you want to promote an event in the Houston area, we encourage you to first post your event on the Houston Indymedia Calendar. It's easy, and if you only have time to post it one place, do it there, so everyone will have one place to look to find what events (of interest to progressive Houstonians) are happening when. To do that, go to http://www.protest.net/HIMC/calendrome.cgi and click on the "Click here to add an event" link below the calendar for the current month. Then just fill in the blanks on the form that comes up, and be sure to keep the "event added" confirmation e-mail that you'll get, in case you need to add or change anything on your calendar entry.

Tired of attending protests where the only people who see you are your fellow protestors?

Want to let the average Houstonian know that there are others who also want the US and Israel to stop their invasions and occupations in the Middle East?

Here's and easy and fun way for you and your signs to be seen by THOUSANDS of people during a weekday rush hour.  Join us as we hold up large signs and banners on one of the bridges over the Southwest Freeway and Gulf Freeway.  Short Videos   Photos   Photos on Indymedia   Houston Chronicle article