2025-09-01 Steering Committee Meeting Minutes
Meeting Minutes
Attendance
Campaign Coordinator: @chima
Membership Coordinator: @HipGnosis
Education Coordinator: @Englishpete08
Treasurer: @Turcotte
General Meeting
Date: 2025-09-04T07:00:00Z
Recording Check
- Ensure the meeting is being recorded.
Roll Call & Introductions
- Steering Committe
- Quorum
- Introductions (New Members and Guests)
Reports of Members Sick or in Distress
Calendar Related Agenda
Steering Committee Votes
Purchsae Business Entity Data
From Christian: Request to purchase Business Entities data from California.
This is so we can incorporate business entities registered in California into our broader tenant union database. We will not get the names of the people on the board of a corporation, but we will get Agents and mailing data. We may be able to see common owners through common names of Agents and Mailing Addresses.
Old Business
Tenant Union Focus Campaign: Renewal
Updates
Current Strategy: We have been following the new strategy we outlined when we previously renewed the campaign. The broad outline of our current tactics include:
- Dropping off flyers at buildings with 4-20 units.
- Speaking to some tenants to gauge a building’s organizing potential
- Returning to buildings to continue have conversations
Current Progress:
- We have been working on eight buildings to varying degrees
- Active at various levels: 4
- Had issues; need to return to: 2
- Perhaps issue is resolves / no longer in contact: 1
- No longer in contact: 1
- People came to the most recent workshop in person
- The Tenant Associations subcategory on the forum has keep the issues at the various buildings organized
Currently Working On:
- Default message that gets sent to tenants if they just wanted to keep in touch
- Set a schedule to follow up with tenants in X number of days after Y events
- After initial issues are addressed, continue to follow up with tenants and build tenant association with regular meetings
- On the website, a way for people to reach out to the tenant union
- Canvassing script
- Creating the following literature:
- Protection from retaliation
- %%Weekly updates on status of tenant associations%%
Database Updates
- Added functionality: track spending, dues, membership, and split tenants and WCU members
- In progress: Incorporating business entity data from CA state
Strategies for renewal
Currently, do not think we have the capacity to knock on buildings much larger than 20 units. With only two people, going door to door through 20 units can take more than an hour. However, we have made some level of contact with a majority of buildings in the English speaking parts of Stockton. So we can expand our outreach to Lodi.
Put up larger flyers at bus stops, near schools, or other high foot traffic areas. In general, the goal is to increase the general awareness of the Tenant Union. The challenge will be to balance people contacting us and our availability. We do not want to be stretched thin and then devolve into a service org because that is the only things we have time for.
There is a bit of a credibility gap. Sometimes that is overcome through organizing conversations. Having cards, materials, or online guides may help, but we have to keep collective action front and center. There are already “helpful tips” out there.
We have collected contact information from tenants that did not need help at the time, but wanted to stay in touch. We need to incorporate a SOP for keeping in touch with them. At minimum, invites to future TU Workshops.
Finally, now that the database back end is in place, start working on a front end that is useful based on needs during canvassing.
Voting
- Vote to renew the Tenant Union Focus Campaign until the end of 2025 (5 months)
If extending the focus campaign is approved:
Elections for Focus Campaign Leadership
-
Ask for nominations
-
Following voting procedures outlined in bylaws if there are more than two candidates
-
Final outcome of votes:
-
Set regular date for tenant union workshop
This should be a date where the KYR meetings take place prior to the TU Workshop. That way, if we do not need assistance with translations, Sandra can leave early.
Know Your Rights
There is a question of whether this should be a side-quest or a focus campaign.
We had previously presented this as a Focus Campaign proposal.
2025-08-07 Meeting Minutes
Currently Working On
Educational Materials Development
- Completing the design of the trifolds
- Putting the information online
- Providing the flyers to Luis / Solidarity Committee / Papers for All / others and helping them with outreach
- Combining KYR outreach with Tenant Union outreach
- Continuing at least monthly KYR meetings
- Legal Documentation Guides
- Power of attorney, emergency contacts, childcare plans
Other Parts of Initial Focus Campaign Proposal On Hold
- Educational Materials
- Recording safety guide
- Accompaniment guide for appointments
- Rapid Response Alert System
- Dual-track: Non-Emergency to Valley Watch, active arrests trigger local alerts from us
- Facility Monitoring Program
- Permanent presence at Stockton ICE facilities
- Help families navigate detainee locator system
- Record check-in information and emergency contacts
- Minimum two-person teams during facility hours
- Volunteers should expect identification by authorities
- Legal Documentation Support
- Notary services at in-person sessions
- Community Outreach
- Network building through vendors, churches, schools, parent groups
- Community Safety Patrols
- Presence at grocery stores, schools, community gathering places
- Confirm absence of ICE, provide reassurance
- Regular shifts at high-traffic locations
- (On hold because without RR number, we do not have the contacts to promote this)
Vote
- Will this be a Focus Campaign or Side-Quest? What aspects do we want to work on/focus on? Do we want to reevaluate in the future?
Workplace Organizing:
Goal: Identify, train, and support workplace leaders via a low-risk ICE raid preparedness training campaign; convert those leaders into ongoing workplace organizing committees.
Thread: Organizing Toolkit: Winning ICE Raid Preparedness Training at Work
Tasks
- WCU Onboarding/Communication: Through an initial contact, the goal is to build trust, provide clarity for the toolkit, and give the worker structured low-risk actions that can help them build early momentum.
- Need WCU Members to take lead on doing these 1-on-1s so we have a set of people familiar with the process. Then they can invite other members to calls so it takes less time to get newer members up to speed
New Business
Side-Quest Proposal: BDS in the Central Valley
Goal: The goal is to support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement at the local and county level by leveraging public funds to punish corporations that continue to be involved with Israel.
Review the thread: Side-Quest Proposal - BDS in the Central Valley
Vote
- Vote to approve a detailed task list for this side-quest that will last until the next General Meeting
Weekly Scheduling
Our current practice is not flexible for those of us without consistent schedules. Therefore, going to propose that working meetings are scheduled in the following way:
- For all working meetings or other events that do not need to be scheduled on a certain date, we will schedule the week to do them at the General Meeting. This allows us to take broader timelines into account.
- On Saturday/Sunday, Rallly links for each event scheduled that week will be sent out to everyone. If you are interested in it, please fill out the link (it will be multiple times if interested in more than 1 event)
- By Sunday night, you will get a notification through Rallly which date was determined.
Vote
Since this is a slight modification to our previous Member approved agenda:
- Vote to adopt a weekly scheduling system
Scheduling Events
- Organizing Conversation Training
- New Member Orientation
- Workplace Organizing
September 2025
| Meeting Week | Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | ||
| 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | |
| Workplace Organizing | 14 4:00-5:30pm KYR | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| New Member Orientation | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 |
| Organizing COnversation | 28 | 29 | 30 |
October 2025
| Meeting Week | Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 WCU General Meeting | 3 | 4 | ||||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
Non-Calendar Related Agenda
Workplace Organizing: Report from Tanner
Lodi Unified School District does not pay livable wages to many of its employees, myself included. This is not unique to LUSD but as Lodi’s cost of living continues to skyrocket and living anywhere within spitting distance of the school district becomes less possible, they are pushing out many talented people who simply cannot afford to live near the place where they work.
This is Capitalism 101, and probably shouldn’t be surprising to anyone involved in our line of work.
For the past few school board meetings, I’ve been getting up and speaking about this issue. That waters have been muddied by the fact that we did just receive a 2% pay increase (about 50¢ per hour at my wage level, yippee) and negotiations, as far as I’m aware, have stopped for the next few months.
LEA, the Lodi Education Association, are still in negotiations, and the superintendent (Neil Young) has made it clear that he doesn’t give a fuck about their needs and has been extremely negative toward the situation overall, even going so far as to suggest to the President of my chapter of CSEA that some jobs aren’t even necessary anymore, including mine. I’m sure you can imagine how ridiculous this is, as pretty much any department in any school district that I’m aware of will bitch and complain nonstop about how understaffed they are, and mine is no different (there are even a massive amount of temp workers in my department, basically negating what Neil Young has implied).
The long and short of it is this: the pay needs to go up, and the union is dragging its feet on making anything happen. People do the best they can, but at the end of the day, CSEA is collaborative with the very people to which they should be applying pressure.
What can WCU do? Good question. A social media campaign probably would put a lot of eyes on the school board and might exert some pressure (emailing/phoning in). Showing up in solidarity with CSEA and LEA to the school board meetings and standing up when we’re making our cases I think could be pretty powerful. These events are long, running from about 7pm to 930pm usually, and so coordinating something of that nature would probably be difficult. But even one or two people showing up might make the case that, “hey, this problem doesn’t seem like it’s going away. Maybe during the next round of negotiations we should put a bit more of a raise on the table.”
Reading Group Updates
- Marxist foundational texts
- Capital Reading Group
- Learning from recent organizing
- And quarterly Tenant Union Readings