Side-Quest Proposals (you must vote on each one)
ONCE YOU ARE READY TO VOTE, PLEASE VOTE YES/NO ON PROPOSAL A AND/OR B. I believe quorum was still six, so we need 7 Yes votes for each with maximum 3 coming from Steering.
A: July 6th Know Your Rights Event
This proposal is for a one time event at Victory Park on July 6th. This should be a family friendly event with food/games for kids. The goal is to get families to attend, learn, and feel like there is a broader network looking out for them, not so much to demonstrate protest capacity. The overall agenda for the event would be to briefly go over our political analysis of what is currently happening with immigration and ICE; a know your rights presentation, that includes playing out different scenarios; having Valley Watch Network present what their role is; we present our extended response network (if we are that far by then); and finally we try to recruit more members/volunteers/help them get signed up for alerts (if we have those ready).
B: Extended Rapid Response Network
This proposal is to extend the current Rapid Response Network, at least in San Joaquin County (we can ask if NCVDSA want to partner with us to extend it further down the valley). There are a few goals here:
- Create some sort of alternative notification system so that social media posts are not the only way for people to learn about confirmed reports of ICE
- If ICE is engaging, then have a wider network of people who are able to go out to record, but also speak with the impacted family, connect them with a lawyer, follow up with whoever ICE has taken
- Continue working with Luis and others to develop online resources that they confirm will be usable
In terms of the alternative notification system, we could send out alerts via SMS for people who sign up, post them on a plaintext website, or whatever else. If we are able to work with Valley Watch Network, we could ask them to send us confirmed ICE sightings and we could have our own Rapid Response Network after that. In terms of lawyers willing to help anyone ICE does pick up, there are a couple of orgs we could reach out to, or we could see if there are lawyers willing to do this work for a very small fee. This proposal is a bit more ambitious and depending on how it goes, may need to changed into a focus campaign if the workload is too high.
For both proposals, we need to break out of our current bubble and bring together any local leaders from the various workplaces being impacted, church leaders, and union rank and file. There is a possibility we could merge movements together, but that means getting people who care about one issue to join first, not just collect the 30 leftists who care about everything because being a leftist is their religion (guilty of that myself).
Comments
I spoke with Luis a few times about this. I’ll summarize here:
- Reducing public panic: One big concern for his is the spread of false rumors as it really disrupts people’s lives for no reason. Right now, he was not even aware of the Valley Watch Network and he didn’t think anyone else was either. He doesn’t think social media alerts are the best way to go about getting the word out.
- Better literature: A lot of the literature out there seems to be more targeted at organizers than anyone else. He said what people should do in certain situations needs to be clearly spelled out in an easy to follow way. Ince we are just producing literature for people locally, it should also have local details: here’s the specific number to call, here’s the intake facility, here’s where the person might be moved to. etc.
- He has been trying to get the city to hold know your rights events, but so far they have not followed through (and he does not think they will). He wants people to better understand the local context (that what is happening out of state is not what will happen here; what services people should feel safe continuing to use). Even though the Mayor does not want to be the face of this kind of outreach, there are probably people in her office who are likely to at least help us clarify those things for us.
- He thinks the Democrats are trying to hijack this moment: He’s not a fan of the Democratic Party and he thinks the Dems are trying to take and redirect blame about ICE / overall immigration status solely towards Trump for their own purposes. He has been through this a few (many) times at this point, and imo he’s right.
Some non-profits are stepping up to fill a void because their staff are generally progressive, but also because this issue has grant funding and is also not off limits like Palestine. Personally, I think we should do our best to push out the nonprofits as much as possible because they will always end up betraying working people in the end just due to their role/funding sources, no matter where their staff’s hearts are at. If we are not upfront about those limitations, then we will also lose any trust we might build with people who have been betrayed by both parties over and over again.
At the same time, I know we have our own limitations, especially in terms of capacity. So the level of NGO/Dem involvement is something we should discuss, if we chose to move forward with either or both of these.
But also, like I mentioned above, the Democrats and NGO world is actively trying to put their claws into this moment. However we end up working with other groups, we should make that determination now before we proceed because later on, the temptation to compromise for the “greater good” will be strong.
Deliverables:
- 5x7 Flyers (or smaller?) New easy to understand and consume Know Your Rights cards + information on how to use the Rapid Response Networks.
- 10x16 Flyers: Can include the following information: Rapid Response phone number, links to our Know Your Rights materials, our Tenant Union materials. The key components should be either how to use the rapid response network or the kinds of information we have available (if ice is at your home, work, etc.). These would be to hang up at businesses or around town.
- An alternative alert system(s) for confirmed ICE reports
- A video demonstration of what to do if ICE comes to your home/work/stops you in the street/etc.
Finally, there is a tendency on the left to do something on behalf of people, without actually consulting those people or thinking we know better than them about what they need. We are doing some of that here, since admittedly, this is based on what one community leader is saying. But we should do our best to get input from as many people as we can throughout this, and then serve the role of helping them achieve their goals (and that can include trying to give them our socialist political analysis to help them make better (in our opinion) decisions). I do not think we have done the best job of that so far in WCU’s history.