Minutes from 2 Jan 2004

Chris, Chris II, Tim, Ashar, Alan, Fraat, Possum, Bill, Erin, Kira, Camilo, Todd

Agenda

• Promotion for Jan courses
• Courses
• e-mail person
• Issues of structure and organization

Promotion

• Ashar and Chris will flyer York, U of T and Ryerson universities
• Fratt will flyer Humber College
• Chris II, FNB and Uprising lists, Buddha's Restaurant
• Yim, Peace thru Diversity list, city libraries
• Ashar, Shaw & College library, Adbusters list and A-Infos
• Chris, Radical Roots Cafe (U of T)
• Bill, EYE magazine, Infoshop
• Possum, TAO lists
• Todd, will make a larger flyer with more info for Uprising, etc.
• Erin, will submit a NOW listing for the first day of each class
• Somebody needs to e-mail Rabble.ca and the will list the first day of each course on their calender

Courses

• Intro (Bill co-ordinating) moved to Thur 7pm, Frank is doing a week on Anarcho-Tao, 3 registered people
• Carnival (Chris) Mon 6-8pm at Chris's place (sidedoor at park), no perfume please. Chris talked with the people at This Ain't the Rosedale Library and it seems that the space is available only for rent.
• Political Economy (Ashar) Tue 7pm at Uprising or a space through OPIRG.
• Lucid Dreaming is changed to 8pm on Mondays
• Creative Writing and Electronics (Darren) as website
• Beckett (Christian) as website
• Sex (Paula) as website

E-Mail

Since the beginning we have rotated this every three months. Paula has done it since August and needs to be relieved. Possum has set the software up again after the break-in to our site. Many names have been lost from our e-mail list that was destroyed. Please sent in lists of participants' e-mails from previous classes. Send them to possum.

Bill volunteered to the the e-mail from Jan to March.

Chris Smith is willing to to another turn when needed.

Structure and Organization

Much of how we do things was discussed when Anarchist U started in the Summer of 2003. However there are many new people involved and perhaps we should spend some time on this.

As well as issues of organization and decision-making it might be useful also to discuss issues of participatory learning, levels of difficulty in courses, different types of courses, and if we want to become more proactive in seeking certain courses.

For example, in terms of organization we discussed that the fallback assumption is that people should contact facilitators before coming to courses. Course facilitators who want people to simply drop in can indicate this for their course.

We began a discussion of consensus decision-making, which we will turn to next meeting. Some issues raised include:

• who is included in decision-making
• how exactly does consensus decision-making work in our organization (there are various models)
• to clarify that it is possible to disagree with a decision and stand aside
• how many people are needed at a meeting to take a routine decision? to take a non-routine decision?
• how is the agenda made up? can there be some notice of agenda items without turning agenda-setting into a tool of power?
• a suggestion has been made in the past to have a community page where people could suggest a course that they would like to take. Can this mechanism be used for input into agendas
• could we make a list of fixed items for the agenda and then have space for new business
• why use consesus? does it have an in-built bias to doing nothing?
• where does our model of consensus come from? Many organizations use a version of C.T. Butler (the Food Not Bombs decision-making process)
• we need facilitators to tell people in their classes that everyone is welcome to come to general meetings
• we welcome people to write and circulate before the next meeting their expectations of consensus decision-making
• minutes of meetings should be e-mailed to everyone (some e-mail persons have done this in the past, some not)
• can Bill please add to the notice for the next meeting that there will be this discussion so people know it is on the agenda

Next meeting

Sunday 6th February at 4pm at 196 Manning Ave

Alan says he is happy to have it it his house but would prefer if the meeting place rotated a little more, perhaps among people who live in the downtown core or close to public transit.