November 17, 2019 - Basement Group Monthly Meeting

Notes at the top of the meeting:

Members of the 50th ADC were unable to attend, we will reschedule with them for another time.

A few of the members are going to help stuff envelopes for the announcement of the ADC at Josh Skaller’s house.

RYB

7 people from the Basement Group are in the 52nd organizing committee of RYB

Tabling

Today there was a tabling event at Carroll street park – tied to voter registration

19 people signed up for RYB!

It was a great group effort and went really smoothly!

Thinking of doing another tabling event at the Stone House – close to the farmer’s market but not impeding which worked out very well this time.

The event was advertised really well!

Katya Kelly advertised it on her blog – Pardon me for asking. She doesn’t want anything politically affiliated – so we called it voter registration.

Prema Yoga put it on their site

Next Saturday there’s a RYB AD 52 meetup

It will be at Tom Rosbarill on Gold Street with wine and cheese

It’ll be a mix between an info session and a meet up

If you didn’t receive a text from Joe and want to go, text him

Identify yourself and Joe will send you the information

Planning another meet up tentatively for December 7 at a bar or a coffee shop

RYB leadership does an orientation every month on what CC is, what it does, and how to petition

Lots of new people are coming to the events and singing up

There’s a holiday festival at the Carroll Street Park

1000s of people attend!

Might be good for another tabling event

Running in 2020

The ADO team looks to each of us to encourage people to sign up!

Please let Joe know if you intend to run again this year

There is an onboarding process to figure out how flexible folks are about running in their ED

Time frame for petitioning

Jan/Feb - attend petitioning training session

Feb 22/23 - pick up petitions

February 25-March 22 - petitioning

June 23 - democratic primary

Sept 2020 - election if primaried

You’ll have to collect only 3% of registered democrats in your district – as opposed to 5%

Still in the process of putting together the running mates

Submit the name of someone you want to run with if you have someone in mind

It’s our interest to get people to run in their ED

If there are people that aren’t actually petitioning but really just get added in, let’s put them in the EDs where people aren’t full

In January it’s rumored that the BOE may reconfigure the Election Districts

Might be minor, but no one knows yet for sure

Because of voter turn out in 2018 election, we were very well represented and so there may be additional seats that come up

In some of the EDs they may be adding seats – don’t think they’ll be redrawing any districts

In terms of bringing in and recruiting people – what’s the deadline?

No real deadline, but the sooner that we get them in, the better to give them more information

By the end of December is optimal to get them into petitioning training

Because also we’ll be able to have all the names and numbers for the meetings with Josh/Jo Anne/Joan

Support needed

Partnerships with other groups haven’t been going as well

If anyone has any local and community groups, let Joe/Meg know

We have contacts to reach out with the Park Avenue Committee

As of last Wednesday, overall numbers of people signing up are good and there’s a great return rate of people in CC

In some other districts, there’s not a great number of new people – if you know people in other districts would be good

One of the phenomena that we’re dealing is that a lot of people signed up for 2020 – we started at 80, but once you start touching base, you don’t hear back

Encourage new people to sign up and to come

Are we helping to table in other ADs

We’re doing better than many, so could we help?

We can make ourselves available, but each AD has it’s own make up and so each ADO team is recruiting in its own way

Keep in mind!

Presidential Petitioning starts on December 31

Important note for the voter registration and getting people registered for a party

Website Update

The site is live! Please take a look and make suggestions for edits, style notes, or additions

View the site here: https://thebasementgroupad.wixsite.com/home

Thank you Meg for writing the copy!

Organizing Document Change – Parliamentarian to Membership Chair

The Executive Committee recommends updating our organizing document with the following two changes:

1) Changing the position of Parliamentarian to an appointed position to keep us in line with Roberts Rules of Order at ADC meetings.

2) Adding a Membership Chair position with the following description:

The Membership Chair is responsible for promoting, coordinating, and overseeing The Basement Group membership efforts and for broadening participation in the Basement Group and the Assembly District Committee. Membership Chair develops and implements strategies to make the Basement Group more representative of the 52nd Assembly District, to retain members and drive them towards action, and to encourage members to invest in the club’s growth.

When we wrote the organizing document – we said that with the majority of those in the meeting we could make changes

To keep in link with our organizing document, we will vote on this at our December meeting.

December Meeting Date – December 5 and December 15 out

We’ve sent out a doodle poll to select our December meeting date

The meeting will be an informal social in The Basement – bring food and drinks to share!

ADC meeting

Since Aaron and Steve met with Jason a short bit ago, Aaron has been communicating with Jason Shelly in an official but casual way

Updates:

There’s an ADC meeting on Monday, November 25 at the Belarusian Autocephalous Church, 401 Atlantic Ave from 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM

Jason emailed out an initial save the date

If you haven’t gotten any emails from Jason, let Aaron and Steve know

Agenda

Jason confirmed that the agenda items that The Basement Group wanted to review will be discussed - (1) Rules Change: 3 weeks advance notice and (2) election of Vice Chair and Treasurer and opening of the standing committees

While we did not have to make a selection of one person as a candidate for the two ADC Executive roles, The Basement Group chose to nominate two individuals in order to have a clear direction for our votes, iit will be more practical for vote counts and we wouldn’t split the votes. If we have the ability to have an election, we don’t know actually how this meeting will go. They may already have the votes, so it’s good for us to be prepared because there is a lot of stuff before the election can take place – like nominating people, running, making speeches

Vice Chair: Vicki

Treasurer: Teresa

The idealism vs. the reality

Good point that the ADC might not officially be formed, but it’s more about a technical question and do we want to spend our efforts there

It’s not an issue since they haven’t spent money

Jo Anne paid for the mailings for the first meeting

Joan had 50 proxies plus the in room votes, we had about 40 votes

What we’re doing is more symbolic

It’s possible that maybe they just say great and move it all forward

We’re trying to figure out why they’ve been trying to have a meeting now

Jason brought up that we should have another meeting, but didn’t have a reason why

Wants to use the ADC and the ideas that we make here as a way to spread ideas countywide

Is there a possibility that Jo Anne would want to use an ADC meeting to talk about CC 2020 and recruiting onto her side?

Probably not, but it’s rumored that now that RCV has been approved, Jo Anne might want to run for Borough President – since she wouldn’t be 1st choice, as a woman, she might be 2nd choice and win.

This then means that the ADC is important to fill her vacancy though they still feel that they’re going to be able to maintain the status quo

There is also something in the rules that we have to have not less than 2 meetings each year, including the organizing meeting

If we didn’t have a second one, we’d be in violation

Aaron and Steve have been in touch about offering volunteers to help with logistics - no news on this yet

Proxies for ADC

Update since our meeting - we received a proxy form from Josh. Please use this form if you are unable to attend.

One person from The Basement Group should hold the majority of the proxies - Cecilia is collecting the proxies (although feel completely free to give your proxy to someone else if you would prefer!)

If any of us know people that don’t got to the meetings, get in touch with them to collect their proxies

Both our Basement Group and people not in Basement Group

We will get their proxy and also we’ll get information on if someone Joan already has it

Theories of change on proxies:

Maybe this is something that we can discuss, for making the meetings more representative instead of a proxy war

When does Joan start whipping proxies? I bet she already has them

In the 43rd there was a fast and loose view of the proxy counts

We can say that we’re bringing in proxies and we want to see theirs

Will do outreach to the people on the basement group list that haven’t been here

Erika and Greyson are reaching out to Basement Group members to alert them of the meeting and get their proxy if needed

Remember that elections for Basement Group are in January! Start thinking now if you’d like to run!