PAA General Meeting Minutes Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008
PAA General Meeting
The Havens Center, 1827 W. Alabama
7 p.m. Thursday, November 13, 2008
Attending:
Cheryl Crosier
Bill Crosier
Bart Boyce
Don Cook
Robert Graham
Kris Graham
Ron Graham
Marie Henry
Charlie Lindahl
C. Lee Taylor
Brainstorming Session:
Possible Goals
• Give up? Or get together & build coalitions
• Invite people from other groups
Coalition for Justice, KPFT
• Build coalition in minority communities
• Help KPFT not be so fractured
• Develop 3rd parties
• Abolish death penalty
• Better air in Houston
• Letters to editor as group
• Build infrastructure – more outreach in PAA
• Get access to media
• More outreach by kpft in minority communities
• Media reform and restore Fairness Doctrine
• Tie in illegal occupations to (tanking) economy
• Working class issues: living wage; jobs, health care
• Increase networking
• Localism + Sustainability
Root causes
• (3) Capitalism – engenders gross power, economic inequities; system that promotes profits over needs is necessarily corrosive
• (9) Corporate Media – source of propaganda; brainwashing, antithesis of public interest
• Electoral process
Campaign Finance reform
Verifiable voting
• Education/ dumbing down
• (3)Fear; (6) No sense of community/interconnectedness; Loss of sense of effectiveness; (6) Alienation, Lack of effective communication between groups
• (5) Military industrial congressional complex
• (3) Unequal treatment of Israel & Palestinians
• (7) Poverty – invisible to too many people
• (5) Lack of viable 3rd parties
• No Dept. of Peace (ignorant about nonviolent resolution of conflict)
• Lack of democracy
Media Manipulation
What props it up?
• Advertising
• Profit maximization
• Privileging Corporate interests over public
• Ideology/power holder’s agenda
• Lack of regulation
Poverty
What props up poverty?
• Lack of effective education
• Wrong role models
• Unfair resource access/support systems
• Structural systems that benefit from maintaining poverty
• Sexism, classism, racism
• War
• Lack of health care
• Lack of living wage
• Teen pregnancies
Fear/Alienation/Hopelessness
• Media/internet
• Lack of mass transportation
• Education
• Lack of community
• Debt/credit culture; consumerism
• Poverty
• Notion of individualism
• Violence + threat of violence
Announcements:
Anna in the Middle East 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 14 Havens Center, 1827 W. Alabama
Intergalactic artists for peace: networking gala Dec. 20th at Gulf Coast Electric Museum with Don Paul from California
Motion made and passed by acclimation $200
Motion made and passed by acclimation to meet Thanksgiving leftover potluck Sunday Nov. 30th to finish meeting at Havens if available