As per the request of over 10% of our membership, we’ll be having a special meeting this Sunday 9:30am-11:30am at 518 Valencia St.
As Chair, I acknowledge that leading up to our last meeting, we did not make it clear to the Membership that Members in Good Standing can cast their votes in advance if they cannot attend a meeting, which has been part of our Bylaws since the formation of the club. This is one of the reasons why some members had requested a special meeting – so they could participate in the endorsement process even if they could not attend a meeting in person.
This meeting is for endorsements, so we will only ask Members in Good Standing to attend. Members in Good Standing need to have attended two general membership meetings in the past and this being your third (we’ve had 4 in the last 2 months because it’s been endorsements season!) and paid your Membership Dues.
Absentee voting ahead of time by Members in Good Standing shall be allowed. Click here to vote on an absentee ballot. If you cannot attend this meeting, please complete the ballot today.
Below is a detailed agenda for the meeting
Please read ahead of time and reply to this email with any comments or questions.
9:00 – Set Up
9:30 (1 min) – Moment of silence
9:31 (4 mins) – Agenda
9:35 (10 mins) – Community Guidelines
- Respect – don’t cut off someone just because you disagree, or talk over each other. If you want to talk, raise your hand and we’ll put you on stack.
Example: During the club’s debate between the first two challengers to Pelosi, a member said that she respected Pelosi for what she had done in the past and that we should focus on races we can win. She was shouted down by multiple men to the point she couldn’t even finish her sentences. - Be aware of your privilege – everyone in this room has privilege, whether based on race, gender, sexual orientation, class or physical ability. Just because you belong to a less privileged group in one of these categories doesn’t mean that you automatically understand others that are less privileged in another category.
Example: I am a woman of color. I face harassment frequently and get disrespected at times. But I will never claim to understand the experience of African Americans. I am mostly able bodied, so despite having chronic pain, I will not claim to understand those with a disability. My parents were poor immigrants when I was born, but I spent my later school years growing up in a middle class family, so I will not claim to understand the situations of undocumented immigrants.
Each of us here has privilege of some sort, and even if you are a less privileged in one or multiple areas, that does not mean you understand the plight of other disadvantaged groups. The best way to check your privilege is to step back, listen, reflect and learn about people who are less advantaged than you are in particular areas. - Criticize the Action, not the person – no name calling, assume best intentions
Example: In the heated disagreements over the Congressional race, there has been name-calling and personal critiques. It’s very important to criticize where criticism is due, but let’s stick to criticizing the action, not the person. - If you’re being criticized, don’t take it personally – if your action has been criticized, don’t take it as a critique of your character.
Example: If a person of color asks you to “check your white privilege”, it does NOT mean that you’re racist and a bad person, so don’t get defensive. It means that your actions show a lack of understanding of certain issues surrounding race, and you need to step back, listen, read up, reflect and learn, and you can do better. Be humble. Nobody’s perfect, but you can always learn. - Be aware of both intent and impact – even if you didn’t mean to offend someone, if you ended up impacting them, you still need to truly apologize
Example: If you have made comments that didn’t mean to be disparaging towards women and people of color, if you comments offended women and people of color, just apologize for your words or actions. No need to be defensive and justify yourself as not racist or sexist. Just simply take responsibility for having impacted others, apologize and learn to do better. - Step up, step back – be aware of the amount of space and time you’re taking up; collect your thoughts, analyze and synthesize them before you speak. Don’t dominate the conversation. Give others a chance to speak, especially women and people of color. LISTEN to others. REFLECT on what they’re saying, take a step back. Don’t just think about yourself.
9:45 (10 mins) – Explanation of process and procedures
Because there is still are still a lot of strong feelings about the issues that we will discuss, I suggest that we moderate our discussions in a stricter manner that would minimize conflict, and encourage reflection and awareness. We will use progressive stack, meaning if you want to speak, raise your hand, and your name will be added to the list of speakers, with priority given to people who have not spoken yet at the meeting, and women and people of color. Each person has one chance to speak during each agenda item, with no more than 1.5 minutes per person per item. No one may directly respond to another person’s statement. All statements should start with “I think…”, “I believe”, or something similar to that nature. Between each speaker, there will be 30 seconds of silence so everyone can reflect on what has been said. This will apply to the Values discussion and Endorsement sections of the meeting.
We need a person to take stack, a moderator and a timer.
10:00 (20 mins) – The Values and Purpose of the Berniecrats
This will be an open discussion. But before we start, as Chair, and one of the very few woman of color in the group, I would like to highlight the importance of intersectionality.
Most of us liked Bernie Sanders because he understood how issues are interconnected. Campaign finance is linked to income inequality, which is linked to race, to indigenous rights, to health, to education etc. A lot of us didn’t like Hillary Clinton because even though she claimed to have a woman’s platform, her record didn’t address low-income mothers on welfare, didn’t address women of color, didn’t address women in Syria and all the countries that the U.S. has been bombing.
So as we evaluate who we are as the SF Berniecrats and think about the values we stand for, we can’t just consider a few issues. We have to be intersectional. Especially when there have been a lot of critiques thrown at the Bernie movement as white male centric. That means we have to do even better. We have to show we understand issues of race and gender, and act as allies. As an organization that is mostly white, and has a lot of men, we need to learn.
For a start, I urge everyone in the club read the 4 texts below. Even though we all consider ourselves progressives, we live in a society where in all of school, media and culture, whiteness is the norm, and we study other “minorities”. So we all need to learn how to be a true ally.
- White privilege – Peggy Mcintosh
https://nationalseedproject.org/white-privilege-unpacking-the-invisible-knapsack - What does it mean to be white? – Robin DiAngelo
http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/guest-what-does-it-mean-to-be-white/ - Can We Talk? – Beverly Daniel Tatum
https://wmbranchout.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/defining-racism-beverly-daniel-tatum.pdf - The Left Has A White Supremacy Problem, Too – Quentin James
https://medium.com/@quentinjames/the-left-has-a-white-supremacy-problem-too-2071ebd1022
For context: http://washingtonmonthly.com/2016/11/25/what-sanders-doesnt-understand-about-identity-politics/
As to the purpose, as the co-founder of the Club, the genesis of the Berniecrats came from a vision to build a movement that outlives one or two election cycles. It is not about a single person, or a single political race, but about a movement that carries the values social, racial, economic and environmental justice.
10:20 (10 mins) – Superior Court Judge race
Discussion on revisiting the Superior Court Judge race
Vote to revote in the Superior Court Judge race (2/3 needed to pass in order for ballots to count for that race)
10:30 (20 mins) – Senate race
Discussion on revisiting the Senate race
Vote to have a runoff between the top two candidates (2/3 needed to pass)
10:50 (30 mins) – Congressional race
Discussion on revisiting the Congressional District 12 race
Vote to revote in the Congressional race, with any potential new endorsements, if qualifying, to be added to the existing endorsement (2/3 needed to pass)
11:20 (10 mins) – Reflection
Each person express 30 seconds of reflection on themselves – not others.
11:30 – Clean up
Thank you all for your patience. I hope we can enter this meeting with peace, and exit as a stronger organization even more grounded in our core values.
Claire Lau
Chair, SF Berniecrats
