Oxford Meeting 2010-04-19

Minutes

Approximately 11 people at the meeting

Action points from last meeting

Well done to all those that have done their actions.

Outstanding actions

  • Put up Tar Sands campaign stepping stones on Crabgrass – Brad.
  • Discussion on questions for local campaign – Carl, Beccy, Charlie, Graham.
  • Set up fundraising working group – Carl.

What’s being done with the TARmageddon video

It’s being made!

National Gathering feedback

This year’s summer camp will be in Scotland in August

  • It will include action
  • RBS will be a campaign focus (following on from last year’s focus on finacial infrastructure but more focussed. Monthly natioanl gathering).
  • The next national gatherings to plan for the summer bash will be …
    • 29-30 May – Manchester
    • 19-20 June – Leeds

There was a question about what about feedback from TVCA on bi-monthly national gatherings to allow for regional gatherings in between.
Feedback: April priorities; Minutes from 29 March meeting

  • The national gathering concluded that there’s lots to do to prepare for August (especially given a late start), so monthly national meetings were needed.
  • TVCA could still its our own gathering in May.
  • People need to be realistic about what the national process can and cannot achieve.
  • But how should a decision such as to have a summer gathering be referred back to neighbourhoods?
  • National process can be exclusive in terms of who’s able to go – regional gatherings were meant to overcome this?

Somebody suggested the following format in future for national Climate Camp gatherings:

  • Autumn – Spring: Bi-monthly national meetings.
  • In between this, national meetings specifically about the summer event.
  • In future, national events should include neighbourhood decisions.

There was concern that last year was dominated by national events, and local TVCA actions were dropped as a consequence.

Noted that TVCA could opt out of the summer gathering, but that doesn’t feel supportive to the movement.

‘Should we be having an annual gathering?’ was asked.

Did people at the national gathering have energy to make the August camp happen? Yes, but relatively small number of people were at the gathering compared to previous gatherings.

There was some support for feeding back TVCA views to national Climate Camp. However there seemed to be general agreement that it would be best to read the national gathering minutes and reflect on views before feeding back to national. If we do feedback, it was suggested that careful consideration would be needed to develop a proposal. This was somewhat countered with a suggestion that perhaps we shouldn’t start with a proposal, but ask for a national discussion, and see if a proposal emerges from that.

Agreed that this topic would be discussed further in the meeting after next.

May Regional Gathering

We could have a discussion on plans developed from the March TVCA Strategy day

Opportunity to have more time on big issues & strategy as a region

  • Would it be better to hold off on Tar Sands decisions to bring other factors into consideration (e.g. tying into local campaigns)
  • How well advanced are other areas – local campaign and outreach? Not been that much progress since March, but plans are afoot.
  • Don’t want Tar Sands momentum to drop off.
  • Be careful of over-planning, and not doing any actions.

Asked that the strategy day in March wasn’t very well attended – would a similar thing in May have better attendance?

Could we just have a social to build up the region?

Let’s do an action!

Should we have a gathering in June instead?

No decision on the date – we’ll see how other areas shape up. A social in May would still be possible, even if a gathering were delayed until June.

TVCA Process proposal

There was a suggestion made a time ago about how TVCA organises. There was a Crabgrass discussion and discussion at the TVCA meeting last week

  • We should wait until after Tar Sands and local actions meetings before talking about our meeting process
  • Can we integrate it in to the agendas of the two meetings?
  • Short, snappy thing to the list linking to the proposal and get a bit of discussion going?
    • It should include information about new strategies
    • BECCY to send this email

More Big Nights Off?

Should we do one? Yes.

How about a picnic perhaps followed by an evening event? Sounds good.

Who’s up for doing? BECCY & DANNY

Marquee, borrowing thereof

The this version of the guidelines were agreed by the group, but noted that we might want to revisit prices at some time.

Agreed that both requests to borrow the marquee were accepted

  • GRAHAM to contact groups.

Making all Crabgrass pages public

  • Sometimes we want a frank discussion that wouldn’t come up on a search engine. Was noted that Crabgrass pages do not come up on Google (for example) even if they are public.
  • An amendment was suggested to pages public by default, but they can be made private if required. Noted that this was hard to do, and might suggest non-public pages meant we had something to hide.
  • There’s a missed step of involvement if people don’t join the group
  • People would still have to be members to make comments, pages, etc.
  • Crabgrass is useful a resource for people who can’t/don’t come to meetings.
  • Mixed public/private pages are hard to get people to do, and makes some parts ‘exclusive’.

No conclusions were reached.

Announcements

OARC’s 5th birthday is at the end on April. See the OARC calendar for lots of activist fun going on.

Noam is looking for more Climate Campers to interview for his research. See his email.

The Plane Stupid subvertising challenge is this Thursday.

This Saturday at 11am WDM & Greenpeace will be doing a Tar Sands action outside the NatWest in Cornmarket. All welcome.

Next meeting

Monday 26 April in OARC. The meeting will focus on ’where next for TVCA anti-Tar Sands campaign & actions. Keyholder is BECCY.

Friday email – CARL.

Agenda

May Regional Gathering

Yea or neigh? Discussion.

Marquee, borrowing thereof

Guidelines

Some guidelines have been drafted – can we agree these for the time being?

Requests

  1. There’s an anti-nuclear camp happening at Sizewell power station from 23-26 April. They are still looking for marquees – would it be possible for the camp to rent the tvca marquee? can you put it on the agenda for next week’s meeting?
  2. Do you have a large sized tent that you could lend to the Oxfam Humanitarian Department between 17-19 May? We are looking for 10 tents to put up during the Humanitarian Learning Forum. This is a request in principle – they might be able to get tents from elsewhere, but I (Graham) said I’d ask the group in principle. And yes, Oxfam is big and has lots of money. But the budget for this event is very small, so any donation would be small (which may effect people’s thoughts on lending then marquee).

Making all Crabgrass pages public

Crabgrass is a useful way for TVCA to store documents so that every TVCAer can access them. However, Some people seem to experience problems logging into Crabgrass. Some people don’t want to have a Crabgrass account to access TVCA documents.

Should we just make all pages on Crabgrass public?

This would mean that people wouldn’t need an account to access them. It would also mean that anybody, including those not involved with TVCA, could see them (however, this wouldn’t be any less secure that the current set up whereby any Tom, Dick, or Henrietta can join the group without us knowing who they are).

I think this should go to the group as it’s a change in our ways of working.