Robert's Rules for Defining a Quorum - dummies

Report on the first meeting of the Senate:
Resolutions: -Buildings in town shall be no more that 4 stories to allow better views for defending snipers. Buildings that already excceeeded 4 stories were grandfathered in, and buildings at the wall were deemed as possible defensive structures, and would not be limited.
-New Residents may be allowed in with a vote of the senate, we wish town to grow.
-The House of Teh Killer was granted full citizenship.
-Some particular people were voted against specifically (no PP, you werent mentioned either way)
-A Town Enemies list is to be built and put on public display.
-A resolution to gather stone for the next 15ish minutes among everyone to make more stone walls was passed.
-A seperation of 'Public' and 'Military' resources resolution was passed.
-Iniv's motion to serve mashed potatoes over hotdogs was vetoed
-somebody threw an axe at Wookie.
Did I miss any important resolutions?
All in all the process went well...Roberts Rules of order were generally followed for the most part and actually worked better than i had expected for a first try...
http://www.robertsrules.org/
Voting tended to be a little more democratic than republican, but we definitely had a quorum of the citizenry in attendance...so I think it gets a pass.
Can i get a second to motion to approve these minutes?

Minutes from the 8/19 meeting of the Restore the Fourth Oversight Committee Meeting. If anyone would like to volunteer to help with minutes in the future, please PM me.
Logo Adopted: http://i.imgur.com/0MYuAOl.jpg by Michael Yi.
Motion Passed: "Restore the Fourth shall have a national event in fall 2013. The Chairman, or a person he appoints, shall have discretion on the details, including the date, and the ability to cancel it." The date is the weekend of Saturday, October 26th, the anniversary of the passing of the PATRIOT Act.
Requirements for Quorum: 14 cities participating. Cities voting before the deadline (8): Louisville, Buffalo, Bellingham, Cleveland, St. Louis, Raleigh, Charlotte, SF Cities attending the meeting who did not vote before the deadline (7): NYC, DC, Birmingham, Austin, Boston, LA, Philly
Voting Yea: Louisville - Brandon Buffalo/Niagara - Michael Bellingham, WA - Odin Cleveland - Brian St. Louis - Anna Raleigh - Leighton Charlotte - Adam Washington, DC (after deadline) - Scott NYC (after deadline) - Tom Birmingham (after deadline) - Christy Austin (after deadline) - Samantha LA (after deadline) - Michael
Nay: San Francisco - Alan
Minutes:
Ben: Remind voting is done via online form until noon tomorrow, abstain vote acts as no vote
Alan: not sure about abstention; believe it is wrong, confident quorom needed for vote, vote is ratio of yes to no, abstention by definition not counted
Ben: looked at Robert's Rules, important to get right, for this particular vote treat abstain as a no vote and we'll follow up and get it ironed out. Is it alright if we table that for this meeting?
Alan: Yes, so long as we settle before any other big votes.
Ben: please don't abstain unless you feel strongly about abstaining.
Discussion of national event in DC in the fall end of Oct.
Ben: Stopwatching.us coalition interested in workin together on a big event in Oct. in DC. Involving a march, speakers, a party, potentially educational training, and potentially time for meeting directly with members of congress. Also will deliver 500K+ signatures from the online form.
We need to decide if this is something we want to make an official, national RT4 event.
RT4 would act as a hub to arrange for people to get to DC.
Scott: Basically RT4 would be the laision; others would shoot out message, we would do bus coordination, fundraising, phone banking for people to contact potential attendees and find out what they need to get to DC. Already have action plan written that goes into detail. We would be “footsoldiers.” Feel we will make or break the event.
Ben: Let's avoid spending time brainstorming cool ideas, let's just discuss whether or not this will be a national event.
Brandon: Assuming this does go down as planned, what are the numbers you're expecting?
Ben: No clear answer, definitely well over 1K, depends on how effective RT4 will be at getting people to turn out.
Scott: Goal is around 5K.
Brandon: absolutely no reservations, 100% support.
Sam: Question about fundraising? Any certain method being used right now? Going through national website? How is that working?
Ben: Currently around 6K in indiegogo account for national, haven't decided whether to incorporate or not and that discussion has been tabled, possible to do event without us fundraising, I see them as two separate things.
Sam: reason I ask is because we are doing a lot of self-funding so if we were doing any heavy fundraising events I hope we could decide as a chapter how much we could contribute. That's why I ask.
Ben: Derick points out there are no rules at all about what local orgs are able to do.
Jay: Don't have anything to add.
Michael L: Sounds great.
Odin: Sounds great, although I would like if there was some sort of way for people who can't go to participate remotely.
Ben: Definitely something we'll be talking about. Derick points out we should set up livestreaming.
Tom: Concerned about costs split between RT4 and stopwatching.us
Brian: All for doing national event and march, great idea, transportation organizing going to be huge. Not everyone can afford plane ticket.
Sean: Great aspirations, I think Scott mentioned fundraising, I would like to hear more about that.
Ben: Have we committed to raise money?
Scott: Whatever we discuss tonight or in upcoming weeks will decide that; right now we have zero commitment. If people are unable to go to the event phone banking would be a great thing for them to do.
Gabe: Nothing else to say.
Christy: Think it's great, hope it comes off, we'll have to do fundraising for transportation, lot of logistics to think about with outlying chapters, but great opportunity to go to one place nationally and be really effective.
Alan: We've spoken a lot in local group, concensus of members is momentum is paramount, visible actions have to be as significant or greater. Concern 30 days is going to be difficult to plan and executve this. Majority of SF members don't have resources or means to get to DC. Consensus is unless we can be assured we can make an impact, action would be deaf, unless we can be assured of impact we shouldn't do it.
Derick: I think we should vote on this to get the bureacracy to the side and work out details after.
Scott: We hve strong network in DC so if I can instill that confidence in you I hope I can; not fundraising for own purposes perse but also to get you guys out there. Hopefully West Coast can support.
Ben: Tentative date is Oct. 28, about 65 days. I share Scott's confidence. Large orgs are very committed to this, once they sign on, it's going to get significant support. Two months is enough time to build something and have people be aware and it will snowball.
Alan: Would like to hear how we believe we'll pull this off, mean that earnestly and positively.
Ben: Great question. Action plan is for the next two weeks the large orgs would be trying to find volunteers. They would e-mail most active people and ask to be part of “core team” in your town. Those people in RT4 would form core team. Another couple weeks of getting those people organized, one on one contact, phone banking, then once infrastructure is setup big drive and RT4 mostly help funnel people that the larger groups can get to us.
Alan: Respectfully it gives me your opinion, I hear the plan, not clear to me it will attract 5K. Have to explain to my guys why they should get excited about this instead of local events.
Brandon: none
Sam: pass
Jay: pass
Michael L: pass
Odin: nothing ventured, nothing gained. Go for it.
Tom: pass
Brian: pass
Sean: my concern is fundraising, are we going to be raising for event itself? Concerned the RT4 organizers calling ACLU and EFF members asking for money to get people to DC. Is that going to be the fundraising aspect, or have we committed to a certain amount of money?
Ben: Hasn't been determined yet. We've been clear we don't have money, not going to get stuck with bulk of fundraising. We can always cancel if that's the situation.
Scott: Not going to be supplying organizers for phone banking, I should minimize the fundraising part, that's not our job here really, secondary aspect. Looking at 100 organizers included our people, stopwatching.us, etc. Need a lot of people making phone calls basically all day for a 6 week period. We need to reach out of volunteers. Our job is to find people willing to work for free. Large number of people able to make it from here in DC. Confident view we can get a lot of people just in the general area to show up. From sattelite orgs, ballpark 1-2K people from DC area alone, from NY another large group, 2500 people from rest of country, that is a huge number, but that's what our organizers will be for. ACLU, etc. taking care of fundraising. Massive orgs handling that.
Gabe: pass
Christy: Get where SF is coming from, but local org ran into July 4thprotest where people didn't want to show up because no one else will show up, participation dependent on others, be wary of thinking like that.
Alan: How do I explain to my membership how activists will be able to travel to DC for this? Implied suggestion ACLU and other groups will raise money for west coast to DC. Should we expect that?
Ben: realistically, transport via bus on east coast. Right in assuming won't get money to fly from east coast. Maybe it does make sense to have event same day in SF, but wary of splitting time and energy. Maybe a parallel event.
Alan: No one opposed to the idea, that's not the case, concern is we want to make sure any action that's taken is a good one and difficult and expensive to get there.
Derick: pass
Scott: Completely understand Alan, getting large numbres of people from SF and Seattle probably isn't realistic, you guys will be supported by us in the future, we need your help if we're going to do this.
Ben: vote by tomorrow at noon.
Ben: Everyone get a chance to read post on where I'd like to see us go? My suggestions and would like to discuss. (Goes through list posted on basecamp.) Let's not rehash old stuff, not productive, we do need to acknowledge people for one reason or another have dropped away. We need to focus on bringing them back in and not wait on that. I'd like to send out a newsletter about new logo, renewed focus on grassroots inclusion, event in Oct. Want to get sense of if you agree this is direction we should be headed in. Want people to not have to go through middle man.
Scott: I think it's a great idea, recently had changes in DC, this is good for movement, we were becoming stagnant, this is good thing.
Derick: You said a lot. I think the best way to fix things or become more active is to do it versus naming it and giving it a plan. I think doing it and telling people that you're doing it is the best thing. If anyone needs info to be added to website, you can say so on basecamp, we need to focus on getting new people involved instead of reiterating things we agree on abstractly.
Alan: A good plan violently executed NOW is better than a perfect plan executed NEXT WEEK. Not that this isn't a good plan, it has to be executed. Similar to what he said, we need action, my theme has been the national committee is empowered for action. Want to see it executed.
Christy: Biggest obstacle you're facing right now is restoring confidence in the movement. Agree with all points. Hope that at end of the day we can focus on getting stuff done and being productive in movement, whether it's associated with national or not.
Gabe: Everything I would've said has been said.
Scott: Still a good thing.
Sean: I like the spirit of it, not sure how much impact it will have. Want to be inclusive as possible, I think it should be decision of organizers instead of national making decision for local organizers.