Agenda September 9 Meeting

• Place: Brecht Forum (​directions)
• Date: Sunday, September 9
• Time: 10:00 am (bagels, coffee), 10:30 am (meeting starts), to 5:30 pm (meeting ends)

Goals

• Redefine the relationship between May First/People Link and the group formerly known as mf-staff
• Develop the role of May First/People Link in the broader ecosystem of progressive politics and the Internet and plan how to perform that role over the coming year
• Plan how to open and expand the leadership of the organization in a way that challenges and works through forms of oppression, particularly sexism, racism, and classism.
• Project realistically a timeline for financial solvency
• Continue developing the idea of what membership means, how a membership organization is different than a regular ISP, and what roles we want our members to play in the organization

Agenda

Item 0: Describe:

• Ecosystem in which May First/People Link operates
  • Because there seems to be a main constituent group that MF/PL is conspiring to serve and connect (namely, progressive organizations), the first order of thinking would be to understand the needs of small progressive organizations, and understand their constraints, needs and values.
  • Once we have a clear picture of that, we want to imagine these organizations being connected and served in a powerful way, and what that would look like.
• MEMBERSHHIP: Then we want to look at how MF/PL manifests it services currently, and how that measures up with the above thinking. We want to ask ourselves:
  • Does a membership model fit well with the needs, constraints and values listed above?
  • Why is the membership model important?
  • What has membership traditionally meant to MF/PL and how might it be re-ordered to satisfy the needs of all stakeholders better?
  • STRATEGY: what is the path forward for accomplishing this?
• LEADERSHIP
  • Given the above, what form of leadership would best serve the above 'Ecosystem'?
  • What does leadership look like currently at MF/PL?
  • How do these two forms of leadership compare with one another. What is the ideal?
  • STRATEGY: how can we move this organization from where it is now with respect to leadership, to where it should ideally be?

Item 1: Lunch, financial review

Item 2: Develop:

• Our role in the ecosystem
• Plan for developing the leadership to play that role
• Roles of people in the room in this effort