2nd ad hoc Meeting: Friday, May 17, 7-10 PM. Contact: Jose 773-632-9992
Agenda:
Discuss the bullshit reform bill

•  How can we make a political attack on the bill that focuses on changing the terms of the political landscape and pushing a radical abolitionist vision?
• How can we unmask the lies behind the media hype and rhetoric? This is NOT a victory for the “movement.”
• Many of us decided we wanted to read the bill — we will each bring key points that we think should be attacked, key ideas on what we think a critique should focus on.
• We talked about the need to “translate” the bill so that we can unmask what is at stake, to analyze and develop a critique that anyone can use — something useful beyond us for those who want to make their own analysis and useful also beyond the struggle around this specific bill.

Tasks for the upcoming meeting:

• Those of us interested in reading the bill will read as much as possible (at least part 1 about militarization) and bring in concrete ideas for what points to attack
• – also, begin to brainstorm and collect possible points of a political program or platform that would express a border abolitionist perspective (or examples of existing platforms you are inspired by or that you think we can use as a starting point)
• – also, collect resources (other good critiques of this bill AND in general border abolition perspectives or political writing that gives us a new way to frame the issues and challenges the “rights” discourse etc. — whatever we want to share).

1st ad hoc Meeting –  Sat May 11, 2013

We talked about some possibilities for moving forward

1. Produce something that can be distributed: one idea was to produce a “translated” summary that turns the language around (instead of security, insecurity.. instead of parkway to citizenship pathway to apartheid etc…? find creative ways to re-name so as to cut through the bullshit propaganda and attack this thing); another was to produce an “annotated” bill — literally all 877 pages with our notes on the sidelines explaining what this means.
2. we will also want to make some kind of action or actions that attract media attention and use the media to insert our voice — for example, a campaign that accuses Durbin or the Gang of 8 of fraud for lying about the true nature of the bill; or an attack on all those sitting at the negotiating table (the senators, ICIRR, unions, CCA, etc.); something about them being a “gang” or a criminal conspiracy; or newsflash: someone stole the immigration reform bill and we found it — here it is!  Some kind of campaign to insert an interruption into the media type and quickly go on the offensive.
3. Make a website (quickly) that collects all the resources we are putting together and acts like a resource for others too — it can be private at first (internal for us to share ideas and notes and links) and as quickly as possible made open and public.
4.  Create a political platform — what does border abolition look like? Can we come up with a series of principles (how many); this can hopefully be something others can take up and use as well. any legislation — even after this bill — can be measured up against this platform .

Also we spoke about June being a goal for releasing the critique and for doing some kind of action. End of May or as soon as possible is a goal for having a more public and inclusive process for the meetings and for developing the campaign — once we have a concrete beginning we want to invite others and to be as public as possible?

Other Ideas:

1. There is a border security fair in Arizona in the late summer, literally a fair with weapons contractors and security firms advertising their products. In the past people have tried to protest this.  We imagined: what if we GO there and try to participate, try to big a table and showcase our version of a security product (like a fake weapon, or like something that will blow up the border wall…?)
2. We imagined an ongoing campaign that is more imaginative and uses disinformation in strategic ways… a possible link for this would be the Yes Lab who helps to fund those kinds of campaigns. Example here: http://yeslab.org/project/loop-coal: for example we could make a campaign to raise funds so that we can go and participate in the security fair…??