New Clubs
Kevin Dempsey Peterson (peterson@ocf.Berkeley.EDU)
Fri, 3 Apr 1998 00:11:37 -0800
Nesim and I were talking about the logistics of getting all these new
groups started after everyone else left the meeting yesterday. Here are
some things we came up with.
1. We might want to wait until we have found some objectivists to start
an objectivist group.
2. One of the biggest advantages that will come out of splitting up is
that we will be able to clearly separate anarcho-capitalism (which will
be the province of the anarchist group) from mainstream libertarianism.
This is good because when we get new potential members, we can get them
interested in mainstream libertarianism, based on the sort of natural
rights or minarchist arguments, without turning them off with the fairly
extreme and implausible anarcho-capitalist position. When "Cal
Libertarians" presents David Friedman, it sort of implies that
"libertarians" think Dr. Friedman is right, while most of those who are
libertarians (upt o about 30% of the population depending ont he
statistics) would say his ideas are too far fetched.
3. An ISIL group would allow us to present a broader range of ideas
because when we don't really want to present things far outside the
party platform in a political group like Cal Libertarians. It would
also allow Cal Libertarians to an actual political action group, without
turning off those who are interested in hearing about "individual
liberty," but don't want to associate themselves with a group actually
trying to do something like abolish the state income tax. For example,
I might be interested socialist anarchismm, but I wouldn't want to go to
meetings of (e.g.) the ISO, because I don't want to hang out with
aspiring revolutionaries.
4. An umbrella organization, the Berkeley Liberty Coalition, is probably
unnecessary right now. We would probably be better off setting up just
the SIL and ASU right now, and adding the BLC when people being members
of multiple groups isn't enough to manage things.
For a schedule, Nesim and I thought that people are unlikely to want to
come to several meetings a week, so alternating weeks is probably a good
structure. First thing is that all administrative stuff, like how we
should manage the mailing lists, and getting constitutions written,
should be delegated to a monthly administrative meeting for all the
groups. THe other weeks would be for activities related to the
respective groups. Here's our proposed schedule, to begin on April 15th
(the third wednesday of April):
1st Wednesday Cal Libertarians. Political activism (petitions,
involvement with the local and state party, and so on) and Libertarian
speakers (people who are actually in politics or want to be or are in
the party)
2nd Wednesday Anarchist Student Union anarcho-capitalism, an-cap'sm and
how it relates to other forms of anarchism, and general extremism, since
you can't hurt the name of a group that calls itself anarchist.
Intended to be a discussion group, and host any type of speaker (and
presentations from members when they have an idea and time). My
enthusiasm for this group is because I want to get to post flyers with
the A in a circle thing.
3rd Wednesday Administrative Meeting. This is where all business for
all the clubs will be handled. When we need it, we can turn this into a
Berkeley Liberty Coalition meeting. The goal is to get all the busniess
out of the other weeks so that newcomers can actually learn about what
we are trying to do, not be bored with the logistics of it.
4th Wednesday Students for Individual Liberty. General discussion of
libertarian and other more-free-than-what-we-have-now ideas. The Henry
George guy would be appropriate for this group, since it is totally
unrelated to the LP, but concerned with Individual Liberty. I think we
should try hard to keep this group moderate, so that we can attract
people who want more liberty than what the Republemocrats will give
them, but aren't violent revolutionaries like the rest of us.
5th Wednesday (1 out of 3 months) Whatever needs more time, whatever we
can schedule.
All these will have to be fairly flexible, so that we can rearrange the
meetings so that whatever speaker we can get will be speaking to the
appropriate group.
To improve attendance, I think we should have a volutary list, of people
who say they want to be counted as members. They must sign up at a
meeting, and we'll print out some nice "Official Card Carrying
Anarchist" cards (or whatever group). The real purpose is to get a
phone list of people who don't follow the newsgroup but want to stay
involved, so that we can call them to remind them that whatever groupo
they have a special interest in is meeting the following day. We can
put at the top of the "Official Membership List" that everyone signing
up more or less agrees with at least some of the ideas that the club
stands for. This will give us a better gauge than just the email list
we have now.
--Kevin
(insert smilies where appropriate if you are humor impared)