[CPRB] Notes from tonight's meeting

[jwalling at uiuc.edu]

Hey folks, 

So tonight Ricky, Danielle C., and I were at the meeting.

A quick note... We're looking at Feb. 10 for the date of 
a "Community Violence Prevention Forum" in the council 
chambers.  Please read on for more info (especially why we 
thought this date would be better) and let me know if there 
are any major conflicts ASAP.

A couple of things... 

First, we're going to meet next Thursday at 6:30 because we 
realized that our meetings conflict with county board 
meetings.  I think, like Danielle Schumacher suggested 
earlier, we're going to have to start meeting weekly to 
really kick things up before the city council elections.

Second, since our goal is first to have the Urbana City 
Council pass legislation to create a Citizen Police Review, 
these are the things we need to do.

1.  Write up a questionnaire and send it to the candidates. 
(To be done by next Thursday by Jen and Ricky and whoever 
else wants to help)
2.  Put together a public forum.
We talked about it tonight and decided that this might be 
most effective if we had the forum in early February like we 
originally planned it instead of in early March.

***We are currently looking at Feb. 10***  Please let me know 
if you have a conflict with this.  I am going to call to ask 
for use of the council chambers and televising of the forum 
tomorrow.

The topic of the forum is going to be "Community Violence 
Prevention" and we'd like to include these three issues
- Police Review
- Court diversion 
- The jail issues that Sandra has been addressing with CU 
Citizens for Peace and Justice

This will, of course, involve our talking to a lot more 
people in the community before pursuing it, but I think it 
will bring community violence prevention issues into the 
spotlight of the campaigns.  

Ricky and I are going to work on getting speakers, the list 
of possibilities that we put together is...
- Laurel Prussing to speak about her involvement with the 
CPRB and how the council can affect community violence 
prevention issues
- Mark Krug, the director of Court Diversion Services
- A pastor from a black church (Ricky is going to ask Carol 
for suggestions)
- Carol or Sandra from CUCFPJ
- Manisha, the woman assaulted by the police, Tim Gibbs from 
Cop watch, and Lori Serb

We're going to ask candidates in the questionnaire if they 
will be willing to flier for our forum when they are going 
door to door for the various candidates.  This will be really 
huge for our campaign.

We currently have $358 in the bank (If anyone wants to be the 
other treasurer, please let me know)

I've got a list of tasks that need to get done, so please 
shoot me an e-mail if you're willing to do anything.

I'll see you all next week at 6:30 PM at the Douglass 
Community Center.

Thanks, all!
-Jen