[Peace] AWARE Minutes, November 26, 2005

[Carl Estabrook]

	Minutes of the AWARE meeting held Sunday
	26 November 2005 at the Urbana IMC 5-6:30pm.

[1] News of the Week (posted separately by Carl Estabrook).

[2] Introductions: 15 present.

[3] New Ideas.

[3.1] CITY PEACE RESOLUTION. Gary Storm proposed a resolution to be
submitted by AWARE to the city councils of Urbana (and Champaign).  The
text is in Appendix 1.  There was some discussion of (a) the text (among
the deepest desires of the human heart being the wish to alter another's
prose) and (b) how best to approach the city mothers and fathers of
Urbana.  The matter was devolved to a Working Group of Gary, Mort Brussel
and Durl Kruse, to consider (a) and (b) and report to the next meeting how
best to publicize the resolution.  (Similar resolutions have been adopted
by the Chicago City Council and those of many cities and towns across the
country.) -- A question was raised as to whether this resolution could be
combined with the petition that Ricky Baldwin was circulating.

[4] Working Groups.

[4.1] FINANCES: (a) $71 was collected at the Holiday Village Market at
Lincoln Square Mall (comfortably in excess of the $40 fee to the Urbana
Business Assoc.); and (b) an AWARE account has been established at Notes &
Quotes.

[4.2] HOLIDAY VILLAGE MARKET AT LINCOLN SQUARE MALL. Durl Kruse reported
that AWARE's was the only non-vendor table at the first of these events,
Saturday 19 November but that presence seemed a good idea.  It was agreed
that we will have a table on Saturday 26 November; Durl will make the
financial arrangements. The market runs every Saturday from 19 November to
24 December.

[4.3] COUNTER-RECRUITMENT.  It was agreed that AWARE will leaflet the
Illinois High School Association football championships (at the UIUC
stadium) on 25 & 26 November, because the military regularly has a sizable
presence at these events.  We'll hold signs and distribute literature at
First and Kirby (Champaign) from noon to 4pm both days.  Randall Cotton
will be the contact person for Friday, and Durl Kruse for Saturday.
Randall is also preparing signs and literature.

[4.4] CHURCH PRESENCE.  This Working Group will meet at the Kruse's Monday
night at 7pm to prepare signs and literature and choose which local church
will be graced with our presence next Sunday.  Contact
<jandurl at insightbb.com> if you wish to participate. It was suggested that
copies of the City Peace Resolution and flyers for AWARE Presents be
distributed.

[4.5] WRFU.  See compiled report in Appendix 2.

[4.6] AWARE PRESENTS. The second Stories from Iraq will take place Tuesday
29 November at 7pm at the Community United Church of Christ (Corner of 6th
and Daniel streets in Champaign).
	Anna Piller <www.annainthemiddleeast.com> has proposed herself a s
speaker in April or May; she will be in Chicago with Not in My Name.

[5] Last Week's Events: talks by Barbara Ehrenreich and a war psychologist
[sic] who reads the Greek classics; and the Wal-Mart movie. The first
Stories from Iraq, at the Urbana Library on the 16th, was good and
well-attended.

[6] Upcoming Events: leafletting and demonstrations at various venues
25-27 November (see above).

=========

*Appendix 1. AWARE Resolution to be Submitted for Adoption by the
Champaign and Urbana City Councils (Gary Storm)

WHEREAS this City Council passed a resolution opposing war in Iraq prior
to the American invasion;

WHEREAS the American government mislead American citizens and the world at
large with false and distorted intelligence on the existence of weapons of
mass destruction, connections between Al Qaeda and the Saddam Hussein
regime, and levels of support among the Iraqi people for an American
invasion to overthrow Hussein;

WHEREAS the American invasion and occupation of Iraq have killed and
maimed thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens as well as American, Iraqi,
and other coalition troops, and have destroyed, without reconstruction,
extensive infrastructure (power, water and sewer systems) upon which daily
life in Iraq depends;

WHEREAS the American occupation of Iraq has failed to establish basic
civil order and security for the citizens of Iraq;

WHEREAS the American invasion and occupation have increased rather than
decreased the level of resistance to American and coalition forces by
national insurgents and foreign terrorists and created a situation in
which it is almost impossible to distinguish members of these groups from
innocent Iraqi citizens who, as a result, are being killed and maimed in
escalating numbers;  AND we could take our little tape recorder with us
when we go to protests and things and ask people afterwards what they
liked about it, why it's important, maybe with honking and cheering in the
background if it's on Main Street :-), etc...

WHEREAS many families living in Urbana have relatives, friends and/or
colleagues in Iraq who are being subjected to the above conditions daily,
whether as Iraqi citizens, members of the American military, business
people contracting to provide needed goods and services, or volunteers
seeking to provide humane relief;

BE IT RESOLVED THAT American and coalition troops be removed from Iraq
immediately, turning over responsibility for maintaining civil order and
security to the Iraqi people through their elected government and to
United Nations or other peacekeeping forces with which the government of
Iraq is able negotiate support;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT during this period, the American government
provide extensive financial aid to support this peacekeeping effort and to
pay for the reconstruction of Iraq's infrastructure as rapidly as possible
.

=========

Appendix 2. Compiled Report on AWARE and WRFU

Questions posed by Linda Evans <veganlinda at yahoo.com>.

Karen Medina <kmedina at uiuc.edu>:
	There is a form on-line for show proposals
<www.wrfu.net/proposal-form/>.  I've never done anything like this before,
and a weekly spot sounds intimidating to me, but I have troubles creating
a syllabus without thinking it is lame and boring. I'm sure those who have
experience doing radio shows might be a bit more practical about
brainstorming a list of enough things to do. I'll support all in any way I
can. Here is my brainstorm:
	*invite all three of the guys that did the "stories from Iraq"
this past Wednesday evening (or we could just turn the audio of it into
something of a documentary)
	*interviews with some of the groups in town who have spoken out,
like the Friends church
	*interviews with people from other countries
	*get a professional storyteller to do a few Iraqi folk tales
	*do a bunch of documentaries about different issues -- kind of
seek out the local expertise and bring them to light.

Ricky Baldwin <baldwinricky at yahoo.com>:
	You know, weekly sounds intimidating to me, too.  But maybe we
could rotate who's doing the show?  A 4-way rotation sounds good to me,
one person one week, two of us the next, ...  In fact, rotation sounds
good to me, no matter how seldom we are on the air!
	And maybe sometimes we can rebroadcast stuff?  News from Neptune,
or a show we already aired?  Somebody still has to show up to put on the
tape, I bet, but we could take turns?  I don't think it's necessary to
rebroadcast, and we should probably have new stuff when we can, but on the
other hand there's a value to rebroadcasting, too - for people who missed
one show and are crying into their breakfast cereal every morning ...
	Depending on the day and time, I could physically show up every 2
weeks or 3 weeks, but not every week.  I think it will be important to
share this load and not let it fall to one or two people.
	I especially like the idea of interviewing people who are working
on various anti-war activities in town, and people who are from Iraq or
who have been there recently - maybe a soldier or two?  And there's
Afghanistan, too, and - if we can find such people - Haiti - and Venezuela
- maybe our friend the railroad photographer sometime if he's in town,
talking about his experience with Homeland Security, or we could tape an
interview over the phone?
	And for that matter, it would be nice to make more connections
between what's going on domestically and abroad, Katrina, welfare cuts,
etc., if we can round up a couple of folks - maybe one at a time - who are
working in those areas who have something to say about how wars drain away
resources, distract our attention, on and on?
	In general it seems to me it might be more interesting for us to
try to have more guests and less of our own chatter.  Doesn't mean we
can't go off preaching occasionally, but sounds less interesting to me.
But whatever we do, I think we all have to resist the temptation to just
do it when it seems like it's hard to get anyone to take a turn.
	Oh- AND we could take our little tape recorder with us when we go
to protests and things and ask people afterwards what they liked about it,
why it's important, maybe with honking and cheering in the background if
it's on Main Street, etc...

Carl Estabrook <cge at shout.net>:
	From 15 years of doing news and culture programs on WEFT, I think
it would be no trouble at all to get programming for as much time as we
want to use.  As we've found with UPTV, there is a lot of good programming
that can be had for the asking and there's much more audio programming
(usually downloadable from the web) that there is video programming.
Secondly, regular AWAREists could produce roundtable discussions of
anti-war/anti-racist news and politics with no difficulty (well, not
quite: but the greatest difficulty I'm sure will be to get us to stop.)
The only question is who wants to commit the time to organize these
things?

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