Last Night's Meeting

Thank you to all who made the trip out to Origin 23 to share your ideas at our third meeting!

We began developing a plan for holding a teach-in at the TCC cafeteria sometime in January. Our plan includes inviting speakers representing all of the various groups who would be negatively effected by the proposed cuts. Examples of likely invitees would be: cafeteria workers, bookstore employees, union members, teachers, Running Start/Fresh Start/A.B.E. participants, students, ect. One of our members suggested sending an invite out to a member of the Washington State Legislature. It was agreed this would be an excellent idea so long as the legislator was unconditionally supportive of our platform and unwilling to vote for any budget plan containing cuts to higher education. All speakers invited to the teach-in will be encouraged to dedicate a portion of their time to discussing how the budget cuts will or have impacted their lives.

It was suggested that a visual element be added to the teach-in. This could be acheived by wearing the same color t-shirts as a sign of solidarity, posting signs, wearing buttons or creating an interesting Power Point display with budget cut highlights.

Our second topic of discussion was creating an outreach program with an end goal of establishing groups at schools in the surrounding area capable of holding their own meetings and shoring up support for our demonstration in Olympia. Our small "core" group simply cannot reach enough students for a demonstration unless we first develop relationships with a small number of dedicated individuals at various schools in the area. These individuals can then form groups such as ours, hand out leaflets, speak at Senate meetings, hold forums and appear at student functions to raise awareness and interest in the movement and ultimately in a demonstration. The crux of our problem is finding individuals willing to dedicate time to establishing groups such as our own; this requires some of us take trips to educate the student bodies at campuses in the area. Some suggested campus locations were: South Puget Sound Community College, UW Tacoma, Green River Community College, Pierce College and any of the local high schools.

If you would be willing to table, leaflet, hang up fliers, ect. please contact me so that we can begin further stages of planning.

Again, thank you for your time and effort!