2018 Membership Meeting
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Communications protest
Photo: Mallory Knodel

2018 Membership Meeting

Welcome to the newly re-organized 2018 Membership Meeting!

The details

There will be three ways you can participate in the 2018 Membership meeting: A discussion forum, conference call, and an online vote.

You are encouraged to participate in all three.

One: Discussion forum

We have three proposals for consideration.

You must login to participate, however, you can use any valid MF/PL username or password to login. If you have trouble logging in, please email support@mayfirst.org to ask for assistance.

The three proposals are:

Discussion is open now! Please participate.

Two: Conference call

We are organizing two audio-only conference calls via our mumble conference system. They will each last 2 hours.

Please choose one to attend:

The agenda for each meeting:

  • Introductions: 45 minutes
  • Presentation of proposals: 15 minutes
  • Discussion: 30 minutes
  • Technology Congress report: 15 minutes

Both meetings will have simultaneous interpretation in both english and spansih.

Both meetings will take place via the mumble conference system. All participants must install mumble to participate.

If you have never used mumble before, please come to the meeting 30 minutes early and we can help you learn how to use it and ensure you are connected and able to participate.

Three: Voting

All three proposals will be made available for all members to vote via our online voting system. The voting period will be between Thursday, December 13 at 12:01 am Eastern time and Wednesday, December 19 at 11:59 pm Eastern time.

The History

In September, we announced an elaborate membership meeting plan that received almost no response from our members.

Rather than moving forward with a failing plan, we postponed the meeting.

After some serious self-reflection, the Leadership Committee (LC), which is tasked with organizing the membership meeting, invited our members to our next scheduled LC meeting, but expanded to include any member that wanted to come.

This leadership committee meeting, which took place on November 12, was unlike anything we have seen before. Over 30 members from the US and Mexico joined our elected leaders for an honest discussion about some radically far-reaching proposals for how to engage our members, grow our membership, and set our organization on a new path.

Now, we need to bring this discussion to the full membership.

The linchpin of our plan is formally re-constituting the organization as a cooperative as a means of more fully engaging with the solidarity economy and our members who are currently engaged with or have future plans or interests in engaging with such work in the future.

This move is a huge gamble for our organization! We need to hear from you now, whether you are in favor or opposed to this plan. Any feedback, however small will help you guide our organization.