[KWPeace-groups] Minutes from January 19 meething

[Emily Mininger]

Hi All,

I think the attachment may  have gotten blocked due to size, so please find
the minutes in the body of this message.

KW Peace Meeting Minutes January 19th, 2017

·         Present: Jim, Ellen, Sharon, Dwyer, Bob, Laura, Mo, Esther,
Isaiah, Sue, Matt, Janelle



·         Welcome to Jim and Ellen, joining us for the first time to
represent Council of Canadians, and also to Janelle.

·         Events

o    Women's March in Toronto was Saturday, Jan 21st

o    Trusted Clothes is doing a clothing swap on January 28 from 10:30-1pm
at 787 King St W Kitchener http://kwpeace.ca/event/trusted-clothes-swap/

o    Activities for Peace

·         Feb 15 - Charades for Peace at Queen Street Commons, 7pm

·         March 15 - Board Games for Peace at Queen Street Commons, 7pm

   - March 3rd - High School day for peace at Grebel
      https://uwaterloo.ca/grebel/events/high-school-peace-day-art-peace

o    March 3rd, 7:30pm - Dr. Mary Jo Leddy will be giving a talk "Room
Enough for Hope: Canada's Response to the Refugee Crisis."
https://uwaterloo.ca/grebel/events/public-lecture-room-enough-hope-canadas-response-refugee-0

   - March 4th, 1-3pm, Wesley United Church - Goodhearted Women Singers are
      doing their annual concert with the police choir to bridge communities
      https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a9435_7f939b8d8a714422874cf9d5743f7ab9~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_508,h_657,al_c,q_80/4a9435_7f939b8d8a714422874cf9d5743f7ab9~mv2.webp

o    March 5th - Blanket exercise at St. Jerome's led by local indigenous
people

o    Ahmadiyya Muslim Women's Association conference March 5th from 10-2. A
women only conference. Last year Esther spoke for Christian Peacemaker
Teams (CPT) and had a table. There's a complimentary lunch. The theme is
Religion in the 21st Century

o    Citizens Climate Lobby, Divest, and Food not Bombs are planning to
host a screening and book launch for Cowspiracy.

   - Cross Cultures is having their International Day of Race Relations at
      City Hall on Tuesday, March 21st all day. There are booths, a concert,
      speakers, and more. Theme is "Our Home on Native Land." If you
want to have
      a booth contact Gehan https://kwpeace.wordpress.com/tag/cross-culture/

o    Age of Consequences film to be showed at Grebel, was going to be March
21st but the date is probably changing due to conflict with Cross Cultures
event.

o    Mo is planning an Earth Day event during the 3rd week of April

·         Updates

o    Esther was here in place of Rochelle to represent CPT, as Rochelle is
currently in Columbia for a 4 week training. Esther is then going to Cuba
for a Humanitarian Aid trip

o    Food Not Bombs is shifting focus from just serving to also include
action against poverty. If you want to have info on a table during one of
their servings you can do so. They serve 1:30-3:30 on Saturday in front of
City hall. Any leftovers go to House of Friendship

·         Another group called Vegan Lunch Bag gives out a vegan lunch bag
and warm clothes

·         Soup for the Soul - a local chef gives out soup near Frederick
and King (61 King St E) one day a  month. Next one is January 27th from
4-5pm

o    Sue is doing a training with the Alternatives to Nonviolence project
January 20, 21, and 22 at Grand Valley. The training was developed in
upstate NY because inmates wanted training on how to solve conflicts
nonviolently. The goal is to foster connections and use transforming power
of nonviolence.

o    Sharon says there's lots going on with FairVote and electoral reform.
At the September 14th town hall it was clear that there is support for
changes to the electoral system that include some kind of proportional
representation, but if you read the report, you don't get the sense of
strong support and they use confusing language

·         Apparently Raj Saini told someone that only 1 person had come to
him in support of proportional representation electoral reform, which is
clearly false. At the very least he's been met by 1/2 dozen people about
this issue.

·         Getting the sense that the Liberals are studying it until it goes
away, and making the claim that there isn't support or a broad consensus

·         If you want to act, you can write to the new minister and CC
Justin Trudeau and Raj Saini with a physical letter (apparently emails
don't count)

·         FairVote is gathering evidence, so if you met or contacted Raj
about this issue, please send them the date and time and method of contact
(Also if you met with Bardish Chaggar). They will use this information to
then confront Raj.

·         May pass Alternative Vote in February so that they can say they
passed electoral reform, but it's not the same as proportional
representation

o    Isaiah has developed an *educational game* that explores and makes
accessible the complex relationship between environmental limits, climate
change and various conflicts within and between societies. He's happy to
present this game to a group, it's good for 5-10 people. Contact him if
interested.

·         It's being presented to KW Awesome next week to get funding to
develop the game further

o    Eco Schools Ontario is a program funded by the government to get
schools and individuals to participate in making their schools more
sustainable. They can get certified if they get enough points, or can just
do actions.

o    Water event at the Laurier Seminary on Monday that deals with
indigenous rights and water for catholic High School teachers. If any
teachers are interested connect with Laura

o    KOALA is working on banning fur farms that are subsidized by the
government

o    KOALA is advocating to add "Meatless Mondays" to school lunches.
Amarak is the provider of food for the schools in the area and is
accommodating of social justice concerns - cooperated with the fair trade
campus initiative at Laurier.

o    KW Animal Save is starting a climate change chapter. Many people ask
what they can do to impact climate change, and two main actions that have
an impact are taking political action and eating less meat.

o    Council of Canadians now has a chapter in Waterloo. They meet the 3rd
Wednesday of every month at Bread and Roses.

·         Their first action was giving information about boycotting Nestle
products at the Kitchener Market before Christmas

o    Social Action Group of the Unitarian Church buys beans every year and
donate them to the food back. They are expecting to get 10,000lbs of beans!

·         The beansa re Romano beans grown in Ontario and are non-GMO

·         Did you know that Canada provides 30% of pulses (legumes, beans,
etc) to the world?

o    Citizens for Public Justice are advocating "Give it up for Lent,"
which asks Christians to give up things that have a negative environmental
or sustainability impact

·         Maybe a launch should be planned for April 1st? Laura and Isaiah
are talking about it

o    Esther is leading a delegation from October 24-28 to Palestine. There
are 4 delegates on the trip who went last year. IT's open to all, and will
include bearing witness during the olive harvest, when Palestinian people
are harassed when harvesting olives, and need to get permits to harvest
their olives. This is co-led by Robert Holmes.

·         Website

o    Few people upload to the site. Mostly it's automatically uploaded or
Bob adds events.

o    CCJ Clearline, the provider of our web services, is no longer offering
web hosting because it's no longer profitable. We will have to find a new
host.

o    There are some VPS (Virtual Private Server) services that are
$5/month. However we don't know if that will be enough bandwidth or
storage, so we'll start with that and see how it goes. We may need to go
with the next level up at $10/month

o    Probably will go with Data Mantle, as it's a local company

o    A VPS requires more work on our end. Bob will continue managing but
would like help. Emily will help but if anyone else feels computer savvy
and would like to be involved please let us know! The work needed to be
done is maintain the systems and do backup.

o    This will mean we can get an HTTPS, or security certificate, for our
site

o    We will likely set up the VPS site in mid-February. The website will
look the same from the user perspective

o    Bob estimates he spends an average of 20min/day for the blog/calendar
currently, this might increase to 1hr or 1/2 hr per day when we switch

o    Several people gave donations towards the website, so we have funds to
continue for a while more, depending on which service we end up using.
Some of those funds are also going towards renewing the domain name, which
we will continue to renew through CCJ Clearline

o    Other options mentioned were Execulink, which is far too expensive at
$200/month

o    Bravehost.net isn't great because you can't aggregate calendars and
it's not easy to access data

·         Next KW Peace Potluck meeting is likely April 6th at 6pm. Sue
will confirm that Stirling is available.



On Sun, Jan 22, 2017 at 5:35 PM, Emily Mininger <e.mininger at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> It was great to see everyone at the potluck last week. Please find
> attached the minutes of what we discussed.
>
> Our next meeting is tentatively schedule for April 6 at 6pm.
>
> Cheers!
>
> Emily
>
> --
> Emily Mininger
>
> Email: e.mininger at gmail.com
> Phone: 519-568-3879 <(519)%20568-3879>
>
> Check out peace groups and events in KW - KWpeace.ca
>



-- 
Emily Mininger

Email: e.mininger at gmail.com
Phone: 519-568-3879

Check out peace groups and events in KW - KWpeace.ca