Meeting minutes for March 2015

Meeting minutes for Wednesday, 18 March 2015

In attendance: Barbara, Bob, Gina, Nancy, Tilo, Colin, Marsha, Kara


Reports

2015 AIUSA Annual General Meeting: Bill Schomp is planning to attend this and will send notes to be posted on our blog.


Actions and Updates 

Petition on behalf of Siti Zainab Binti Duhri Rupa, Indonesian national on death row in Saudi Arabia [Gina].


Nowruz (Persian New Year) cards: This is an annual AIUSA event to send Nowruz cards to a highlighted group of prisoners of conscience and political prisoners in Iran. This year's group includes Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand, our group case file from Iran.

• Thanks to Bob for preparing printed mailing labels for us to use.
• At today's meeting, we wrote 56 cards for this action!

New Business

We agreed to give $250 (from the funds raised at our annual community shopping event at Ten Thousand Village in December) to the AIUSA main office. We are hoping we actually get a thank-you note from them this time.


Meetup.com

• We agreed to get back onto Meetup.com and to pay the $10 monthly fee from our group funds. 
• Marsha will check with Jeff to see if he still manages/owns our old group on there and whether it can be revived; otherwise, maybe Barb or Colin will start a new group.
• When we post our group meetings on Meetup.com, we all need to be sure to RSVP as much as possible so that prospective attendees don't think no one will be there.

Future Book Discussion

• Barb suggested Just Mercy, by Brian Steven
• Marsha suggest a memoir or biography of an activist
• We agreed to put together a list of possilibities

Field Trip

• Bob brought up the idea of taking a group field trip to participate in an AI event.
• One option: June 26 is the International Day of Support for Survivors of Torture
• Barb will find more info on this event and share it with the group

We also discussed AIUSA's "find local group" feature on its website. It currently does not list our group (or any group within 50 miles of us), so it looks like it's not maintained. Barb will contact AIUSA about this. 

Upcoming Events

Meeting on Wednesday, 15 April, 7:30 p.m., Wegman's cafe in Malvern