December 14th, 2023 Meeting

Meeting to be held via video conference: https://communitybridge.com/bbb-room/mass-pirates-bbb-room/.

Recording: https://youtu.be/akQeUr2pOiA

Decisions/Endorsements

Statement on Israel/Gaza conflict

Etherpad at https://etherpad.pp-international.net/p/MAPPIsraelGazaStatement

 
Every person killed is a theft from a better future. Every person killed is a trauma that those who live must suffer.

Peace for Israel/Palestine will not come from the mass death of civilians. It will not come from children shot, crushed under the remains of their homes or pierced by shrapnel. It will not come from desolated Kibbutzim, burned olive trees, houses leveled by bulldozers or land stolen. 

We must stop Israel's genocide in Gaza. It was bad when the US did not lead other countries to stop the genocides in Rwanda or Nagorno-Karabkh. It is worse that our government's policy actively aids in the destruction of Gaza and the killing of tens of thousands of its people. 

We condemn the killings by Hamas and other groups on October 7th. Israel's desire for revenge for the abhorrent deaths of 1400 Israelis and others is understandable, but it is not acceptable. Killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in a refugee camp to get one Hamas leader is a war crime. Forcing Palestinians to flee their homes, destroying whole blocks of apartment buildings with civilians living there, or starving people to exact collective punishment is a crime against humanity.

We call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the return of hostages by both sides, the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gazans and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. This conflict must end and human life and rights must be respected by all sides. 

Finally, we denounce the attempt by supporters of Israeli to equate Palestinians struggle for their human rights and dignity to Antisemitism. Such attempts are no more than an effort to silence those who use their right to free speech to oppose oppression.  Being pro-Palestine and against antisemitism go hand in hand. All systems of oppression reinforce one another, and none can be fought in isolation. As we condemn the Holocaust, we will also condemn the Nakba.

Projects/Events

Planning for 2024

• Restart democracy committee
• Contact cities/town to get list of voters
• Put together plan for local organizing and 2024 town/legislature campaign
• Mail members/voters
  • Ask them to organize locally
  • Ask them to campaign/run
  • Ask them to give us their full contact info
• Call potential candidates/supporters
• ?

Winter Conference

Will be on-line in ~January. Need to post survey before December and add forms for signup/presenting.

Suggest it be longer than two hours.

Possible Topics:

• 2024 Campaign
• Planning for post-2024 election future

Video Newsletter/Podcast

Leader: Joseph

• Pirate news recording scheduled for Sundays, 7pm with go-live at 7:30pm. Unless changed

Participants

• jokeefe
• srevilak

Observers

• v

Summary

Reports

• Email update went out
• Restore the fourth is promoting a bill that would roll back some of Section 702 (aka the Patriot Act)
• Survey out for Winter conference date and topics
• NDAA extended Section 702 authorization. In January, will be debate on limiting what it allows in terms of surveillance, etc
• Conference page needs to be updated
• Video from previous conference to be posted soon.

Statement on Israel/Gaza conflict

• Statement adopted. Should be posted tomorrow.

Events

• Democracy committee meeting Sat Jan 6th.
• Next pirate news on Jan 7th
• Public domain day is Jan 1st.

Addendum by James O'Keefe:

• Corrected several misspelled words in the statement;
• In the second sentence of the first paragraph, "Every person killed is a trauma for those who live to suffer.", changed "trauma for those who live to suffer" to "trauma that those who live must suffer" as it could be misconstrued as people "live to suffer".