February 20th, 2018 IRC Meeting

Decisions/Endorsements

Fundamental Freedoms Act

More details on this bill at warrantless.org. There is a lobby day starting at 10:30am on Monday, 2/26.

The bill may not go far enough for us, but it is something we should consider helping Restore the Fourth Boston in supporting. If we approve, will email people in the Boston-area and put up a blog post on it.

Projects

Video Newsletter

• Planning for next video.
• Videos of the November candidate workshop have been processed
• Checking in on the other equifax video

2018 Elections

Trainings:

1. Videos
2. February 24: Worcester
3. March 3: Somerville

In 2018, towns decide when their elections are held, but most are held in the first half of the year. State & county elections are in November. What offices are up in 2018 is listed here.

Nomination papers for federal/state/county elections are available in mid-February. State/county candidates have until the end of May to gather all of their signatures, while federal candidates have until the end of July. The number of signatures needed vary from 150 for State Rep. to 2000 for US House of Representatives.

Digital Right of Repair

Details.

Computer Donations

https://piratenpad.de/p/MassPiratesComputerDonations

Yearly Conference

Once we set dates for the trainings we will put up a poll asking about our 2018 conference and whether to change it into several regional conferences.

The electronic election for our officers went well in 2017, and we should consider doing it again. Such a change would allow us to decentralize our yearly conference and hold multiple regional conferences in different parts of the state. We could schedule monthly conferences starting in March or April. We could limit them to about 4-5 hours long, with the first half being training and the second half being discussion. If we want to go this route, we should ask our members soon and see who wants to organize their regional conference.

Statements In Process

• MA Bill H.3641: An Act relative to electronic tolling - Approved our opposition to it. Past position is to remove the tolls on the Pike since it has long been paid for.
• US S.1241 - Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Counterfeiting Act of 2017 - Approved our opposition to S.1241. Need statement (Joe)

Other To Dos

FOSS Tutorials

Worcester farm group is interested in having some FOSS tutorials. Perhaps:

• how to do basic labels in GIMP,
• work through a few sample spreadsheets related to seed cost and
• similarly applicable real-world situations, depending on the needs of the group

Basically how to do graph design & product management with open source tools. Malt will put together a one paragraph description of what we need and we can mail it out to ask pirates to help.

Tech/Outreach

• Review regular IRC meeting day. Poll sent to email list - Sent (jokeefe)
• email Loomio invite to supporters (jokeefe)
• set up torrents for PirateCon videos (creynolds)
• post remaining audio for PirateCon talks (srevilak)
• finish setup of myBB (jokeefe)
• install mattermost as slack alternative (jokeefe)

Mayfirst is looking at setting up a Discourse instance we could use.

Upcoming Events

• 2/24, 2-4pm, Pirate Party Candidate Training, Worcester Public Library, 3 Salem St. Worcester Register. Facebook Event
• 2/28, 6-9pm, Somerville Cryptoparty, The Sprouts, 339R Summer Street, Somerville
• 3/3, 11am-2pm, Pirate Party Candidate Training, Somerville Public Library, 79 Highland Ave Somerville Register. Facebook Event
• 3/6, 5:30-7pm, Worcester Cryptoparty, Event Page, register, if you want
• 3/7, 6pm – 9pm, Community WorcNite #18, The WorcShop, 243 Stafford St, Worcester, MA 01603. Registration
• 3/10, 1:30pm to 3:30pm, Mass Mesh Meeting, Somerville Public Library, 79 Highland Ave Somerville
• 3/10-11, 9am-5:30pm, MassAlliance Grassroots Campaign Training, Greater Boston
• 3/17, Boston Socialist Unity Project Conference cryptoparty, MIT, Cambridge
• 3/24-25, 9am-5:30pm, MassAlliance Grassroots Campaign Training, Worcester
• 3/24-25, LibrePlanet 2017, MIT, Cambridge
• 3/28, 6-9pm, Somerville Cryptoparty, The Sprouts, 339R Summer Street, Somerville
• 3/?, ?pm, Democracy/IT meeting. Email info@masspirates.org for the location

Participants

• jokeefe: James O’Keefe, Somerville
• hvxgr: ahoy ( Tom Rodman, Milwaukee WI )
• Joe: Joseph Onoroski, Lowell
• igel_

Observers

• ChanServ

Summary

Fundamental Freedoms Act

Agreed to support the bill, but state that we want it to go farther in protecting people's privacy and eliminating surveillance.

Immigration Policy

Lively discussion. Will ask members for policy ideas, then put them to a vote. Any that receive enough support will be adopted. Others will be left to national party for consideration.

Video Newsletter

Joe and jokeefe went over the topic for this Sunday’s video. Will focus on Meltdown and Spectre. Recording tentatively scheduled for Sunday, 7pm.

We have two up so far. Want to get the time for each to 15 minutes or less. Using Google Hangouts for recording.

We have another on the equihax that is being edited, hopefully by the end of the week.

2018 Elections

Trainings are scheduled. Worcester should be well attended

Announced it on email/blog. Will send out another announcement to people who signed up as candidates

Working on the videos

Cryptoparties

One scheduled for Feb., three for March.

Minutes

 


[9:04pm] jokeefe: Agenda: https://masspirates.org/wiki/February_20th,_2018_IRC_Meeting
[9:04pm] jokeefe: ids
[9:04pm] jokeefe: James O’Keefe, Somerville
[9:04pm] hvxgr: ahoy ( Tom Rodman, Milwaukee WI )
[9:04pm] Joe: Joseph Onoroski, Lowell
[9:05pm] Joe: ahoy
[9:07pm] jokeefe: Nothing to Review that isn’t on the agenda later, so Decisions/Endorsements
[9:07pm] jokeefe: Fundamental Freedoms Act
[9:07pm] jokeefe: Details at https://warrantless.org/2015/10/fusion-chandler/
[9:08pm] Joe: I am pretty sure this one is a no brainer
[9:08pm] Joe: I support
[9:08pm] jokeefe: It is an improvement on what is existing
[9:08pm] jokeefe: It equires the fusion centers to audit themselves annually to determine whether they have investigations open that shouldn’t be, and make the report of that a public record; they empower an inspector-general to conduct outside audits; and they specify some metrics whereby the fusion centers can determine how well they are respecting people’s privacy
[9:10pm] jokeefe: I think it is an improvement that we should support, though it doesn’t go far enough
[9:11pm] jokeefe: Any other discussion?
[9:11pm] Joe: We could do a support and amend for the act
[9:12pm] Joe: Such as a FB post or tweet
[9:13pm] jokeefe: Sure
[9:13pm] jokeefe: Any opposition?
[9:14pm] igel_: no, none here
[9:15pm] jokeefe: Ok, so we endorse it, but want it to go farther
[9:16pm] Joe: Aye
[9:16pm] jokeefe: aye
[9:17pm] jokeefe: Moving on
[9:17pm] jokeefe: Immigration Policy
[9:17pm] jokeefe: Joe?
[9:17pm] Joe: So this one is pretty straight forward.
[9:18pm] Joe: As everyone knows, Immigration is a sensitive subject. When jokeefe discussed it the other day, it was hard to put in to words.
[9:20pm] Joe: So I propose we table this to the uspp in order to help draft a more concrete idea for how we stand on this issue.
[9:20pm] Joe: We don't want to get it wrong.
[9:21pm] jokeefe: In general, I can see your point.
[9:22pm] jokeefe: Though I feel that we should oppose Trump’s attempts to change existing immigration law especially to reduce the number of people allowed to come here by fast and
[9:23pm] jokeefe: Should support any one brought here by their family when they were young and give them a path to citizenship. If this is the only country they remember,
[9:24pm] jokeefe: then why would we want to abandon them, especially when they want to be here and contribute
[9:24pm] jokeefe: my 2 cents
[9:24pm] Joe: My city is very diverse, with people from all over the world living here.
[9:24pm] Joe: So long as they are willing to be a part of America, I welcome all.
[9:25pm] jokeefe: We are a nation of immigrants after all
[9:26pm] igel_: businesses that exploit people with threats of ICE should be held accountable
[9:26pm] jokeefe: aye
[9:26pm] Joe: ^
[9:26pm] igel_: deportation is terrorizing parts of the States
[9:26pm] igel_: literally snatching up kids parents when they are driving to pick them up from school
[9:28pm] jokeefe: yeah, also trying to strip people of their citizenship - https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/ice-denaturalization-naturalized-citizen-immigration/
[9:29pm] jokeefe: I feel like we should come up with a bunch of individual positions and ask for more and then put a poll up for each of them. Whatever doesn’t get enough support, we can defer to national.
[9:30pm] igel_: for starters, abolish ice. heh.
[9:30pm] jokeefe: Would be a good excuse to use the loomio page.
[9:30pm] Joe: lolz, sounds good.
[9:31pm] igel_: clearly, their prisons are labor camps
[9:31pm] Joe: Then poll everyone via email requesting ideas?
[9:31pm] jokeefe: It is a start
[9:31pm] jokeefe: ok?
[9:31pm] Joe: Sounds good to me?
[9:33pm] jokeefe: igel_?
[9:33pm] jokeefe: thoughts hvxgr?
[9:33pm] igel_: > “We had one night when 35 dads were taken in one night from Avenel, New Jersey, from the same apartment complex. I had 60 kids become orphans that night or become fatherless,” Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale said.
[9:33pm] hvxgr: Sorry, got interupted by a call, but in general I agree w/poll approach.
[9:36pm] jokeefe: yeah, there is no sense to this, igel_, but I always expected Trump policies to be designed for maximum cruelty
[9:37pm] jokeefe: We are a nation of immigrants and immigrants will always be our past, present and future
[9:38pm] jokeefe: ok, to move to Projects?
[9:38pm] Joe: We hope.
[9:38pm] igel_: so.. re: march
[9:38pm] jokeefe: which one?
[9:38pm] igel_: daca, is this the main?
[9:39pm] igel_: dunno, i'll look in emal about poll
[9:40pm] jokeefe: ok
[9:40pm] jokeefe: Video Newsletter
[9:40pm] hvxgr: Milwaukee has a healthy Latino activist community. Last May day we had a march with my hunch is 5000+.  One of the issues is increasing the cooperation between ICE and local police.  That local law was stopped; there were several creative actions against it.
[9:41pm] jokeefe: Is there a list of the creative actions?
[9:41pm] hvxgr: I went to one of them, in our city hall -- might be able to dig up a video.
[9:42pm] jokeefe: thanks
[9:42pm] jokeefe: Joe and I went over the topic for this Sunday’s video
[9:42pm] hvxgr: sure (and a few other links)
[9:42pm] Joe: As far as the news letter goes, we plan to focus on Meltdown and Spectre.
[9:43pm] jokeefe: We have two up so far.
[9:43pm] Joe: We still want to bring down the overall time but I feel we are improving.
[9:43pm] jokeefe: Have another being edited, hopefully by the end of the week
[9:44pm] jokeefe: Well, we went from 38 min to 18 min, so progress
[9:44pm] Joe: Yes, the public service announcement for the Equihacks
[9:45pm] Joe: I hope we can get it edited so I don't sound too bad,
[9:45pm] jokeefe: 2018 Elections - Trainings are scheduled. Worcester should be well attended
[9:46pm] jokeefe: Announced it on email/blog. Will send out another announcement to people who signed up as candidates
[9:46pm] jokeefe: Working on the videos
[9:49pm] hvxgr: I'm interested in the Nov videos, will they be posted to the youtube channel?
[9:49pm] jokeefe: yes. we record them on google hangouts
[9:49pm] jokeefe: so two of them are up there now
[9:50pm] Joe: You are welcome to join us!
[9:50pm] jokeefe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii-QvTPDcVM&list=PLx2c_9B8YzXnOIN1tieiRgqc2rx2JmjLb
[9:50pm] jokeefe: I don’t have anything else besides having locked down the cryptoparties for March
[9:51pm] Joe: Next Sunday
[9:52pm] Joe: I have to do the video at night. Sorry
[9:52pm] jokeefe: No worries
[9:52pm] Joe: So 7pm est?
[9:52pm] jokeefe: I think so. I’ll double check
[9:53pm] Joe: In anyone wants to join, can we have them just email info@masspirates.org?
[9:54pm] jokeefe: yes
[9:54pm] hvxgr: Joe: appreciate it, probably will not but I could share my hangouts contact info.
[9:54pm] hvxgr: ( to that email addr )
[9:55pm] Joe: Well, jokeefe is the one doing the leg work, but still, I would love to pick your brain. <3
[9:56pm] jokeefe: If there is nothing more, shall we adjourn early?
[9:56pm] Joe: That's all I have as well. Motion to ajourn!
[9:56pm] jokeefe: 2nd
[9:56pm] jokeefe: all in favor?
[9:56pm] Joe: Aye
[9:56pm] hvxgr: aye
[9:56pm] igel_: aye
[9:56pm] Joe: Good night everyone!
[9:57pm] jokeefe: thanks all. I pull post the transcript
[9:57pm] hvxgr: Good night all!