2024-07-11 Retreat Planning

From UAW RNF

Up to: Retreat/Meetings

Planning Meeting - Thurs July 11 2pm

Zoom link: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/8480527799

Facilitator:

Notetaker: JuliAnne

Attendees: Becca, Leah, Dana, JuliAnne, Jonny

Summary

Goals

  • ~bonding~: Build stronger ties w/ existing rnf members, strategize bringing in new ppl.
  • Labor and power sharing: How to empower people, make them feel like they have a place in the caucus. Want to avoid a small group of people doing everything and also diffusion of responsibility where everyone does everything means nobody does anything.
  • Preparation: a prepared caucus is a dangerous caucus

Themes…

  • Shared values: Coming to a collective understanding of what our caucus is and what we are doing. History, org structure, values,
  • Tactics and Strategy: Setting organizing priorities for the year, diagnosing strengths and weakness within the caucus, becoming a more effective caucus
  • Skillsharing: Led by working groups, teach each other stuff and make concrete plans
  • (Joy: we also want to dance at our revolution)

… that lead into a rough schedule

  • Morning: Orientation, history, values, consensus training
  • (a break that may or may not be called Lunch but it should probably involve food)
  • Afternoon: Internal infrastructure planning, self crit (?), setting priorities for internal union organizing and points of unity with other organizing groups
  • (another break bc we are chill and value life and human flourishing)
  • Evening: Breakout groups!!! One all-together one-on-one organizing workshop, split off into smaller groups to do practical training, then rejoin and recap
  • Night: no work only vibes

TODO:

  • Becca: Suggest times and places in the chat
  • Becca or Dana or JuliAnne: Someone could propose in the assembly to have an upcoming oc be a retreatlet to talk about organizing strategies -
  • Dana: Make an agenda
  • Everyone: Poll subgroups to see who wants to lead a breakout session
  • Everyone: Think of idea for breakout groups

Minutes

Intro / check in

    1. Name, pronoun, department; what’s your favorite type of mayo-based salad?
  2. Brainstorming/ideas
    1. Goals (what the goals of the retreat are)
      1. Leah: create a shared understanding of our values/goals as a caucus; empower more people to take on roles in organizing
      2. Dana: agree, getting people on the same page, feeling equipped to take on more leadership and organizing w/i departments; developing/solidifying a plan for organizing for the coming year and contract campaign (not necessarily a strict plan, but strategy)
      3. Jonny: orientation to various subgroups within the caucus, as a prep thing, is there a way we can reach out to incoming first years, spreading word beyond
      4. Becca: this meeting is a good space to talk through
        1. In order to organize better, having a more meta conversation about who we are, go over/revise the founding documents, have the big picture conversations that have come up
        2. Agree with empowering people to take on more roles, wonder if the retreat would be a good place for someone to first begin with rnf, or is this a place for someone with more involvement with rnf?
        3. Dana: same question, we need to be doing outreach but the retreat may not be the best initial space for outreach, for people who have been involved in organizing in some capacity (as long as people have some sense of what’s happening and want to be involved)
          1. Related to the fact that part of the program of the retreat should be a history of rnf and how we organize --- helpful for thinking about why we relate to leadership
          2. JuliAnne: agree with Dana, it would be alot for people to start with rnf with a retreat
          3. Leah: not necessarily completely new people, more reach out to the inactive people in the group chats and get more of those people involved. Get people more active in the chats and various forms of leadership. Message it is a commitment that people take on, but still have some outreach to first years but just not for the retreat.
            1. Goals: defining what we want from the contract campaign
      5. Jonny: structure of the retreat, if we want to think about empowering people we could split off into groups related to people's interests  
      6. Becca: two contingency plans based on attendance (we should have an RSVP); recruiting people, use this space to have a conversation about recruitment and what the barriers to entry have been for others, use the retreat as a space to work on the structure to get people involved in the future
      7. Dana: likes the idea of breakout groups, perhaps based on the working groups? one-on -one outreach should not be a breakout group, it is something that we all need to do together, it’s the core of our work
      8. Leah: if we do a whole day, morning: our goals, history, self reflection) how we failed as leftist), afternoon: planning priorities for contract campaign, breakout groups, one-on-one then happy hour
        1. Broad picture in the morning, specific planning in the afternoon  
      9. Recap of broad goals:
        1. create a shared understanding of our values history and what we want to look like going forward;
        2. building out our organizing structure
        3. Talk more specifically about organizing strategy, how we want to organize within our union
          1. What we want
          2. How we’re going to get it

Components

(diff sections/things covered)
      1. create a shared understanding of our values history and what we want to look like going forward;
        1. intros
        2. Dylan on the last 10 years of UAW organizing
        3. More focused history on rnf this past year and a half (2022 strike to now) -- think about the caucus in the context of larger existence of co-ops, etc. (Jonny has knowledge on this)
        4. Why we’re here and what our goals are. What have we learned? This can lead in to the reflections
          1. Reflections (maybe put a time limit? This can take up time so how do we build this in).
          2. Maybe one of the breakouts can be how to facilitate a meeting, to help keep things from getting out of hand
        5. Group brainstorm session. Name our core values and anchors a bit of a collaborative aspect to what we are committed to and how.
          1. Look over the original rnf documents, make them available to newer rnf members
        6. Community norms, how we have been having meetings and how we talk to each other (this may relate to Jonny’s comment on bullet point 3)
        7. Divest reps could re-emphasize our connection with UCLA divest and where those conversations are at

Organizing and strategy

building out our organizing structure (how do we improve our own infrastructure) what are our goals as a caucus, what does that look like for this year?  (leave this more open because we will be working on this together, but we can have some prompts)

    1. Priority setting for next year organizing?
    2. Go from broad to narrow, can put lunch in between. Talk about what are our goals for contract campaign, palestine organizing, etc.
    3. Jonny’s activity: a big board, everyone put a sticky where we all put our main priorities and then we group them to see where there is consensus and disagreement, good to get people on their feet and moving around after a long period of sitting
      1. Questions:
        1. What does the contract campaign look like and how do we manage our other organizing time/efforts?
        2. What do we want our organizing efforts to look like next year?
    4. Thoughts on continuing the encampment and Palestine movement, more related to undergrad organizing than the contract campaign, how do we organize these discussions? This can be a question for discussion in this section, how to we balance these goals, what is our relationship to other orgs on campus?

[Lunch break]- goal setting immediately coming off of values conversation. We can have a snack break, we can make our own timeline

  1. How we achieve that: Talk more specifically about organizing strategy, how we want to organize within our union (how do we force leadership to listen to us)
    1. Multiple levels,
    2. Outreach--getting new people in the caucus; Retaining new people, how do we make it welcoming?
    3. Internal: how do we keep things from falling on the same people, how do we encourage people to take on more leadership roles?
    4. Turn to the person next to you and discuss what do we think are the barriers to the organizing structure, what needs to be different, etc.  
    5. How do we identify the problem from the people in the middle and the people who take on too much? Does it make sense for people to come and say “I haven’t been involved bc of x” or “I have been too involved bc of y” (people who are at the retreat will be more involved, maybe at a retreatlet ask people to come to the retreat having talked to people)
      1. What are some smaller involvement tasks that we can ask people to do that they don’t need to be super involved to take on, steps of being involved, steps for being involved
      2. We need to have a container on self-crit time, this could be a strengths and weaknesses conversation. What are we doing well and what could we do better? Question of how much this conversation needs to be a place for self-reflection
      3. What are you hearing from people who are supportive but not involved, as a homework assignment  
      4. End with concrete steps we can implement moving forward and bring those to the breakout groups
    6. How do we advocate for our goals within the union but also against the university? This can be murky, should return to this section  
    7. Training on one-on-ones

Breakout groups

(related to working groups?) and one-on-ones

    1. One should be outreach, solidifying connections with undergrad orgs
    2. Not so much “now this is a working group” but “how can we think about our breakout group the way we’ve been thinking about the caucus” so a mini version for the caucus
    3. At most three to four themes, so we don’t all fracture into tiny groups. Themes can be dependent upon what people actually want to do
  1. Orientation to caucus: history, values, etc.
  2. Self defense
  3. Organizing priorities for year
    1. Expand da caucus???
    2. Contract ???
  4. ~ security culture ~ and infosec for organizers ???
    1. Jonny:
    2. Dana: we should do this
    3. Becca: we should talk to the people in the summer groups who are working on that
  5. Media/Propaganda
    1. Dana: these could be breakout groups, we could provide guiding questions for each breakout group
  6. Some Fun Only No Learning Things Too
  7. … (what else has been floated)

Talk in the chat about:

  1. Date
  2. Location/Host
  3. Duration? (all day, afternoon, overnight???)
  4. Retreatlets?
  5. Supplies
    1. Big poster board thing for becca
  1. Narrowing down/deciding
    1. Goals
    2. Components
    3. Date
    4. Location/Host
    5. Duration? (all day, afternoon, overnight???)
    6. Retreatlets?
  2. Next steps
    1. Find time
    2. Find place
    3. Planning content
      1. Poll subgroups to see who wants to lead a breakout sesion
    4. Outreach
      1. Kitchen committee
    5. Supplies/logistics

Meet again: on Sunday

Recap in the chat, these are the main things we discussed and then suggest the meeting

Work on time and place in the next chat (someone should raise them in the chat)

Action items:

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