The UNA SF Bay Area Council of Organizations met on May 8th at the Unitarian Universalist Church at 1187 Franklin St, San Francisco, CA 94109 from 5:30 to 8:15. The meeting was small but useful and friendly, which is always important! We had eleven persons in attendance, Jim Barnett of Bay Area Humanists, Bob Flax and Roger Kotila of the Democratic World Federalists, Nancy Merrit of the California Peace Alliance, Doug Merritt, Lutheran Pastor, Larry Danos and Melvin Starks of UU-UNO, Mary Jane Mikuriya of Servas, Oleksandr Filipenko, Ukraine conulate staff, activist Tom Ray and Roger Eaton of UNA-SF.
Larry Danos began the evening by giving us a good rundown on the UU United Nations Office. We learned that the UU-UNO is a very large and active multi-faceted network that has NGO status at the UN with both the UN Department of Information (DPI) and with ECOSOC. Of possible special importance, UU-UNO has a Women’s program that pursues peace and progress on CEDAW.
Roger Eaton described progress so far on our structural questions. We are agreed that “Our mission is to promote the goals of the UN in the Bay Area.” The Bay Area is defined as the standard nine counties ringing the Bay. We are a project of UNA-SF currently with co-chairs Roger Eaton and Eliz Weinberg. Our membership is made of of organizations which are willing to have their logo and mission statement posted on our membership web page. Organizations and individuals may also affiliate. Affiliates have full speaking rights, though cannot vote. New member organizations must be OK’d by the existing members. The Core Collaborators is our central executive committee. COO members and affiliates are welcome to join the Core Collaborators. At some point we may need to limit Core numbers, but not yet. Decision making in the Core group is by consensus with a two-thirds super-majority fallback if an issue cannot be reconciled in two meetings and sidebars as needed.
At this time we have four member organizations. UNA-SF, Democratic World Federalists, Bay Area Humanists and US Servas. See our membership page.
Roger Eaton. here making this report, then continued, saying the COO is something of an oddity organizationally, since it is a project of UNA-SF yet it is composed of completely autonomous organizations and UNA-SF itself is actually a member with equal voting rights within the COO. As a project of UNA-SF, the COO inherits the 501(c)(3) status of UNA-SF for fund-raising. In return, all COO activities must be totally transparent and UNA-SF needs to be kept fully informed in its pro-forma supervisory role. Our COO bank account will be a UNA-SF bank account with access by both a COO treasurer and a UNA-SF treasurer. Essentially, the COO and UNA-SF relationship is built on openness and trust. Because the COO mission is fully in harmony with that of the UNA, the meeting felt we are OK.
However I cautioned that while the UNA-SF Board had approved the COO as a project, UNA-SF President Pablo Castro had expressed reservations more than once, questioning the wisdom of such a close relationship with a body that would be making its own decisions, even though as a matter of practicality, nothing would be contemplated that UNA-SF could not accept. Roger explained that as he saw it, the relationship was greatly to the benefit of UNA-SF, representing the outreach of UNA-SF using the chapter’s convening power. The fact that national UNA-USA has a COO at the national level and supports the creation of local COOs also weighs heavily in favor of the project.
The consensus at the meeting was that Roger should talk to Pablo and see if we couldn’t secure his active support. We felt that without that support, it would be difficult to proceed. (On May 13th, Pablo and I met and discussed the matter and I am very glad to report that Pablo has given the COO his full blessing. UNA-SF will support the COO in every way possible, beginning with setting up a bank account and making UN Day 2014 a COO cooperative fund-raiser. We will formalize this support at the next meeting of the UNA-SF Board.
Continuing the general meeting, we discussed the following
* UN 69th - this is a definite event to take place at the UU church on October 19th with the theme of Human Rights. There is a committee already but we need more people to sign on. There is plenty to do to fill the room and have an enjoyable lunch and discussions around the theme. We are starting a subgroup for this item. You can easily join up online.
* Fundraising for UN 70th in connection with UN 69th. We are at the idea stage on this one and need to form a committee to carry it through. The idea is to have a fundraiser at the Fairmont Hotel in the Garden Room (capacity 80), where the UN Charter was drafted, on UN Day October 24. To incentivize our separate organizations to help with the event, proceeds will be split 50/50 between the COO and the organizations proportionate to the number of attendees brought in by each organization. There is plenty to do here and we need to get started. We are starting a subgroup for this item. You can easily join up online. Oleksandr Filipenko, Vice-Consul for the Ukraine suggested he could bring in a number of Consuls and help out for the fundraiser. Thank you Oleksandr!
* UN 70th. We have a number of ideas and expect to make a preliminary visit to City Hall.
a) An NGO conference for October 2015. (Since our meeting, Brian Webster reports that Ramu Damodaran is preparing a write-up of what it would take to get the 2015 DPI NGO Conference to San Francisco.)
b) Historical Exhibits at the downtown Library and StoryCorps recordings of SF residents’ stories about their UN experiences.
c) A Green Labor - Capital Conference in October 2015.
d) A push to bring existing City plans for a UN Global Compact Sustainability Center to life again, possibly by catalyzing a High Level Committee for UN Offices in San Francisco and/or encouraging a Fall 2015 meeting of the UN Global Compact’s US Network. We have a list of candidates for the High - Level committee and want to discuss the possibility with the Mayor’s Office.
e) October 2014 and 2015 San Francisco Social Good Summits parallel to the New York events of the same name.
f) And of course, the big event at the War Memorial. One thought here was to ask Rep Barbara Lee, whom Nancy Merritt knows well, to be a UN 70th speaker. We are also looking to talk with the War Memorial Board about adding an outside plaque about the UN Charter and possibly a UN flagpole.
We need to prioritize and each of these possibilities needs a committee of its own.
* Outreach for the COO and the closely related requirement to have a committee to handle our bi-monthly meetings. Trilight had ideas about the development of outreach materials, such as business cards, flyers and so forth. We are starting a subgroup for outreach. You can easily join up online.
* Gender Crosstalk - I presented this idea as a way to bring in those who would prefer to participate from home, and was given the OK to do outreach to the COO list for participants.
-- Roger Eaton
rogerweaton@gmail.com
415 933 0153
