Present: Peter, Ellyn, Glenda Rae, Rey, Lois, Wanda, Galen
Old business
1. Approval of Minutes for April 23: The minutes were approved as written.
2. Progress Reports:
a. Topic of the Month: Why we oppose nuclear weapons: Peter had recycled his notes before making the corrections to the draft. Ellyn prepared a new draft and also a draft of a Michiana Point of View letter for us to work with. Rey made some corrections to the letter which Ellyn changed after the meeting in an attempt to reflect the ideas which Wanda had proposed. Folks were going to look over both the statement on nuclear weapons and the letter to the Tribune after the meeting and let Peter and Ellyn know of corrections. Ellyn ponted out the list of online references, especially the Wikipedia article, as worthy of examination.
b. Tribune Interview: Lois received a call from a representative from the library local history staff to do an interview. She agreed if she could talk about the work of MPJC. After much discussion, we decided that Peter and Lois would meet with her and talk about the mission of MPJC and some of our more recent actions. We hope that this will motivate people to find out more about MPJC since the library often puts things in the Tribune and on WVPE. Lois originally wanted the focus to be on Veterans for Peace, but we decided it should be more local.
c. Gaza Vigil: This vigil on a Friday afternoon in late May was well attended. There were a mixture of groups and people called out in response to the violent Israeli response to the Gaza protests. The organizers were very pleased with the response. Lois was able to recruit some folks for our Memorial Day parade float.
d. Memorial Day Parade: We gathered at 6:45am to decorate the truck that Rey rented. There were four veterans, including Ed Liptrap who is running for Indiana senate, who rode on the back of the truck. Peter walked in front with the Veterans for Peace banner. Wanda and Carol Smith carried the long banner with the motto of VFP. There were three young people from Prince of Peace to carry various flags and signs. We spotted Wanda's car and Ed had spotted his car at St. Adalberts, so we had rides for everyone back to the staging area. We had good resonse from the spectators. No one had anything negative to say about the experience. It went much better than last year.
e. Book of the Month report: We did not have time to talk about this topic
f. Immigration Coalition: The coalition meets on the 2nd Wednesday of each month. They are planning an event on August 16th at 5:30pm at Wiekamp Hall at IUSB to discuss what Immigrants contribute to the local economy. There was a vigil at Walorski's office last Tuesday to call on her to push for clean immigration legislation.
g. Hiroshima/Nagasaki Vigil: We will gather on Monday, August 6, at the usual spot to remember the nuclear devastation at Hiroshima. We will try to get the Tribune to publish the Point of View mentioned above before the 6th. In any event we will send out a press release and notify Indivisible and Jan Brown from CPNV. We should contact Joe, Tony, and Paul from labor and David Cortwright from ND Kroc Center. Peter and Ellyn will be gone next week so could use help with the above. Let them know what you can do to get the word out.
3. Treasurer's Report: $124.52 with $30 in petty cash. We used Bernie's donation to rent the truck for $63.50 and buy decorations for $8.31.
New Business
1. What do we (can we) do next? We incorporated this topic into other discussion
2. Topic of the Month: Why we oppose nuclear weapons. We will send out the statement to the list serv.
3. Other Topics and Issues: We briefly discussed the Church of the Brethren gathering which Lois and Glenda Rae had attended. The latter arrived home to find that there was a bad fire in their bedroom. She nd Rey will be displaced for several months while the house is repaired.
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4. Next meeting: Monday, August 27th, at 2:30pm at Lois' assisted living center. We will send the directions in the meeting announcement.