Notes for Democafe meeting

2-4pm on Sat 30th April 2016 – at The Forge, Delancey St, Camden.
Present: Trevor, Mary, Sara. Apologies from Janos.

1. NOTES of the last minuted meeting held on Saturday 23rd April 2016.
2.  MATTERS ARISING from the NOTES other than on the agenda.

3.  EVENTS LISTINGS:

•  DemoCafe Events Listings: http://www.democafe.uk/events/
•  DRUK – Debt Resistance UK: https://www.facebook.com/DebtResistanceUK – http://debtresistance.uk
•  Global Table:  http://globaltable.org.uk/wp/forthcoming-events
•  LETSlink: reports on Hull City Council’s new community currency as reported by Steven Walsh in The Guardian
•  Occupy Economics Working Group: events listing http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/
•  Momentum: http://www.peoplesmomentum.com/calendar
•  Pathways Network:  http://www.pathwaysnetwork.co.uk/meetings.htm
•  Positive Money: Events Calendar search 500 miles of London

4.  UPDATES

•  38 DEGREES: Current Campaigns: https://home.38degrees.org.uk
•  FREE CRITICAL THINKING:  Daily Pickings, edited by Clive Menzies: updates for April needed! – all links go to pages on: www.freecriticalthinking.org
•  ICUK (Constitutionalists): Meeting held on Wed 13th April.
•  LGOT: London Global Open Table: “Matters in the Air” are circulated in advance, providing background information for the weekly open meetings on Wednesdays 12noon to 2pm: http://globaltable.org.uk/wp/
• LONDON MAYORAL CAMPAIGN – request for volunteers to support Sadiq Khan’s campaign: www.sadiq.london/volunteer
•  POLITICS & SPIRIT: The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination – Defending the Zad: https://labofii.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/defending-the-zad-a-new-little-book-about-the-struggle-against-the-airport-and-its-world/
•  THE RUNNYMEDE GAZETTE: a Journal of the Democratic Resistance, produced by Frank Taylor and in its seventh year, the April 2016 edition is now available.  See http://globaltable.org.uk/wp/links/newsletters/runnymede-gazette.
•  GREG PALAST: http://www.gregpalast.com

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5.  Discussion Topics

5.1 Housing Event 20th February 2016:
Report of this event:  http://www.quaker.org.uk/events/housing-and-inequality-what-canst-thou-do – see papers uploaded on previous posting.  Janos and Sara had attended a Green Party meeting, and they expressed interest in the work done by DemoCafe on Housing.  Mary has added a link to the Green Party on our Friendly Links page and written to Dee Searle at the Green Party with the link, and received a positive reply.

5.2 “Meet where you are”  –  Recruiting new Democafeteers.
We had a follow-up discussion of Frank Taylor’s idea of setting up local “lodges” for his Runnymeded Project, and the proposal that we should seek to collaborate directly in extending DemoCafe to other areas of the country.  We could send out our agenda which links to many sources of information to a wider list if other organisations wished to come on board, but would need to have a technology to link members to each other and/or a list of local meeting venues.

5.3.  Zionism:  We discussed the current confusion between criticisms of Israel and Anti-Semitic behaviour, and agreed that it was very bad timing for this issue to have arisen, given the forthcoming election of the London Mayor.  We found the following link to be informative: http://www.theocracywatch.org/christian_zionism_israel_forms.htm – also: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/30/battle-london-mayor-dirtiest-fight-zac-goldsmith-sadiq-khan – lots more on this including this Letter to the Editor: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/29/labour-antisemitism-and-where-jeremy-corbyn-goes-from-here.

5.4. Renaissance Britain:  Trevor gave us an update on planning for his project, which, among other things aims to replace the party whip with independent voting and consensus politics.  His ideas are generally compatible with the Independent Constitutionalists project.  Hopefully the introductory paper for Renaissance Britain will be available before the referendum vote.

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6. A.O.B.

7.  NEXT MEETING: 

It was agreed to defer our next meeting in favour of the Demo for Democracy to be held on Saturday 7th May: from 12noon at Old Palace Yard, Houses of Parliament https://www.facebook.com/events/1732795900291616.  “On the anniversary of the most disproportionate election in British history we will unite to call for all voters to be fairly represented in our Parliament and for the establishment of genuine democracy in the UK”.

Watch this space for details of future meetings, and we invite all readers to suggest additional items and/or let us know about local meetings they have held and/or to send apologies for the Camden meeting to group@democafe.uk.

JA/mf