Minutes of the Santa Cruz Peace Freedom Party Meeting of Dec. 7, 2002

7 members present

1. Agenda approved

2. A NEW DEMOCRATIC AND ACTIVE PEACE AND FREEDOM PARTY ESTABLISHED IN SANTA CRUZ: We voted to re-establish the Peace and Freedom Party as an activist Party in Santa Cruz. Decisions to be made by majority vote. All who are registered to vote with the Peace and Freedom Party or who are denied the right to vote by the government have the right to vote at meetings.

3. BALLOT STATUS: We discussed how close we are to re-gaining state wide ballot status (with 72,000 registrants we are only 4,000 away). So we discussed our campaign to get people to register with the Peace and Freedom Party to get back on the ballot. We decided to make a flyer out of the statement from Howard Zinn, Naom Chomsky, Michael Parenti and other prominent movement people where they ask people to register with the Peace and Freedom Party. We discussed distributing this at anti-war events, on campus, and at the Farmer's Market. While we are now too low on funds to make the flyer this will be one of our priorities.

4. EDUCATIONAL FORUM: For the night of January 25th we decided to organize a Peace & Freedom Party educational forum opposing Bush's privatization plans in the Federal Government and opposing his interference with the Longshoreman's Union. We will invite speakers from affected unions to speak, which Steve Zeltzer in San Francisco committed to helping with. We will try to get a union hall for the event by raising the idea with a few people at the next meeting of Unionists For Peace And Freedom held on Weds. Night. $19.00 was raised from those present to print up a flyer for the event.

5. ENDORSEMENT OF GENERAL STRIKE PROPOSAL: We voted to endorse the attached general strike proposal. Part of why we supported it was that it did not set a date, something that would not be realistically possible given the small forces that have endorsed so far. Instead the call educates about the need for such action, something we are glad to lend our name to.

6. ANTI-WAR ACTIONS: Participation in building the January 18th SF action was discussed, as was participation in Peace Friday. Nobody knew if anything was being organized for the event locally like busses and flyers so we decided to check with some people on it to see what we may be able to hook up with.

7. NEXT MEETING TIME: The next meeting was set for Saturday, January 4th at the Louden Nelson Center at 1:30. That date will give a good amount of time before the forum on the 25th to mobilize the Party to build it.

Calling for a One Day
Nationwide General Strike
Buy Nothing - No Work - No School
To STOP the War Against People Abroad and at Home

We are reaching out to all conscious people to participate in a one day
nationwide general strike here in the U.S.A. Don't go to
work, don't go to school, don't send your children to school, don't buy
anything day in opposition to the horrendous policies of the
U.S.A. government. Let's show the corporations, the policy-makers, that
we don't agree with their policies towards the poor, the
homeless, the youth, people of color, immigrants, the environment, etc.
Lets him them where it hurts, in their pockets.

George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condolezza Rice, Wolfowitz, and others
in "powerful" positions in the U.S. govt., the Senators and
the Congresspeople and the U.N. are rubber stamping yes to everything
the U.S. military machine is saying. The policies of this
present administration are beyond anything that could be called concern
for human rights. Our civil rights are under constant
attack, millions of people throughout the world live under the threat
of war to be waged by the armed forces of the U.S. govt.
Thousands if not millions of people are already living under constant
war to be waged by the armed forces of the U.S armed forces
and some by their own dictatorship governments supported by the U.S.
govt. financed by our tax dollars. All forms of life on this
planet are being polluted, damaged and some face extinction, some are
already extinct - because the powers that be value profit and
power over life. We say NO!

In Afghanistan, over 3,000 Afghanistan civilians have been killed
since Oct. 7, 2001.

In Palestine, over 1,960 Palestinian have been killed since Sept.
28, 2000.

In Iraq, over 1.5 million Iraqis, mainly children have been
killed by the economic sanctions imposed by the USA since March
1991.

In Guatemala, as a result of CIA-sponsored coup in 1954 and death
squads trained at School of the Americas (SOA), 6 million
indigenous Mayan Indians have no social or economic justice, over
150,000 Guatemalans have been killed or disappeared,
tens-of-thousands have been forced to flee to Mexico, 1 million have
been displaced inside the country and more than 440 Indian
villages have been destroyed.

In the United States of America, 780 people have been executed
since 1976 when the death penalty was reinstated in the USA.
The USA has over 2,000,000 people incarcerated in the prison industrial
complex, more than half are people of color and most of
these people committed non-violent crimes. Since 9/11/01, the police
have killed over 144 people. Here in the United States,
homelessness is at an all-time high and people without homes are
criminalized. Since 9/11, disappeared people here in the US have
grown. Administrative detentions, denying people access to their
attorney's, preventing attorneys from knowing the charges and
whereabouts of their clients, and refusing families requests to know
where their loved ones are have become commonplace. The exact
number of people being held is still unknown, since the government
refuses to divulge that information. If the truth be told, this
country was founded on the genocide of the indigenous people, theft of
the lan!
d, and the slavery of Africans. Tens of Millions of indigenous people
of this land have been killed by American regimes.

Come to a planning meeting
to organize for a one day Nationwide General Strike:

When: Saturday 7th December 2002
Time: 10:00am - 1:00pm
Where: Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street, Oakland, CA
(411 - 28th Street wheelchair access to this same building)
walking distance from 19th Street BART

There are many issues to choose from to tell this government:
NO, WE DO NOT AGREE!
Choose your issue, and if your issue is not listed, add it:
* affordable housing
* homelessness
* healthy health care
* access to a good formal education & also higher education
* healthy food to eat uncontaminated by pesticides & not genetically
modified
* racial profiling
* mascoting
* police brutality
* death penalty
* all unconstitutional laws
* institutionalized racism
* prison industrial complex
* political prisoners
* new age slavery
* the so-called war on drugs
* child care
* handicapped accessibility to all buildings & public transportation
* freedom of speech
* censored press
* blatant pro-zionist propaganda
* gay rights
* equal rights for children, elders, all people
* contamination of and stealing of sovereign native land in U.S.A.
* slavery
* 500 years of U.S. Occupation of native land
* AIDS
* AIDS in Africa
* War criminal Henry Kissinger
* U.S. war on Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Somalia
* U.S. bombing of Yugoslavia, Sudan, Tanzania, Vieques
* U.S. intervention in Colombia, Philipines
* U.S. sanctions on Iraq, Cuba, Haiti, Iran, Libya, North Korea, etc.
* Our tax money being used to:
- finance Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians
- build new illegal Israeli settlements & expand existing ones
(note: U.S.A gives more than $3 billion " aid" to Israel each year
* more than 1,300 immigrants missing in U.S.A. since 11th Sept. 2001
* racist attacks on Muslims, Arabs, South East Asians
* Patriot Act & USA Act
* the U.S.A. governments intent to
- wage another genocidal attack on Iraq
- overthrow Yasser Arafat
- overthrow Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela
* the U.S.A. governments refusal to:
- sign the Kyoto treaty
- to participate in the conference on Racism in South Africa
- participate in recent conference on sustainable energy
* the U.S.A. government calling other governments axis of evil
* capitalism
* imperialism

How many more reasons do you need?
We must take action now!

Current endorsers: Santa Cruz Peace And Freedom Party, Third World Forum, UC Davis, Black August Coordinating Committee, Bay Area AIM, Prisoners Rights Union, Freedom Socialist Party, Huff Santa Cruz, Coalition on Homelessness, Cesar Cruz of 4 Winds Student Movement, Richard Aoki, Yuri Kochiyama, Justice for Palestinians, People's United Front

for more info contact:
Mike Cheng at (530) 759-8892
Jams Cosner at (510) 836-4321
Donna Wallach at (408) 293-4774