Meeting Summaries-March, April, May, June, and July

Written by: pamella gronemeyer on Jul 9, 2007 5:40 PM EDT

Linked to groups: Downstate Democrats for Change

These minutes are long overdue. You must forgive me. In March through July, we met at the library to develop a plan of  action for the year. The meeting attendees in  these months included Pam Gronemeyer, Stephen Kriegh, David Kiley, Bill and Maggie Rechtiene, Miriam Burns, the Slosars who were new to the group, Joane Nabe, Dianne Lee, Mike Bailey, Freydna Scroggins, Karen Sandefur, and Dick Wagner.  We decided to concentrate on fund raising for the upcoming 2008 elections as well as raising money to sponsor students for the DFA Training Academy in Springfield in September.  The dates for the training academy were set on September 29-30, 2007. Pam is working with the DFA Trainers and  Tim Bagwell to get the details of site, time,housing, food, and advertising together. She also speaks every month to the DFI Leader Group to tell them about our progress and to get the word out to potential enrollees. We planned a trivia night for August 18, 2007. This will be held at the IBEW Hall in Collinsville. Maggie created a flyer and we are distributing it. Pam is sending a letter to try to get round sponsors. We tried to get Senator Durbin to make an appearance but he will be attending a family wedding on this weekend. We are still trying to get a video from him to show. Tim Bagwell will be the emcee. There will be a silent auction, 50-50 game, and another game in between rounds.

We are firming up the DFA Training Academy details. Maggie is now making a flyer for this event. Bill investigated getting a speaker to come to talk to us about  ongoing activities to prevent voter fraud. He will report back in August. An ad about our group was submitted  ( along with the fee) to the Madison County Federation of  Labor Award Ceremonies book. Unfortunately, the ad did not appear and we are to have our money refunded. We did everything correctly but we were left out of the book. Dorothy Asbury ,one of our members, received a well-deserved award for all of her activities working for the retired union members. Congratulations Dorothy !!  Pam and Stephen attended the event.

 Dick Wagner and Pam are now appointed precinct committee persons in Highland as part of  the East End Democratic group.  Jeff Hurst welcomed our help and gave us our precinct lists to get the word out to voters.  Pam attended the Illinois Democratic Women annual meeting in Springfield this spring and has a copy of the DNC Precinct Committee training powerpoint to educate new precinct committee people about their  responsibilites. She will be taking the power point to the East End Democratic meeting  to show in July. Six of us went out on July 5 to see SICKO. We distributed some information about universal healthcare from the Physicians for National Health Plan  Organiazation. Pam is a member of the group.

On July 14, we will have  a community table at the Goshen Market to try to recruit new members. We are talking about a second monthly meeting when we have a movie night and show progressive movies.

Hopefully, this summary includes all of our activities.I think that this summarizes our meeting minutes to date. 

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Location: IL