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Draft Notes from AFBA April 12^th meeting at Radial Café (1:45 – 3:30 pm)

[Original Name = LFnotesfromAFBA4.12meetingatRadialCafé.doc in MS Word format. Click here to read original document. (Then Click "Open" in pop-up window to View doc. {And also Click "Allow" if using Windows Vista}) After vewing the original document, close it's window, OR, press "ALT-Tab" as many times as needed to cycle back to this page...]

[This is a Copy of: LFnotesfromAFBA4.12meetingatRadialCafé.doc  in MS Word  format  Attachment Link that was given in the original e-mail by Lorraine Fontana (tana44@hotmail.com) to Louis Hinton... It was opened in Word, and then copied & pasted into this wiki page for editing by Bernard.]  Attachments are NOT saved in any Yahoo! Groups any more, so the only way to even read it is to view it here, unless you saved the original e-mail to your hard drive, etc.

[Rough draft notes to be refined (edited by you folks) into the final minutes to be sent to all AFBA attendees on e-mail list, and members of "AIA" Yahoo! Group, and posted (linked) on this wiki site also.]

Present: Louis Hinton, Edonna Koon, Maressa Pendermon, Dionne Bates, Sandra Lawson, Rev. Paul Turner, Bernard Wooten [correction: Wotton], Cathy Wilcox, Kathi Martin, Lorraine Fontana

(those in bold are non-Steering Committee (SC) attendees).  [Names are given in "clock-wise" order around the table.]

Since there were other customers also in the room with us for much of the meeting time, not everyone was present when we first convened, and ordering and eating needed to happen, we started late and took some breaks along the way.  [Because of this, some of us could not understand all that was spoken by everyone. Cathy and Bernard had troulbe hearing the folks at the other end of the table. There was too much noise.]

I.                    Opening/greeting and ordering food – Paul  performed this function and pulled our energy together

II.                 Overview/Intros – Lorraine asked that we go around the table and each say our name, affiliation and history with AFBA so far….we greeted our one first-time-attendee (Cathi  [correction: Cathy] Wilcox, who Louis will add to our general email list)

III.               Setting SC and next general meeting:

a.       Steering Committee to meet on Sat, May 3^rd  at Paul’s office in First Christian Church in Decatur at 1:30 pm – we will use the minutes from the 2^nd general meeting (see below), the input from today, and the questionnaire answers received by then (from both at large attendees and SC members) to concretize a group vision and mission statement

b.      A second SC phone conference will be scheduled at that meeting to check-in and complete final preparation for a June general meeting

c.       A general meeting will happen on Sat, June 14^th  – Paul will check availability of space at First Christian Church in Decatur

IV.              Creating a Shared Mission & Vision/Discussion - Because of the small size of the group and several folks having to leave early, we decided to ask non-Steering Committee people to share with us how they saw the group and what they wanted it to accomplish (thinking that the SC members would have two more gatherings to add/share our individual input) – here’s some of what was said:

a.       Two people came because they knew the people already involved and on the SC and wanted to work with them

b.      3 steps to take:

1.      identify which justice issues we want to address

2.      educate (ourselves and others re these issues)    [re =  regarding, concerning, in reference to ??]

3.      take action (write letters, meet with stake holders, demonstrate, etc.)

c.       One suggested we should return to the second meeting input/minutes, which weren’t properly followed up on, and use those many ideas to move forward and develop a mission

- All seemed to agree with this last point – Louis will re-distribute those minutes to all on the SC and those who attended this meeting.

- Louis said those ideas from the 2^nd meeting were out there like children who needed “parents” – i.e. name, mission and vision statements for them to have a home.

- Paul suggested we use a “flow chart…of substance” in which to plug these ideas at the SC meeting.

- Having a substantive presentation at the last general meeting (on sexuality) before we finished the formative steps  re  name, mission, vision, etc. may have been a bad move – left some attendees wondering what the SC was doing and where they were leading the group, and what happened to all the ideas generated at the previous meeting(s).

Additional action steps:

1.      LF volunteered to send out the beginnings of minutes from this meeting to those who attended, and get additions/corrections for a final version.  [Bold, color added by BW]

2.      Those final minutes will be sent to all on both the SC list and the general attendee list, along with info re date/place/time of next general meeting

3.      Louis will send immediately a request to the general list for everyone wanting input into the SC decision re vision/mission to return the questionnaire to him in the next 2 weeks (by Sunday 4/27) – this includes all SC members.

4.      Louis will then distribute these responses to all SC members  so we have time to read and think about them for at least several days before the 5/3 SC meeting.