Minutes of ASFAR General Meeting of Sunday, October 10, 2004

Location: AOL Instant Messenger, private chat room "ASFAR"
Time: 8:00 pm eastern time

Members Present:Tevi A., Aaron B., Camille B., Woty F., matt6288 bigmail, Michael G., Andrew J., Jacob K., Alex K-P, Justin M., Ben P-S, David S-J., Elliot T., Oliver T., Susan W.

Visitors Present: Andrew L., atomicsteif, Becky, Scott D., Dan F., finliath, staticx1620,

The meeting was called to order at 8:17m pm eastern time.

Minutes of the annual meeting of 2003 had not been written. David Schneider-Joseph proposed that minutes, when written, be appended to the ballot to be approved by the membership at large, and Tevi Abrams made a motion to do so. The motion was seconded and passed 6-0.

Reports of Officers

The President, David Schneider-Joseph, reported that several board members and officers had been inactive in 2004, including the vice-president and the recruiting officer. Otherwise, 2004 had been a very active year. Successful voting age protests in August had resulted in media coverage, and additional protests in late October or November were planned to be held in ten locations around the country. A t-shirt design had been approved, and fundraising efforts were underway. David Schneider-Joseph announced that he planned to run for ASFAR's 2005 board of directors, and would be willing to serve again as treasurer and webmaster, but did not wish to serve as president again.

TheVice-President, Winston Featherly-Bean, was not present

The Secretary, Susan Wishnetsky, reported that she was keeping up with new members, but had written no minutes since April 3, 2004. She had sent packets with voting age materials to about 500 members over the summer, some of which were returned. Based on those returned packages, she now feared that buttons sent in padded envelopes were not arriving in good condition, and hoped to find a better way to package them.

The Treasurer, David Schneider-Joseph, reported a PayPal balance of $50.14, a bank balance of $637.02, and about $45 due from Amazon and Google. Google ads on ASFAR's web site had brought in about $15 per month. He further reported that he had not applied for the 501c4 status with the IRS, and planned to tackle that after the voting age protests.

The Fundraising and PR Officer, Andrew Jennings, reported that his t-shirt design had been approved and completed, but there was a problem with the resolution of the image, which he would try to resolve. He said that he had other fundraising ideas which would be pursued after the protests.

The Webmaster, David Schneider-Joseph, reported that traffic on the web site had averaged about 25,000 hits per month, although the statistics had been lost in September. YRFire, the collaborative content-driven web site, had not received much traffic. Aside from the voting age protest page, he said he had done little work on the web site, and hoped to get help in creating HTML versions of Youth Truth issues. He also hoped to develop more issue-specific pages, and encouraged people to write position papers about the issues not already covered. Alex K-P said that he had saved some ASFAR web traffic statistics and agreed to send them to David Schneider-Joseph.

Reports of Committees:

For the Zine Committee, Susan Wishnetsky reported that few submissions were being received. David Schneider-Joseph added that the new deadline for the Youth Truth writing contest was November 15, and mentioned that he and Susan Wishnetsky planned to write their contrasting visions of a society without age restrictions.

For the Demonstrations Committee, Andrew Jennings reported that meetings had been very informal. Susan Wishnetsky added that she had 10 boxes of materials ready to send out to organizers, and still needed some address information. Writing and issuing of press releases was discussed.

Candidates for Board of Directors:

Various individual nominations were received and seconded; two people declined their nominations. The final slate consisted of Tevi Abrams-Slep, Camille Bauer, Daniel Frank, Michael Graves, Andrew Jennings, Jacob Kafka, Andrew Lindberg, Ben Plotkin-Swing, David Schneider-Joseph, Elliot Temple, Susan Wishnetsky. The slate was approved, 9-0 with 1 abstention.

Ballot Proposals:

David Schneider-Joseph moved to include a ballot proposal to delete sections 7.2 and 7.3, the long disputed sections on discrimination by private businesses, from the Declaration of Principles. The motion was seconded and passed, after discussion, 6-1 with 1 abstention.

Justin M. moved to include a ballot proposal to add a new section to the Declaration of Principles, section 1.4, to read "As an alternative to an age-based restriction, the test for foreign-born individuals to become U.S. citizens my be used as the requirement for granting voting rights to anyone of any age." A lengthy discussion ensued, involving many rephrasings of the proposal, one of which was seconded. A motion was finally made to cut off discussion, which was seconded and passed 8-0 with 1 abstention. Justin M. then restated the new wording, "As an alternative to an age-based standard, ASFAR proposes that our society consider a test, similar to that taken by foreign-born individuals to become citizens of the U.S., as the requirement for anyone not already registered to vote to gain that right." The motion failed, 3-4 with 4 abstentions. Jacob K. then made a motion to add this new section with the wording "ASFAR proposes as a possible alternative to an age-based standard, that our society consider a test, similar to that taken by foreign-born individuals to become citizens of the U.S., as the requirement for anyone not already registered to vote to gain that right." The motion was seconded and, after some further discussion, passed 6-2 with 1 abstention.

David Schneider-Joseph moved to approve the entire ballot. The motion was seconded and passed 9-0 with 1 abstention.

The meeting was adjourned at around 11:24 pm eastern time.

Respectfully submitted,

Susan Wishnetsky
ASFAR Secretary