Rockford Coffee Party Meeting

Rockford Coffee Party Meeting

When: Saturday, March 5 · 11:00am - 3:00pm

Where: Katie's Cup coffeehouse, 502 7th Street, Rockford, IL

This will be our first meeting of the year. Attendence is open to all. Expect the meeting to last longer than scheduled.

On the agenda will be the drafting of a proposed bill to pass on to our state legislators boycotting future State of Illinois business with any states which have banned public employee unions, and collective bargaining by public employees.

To this end, I am asking those who can bring laptop computers to the ...meeting to please do so.

We need to:

1. Research the state laws passed last year which boycott business with the state of Arizona following the passage of their anti-immigrant law, for similar language to use in our draft bill.

2. Research the Citizens' United Supreme Court ruling so as to specifically include PRO-Citizens' United language in our draft. That's right, I said "PRO" Citizens' United. Why? Because we want anti-union activists to argue AGAINST Citizens' United, and corporate personhood, when arguing against our proposed bill. That'll fix but 'em good: They won't know how to come at it in opposition, without losing credibility with their base. Let them argue AGAINST corporate personhood.

3. Include language that anti-union politicians could be poltically devasted by if our bill ever passed into law, i.e., the labor movement is the expression of the First Amendment's freedom of speech and freedom of assembly married to capitalism's inherent demand to negotiate over contracted prices and conditions - in other words, the ability for parties to negotiate a contract is an integral part of capitalism and, as a consequence, the denial of the right to negotiate a contract must be a refutation of capitalism. That'll fix 'em even more, for the very same reason. Let the anti-union politicians argue AGAINST the free market!

4. Look up the email addresses for AFSCME and other labor organizations to get them on board with all of this.

5. Look up the email addresses and office phone numbers of our state legislators in order to send off our finished product, and then email the finished product to those legislators.

6. Post our finished product on those state legislators' facebook pages provided if they do maintain a facebook page, so there is no way that those elected officals can claim ignorance some where down the road.

7. Notify the press. That means we need to look their email addresses up, too

If you need direction's to Katie's Cup, here they are, courtesy of Google Maps:

http://maps.google.com/maps?rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-us%3AIE-SearchBox&oe=UTF-8&rlz=1I7GGLT_en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=0%2C0%2C9576049532831690854&fb=1&hq=katie%27s+cup&hnear=Freeport%2C+IL&gl=us&daddr=502+7th+Street%2C+Rockford%2C+IL+61104-1215&geocode=1156957426245931350%2C42.262563%2C-89.080785&ei=enNdTYO5J4H7lwfBz9iZCw&sa=X&oi=local_result&ct=directions-to&resnum=2&ved=0CB0QngIwAQ

Here's the Katie's Cup cofffehouse web address: http://www.katiescup.com/Katies_Cup/About_Us.html

PS: If you don't already know, Katie's has some kick-ass coffee and pastries.