The recording of the meeting can be found here: https://youtu.be/hRDAWYgVCmE?si=ZRy3DQQc1yYNZ9Ao

 

State Committee meeting

11/28/2023

Attending

1) Christian Fyke, State Chair

2) Benjamin Valimont, State Secretary

3) Brian McMurray, South-West Chair

4) Rachel Shanok, Executive Committee Member

5) Gust Tatlas, Executive Committee Member

6) Kyle DeMarino, South-East Chair

 

Agenda

Finance

  • Jack & Tim could not attend tonight due to a Giving Tuesday event with Jack’s animal rescue organization (https://www.greenmorerescue.org/)
    • Total Pledges and Gifts: $17,351.54 from 48 Donors
      • Pennsylvania has made a total of $11,303.81 donations on NationBuilder before the 70/30 split & expenses.
      • $550.00 has been put directly into our PNC Bank Account
      • We have a total of $1,625.00 in kind donations
    • According to National, we draw $1,366.40 from donations made through NationBuilder

Fair Districts

  • One of the priorities we are about to highlight is the need for Pennsylvania to adopt an independent citizens commission to handle redistricting. The most active & prominent group in this area is Fair Districts (https://fairdistrictspa.com/).
  • Brian McMurray made a motion to formally endorse Fair Districts. This motion was seconded by Benjamin Valimont &
    • There was a discussion on whether or not this endorsement would extend Fix Harrisburg, but it was decided that it would not and that we were not endorsing Fix Harrisburg at this time.
    • A vote followed with an overwhelming majority voting in favor of the motion in a vote by show of hands.
      • The Pennsylvania Forward Party has endorsed the organization Fair Districts

Priorities

Collaboration Event

  • Christian mentioned that he has been in talks with several of the pro-democracy reform groups about having some type of event after the primary (probably in May).
    • Craig Snyder noted that we should be aware that these other groups are PACs and their goal is different that ours. Their goal is to get the reforms enacted whereas ours is to create an enduring political party.
      • Christian noted that Forward could not be the hosting organization but suggested this could be a way to promote ourselves to like-minded individuals.
    • Secretary Valimont also had concerns about the suggestion that we time our convention to coincide with this event. He noted that by doing them at the same time, we would be limiting what our convention could be. Secretary Valimont further suggested that we could attempt to use this event to promote our convention—so long as the timing was right.
      • Secretary Valimont suggested that we probably don’t want our convention to happen later than June but also noted that if we did choose June, we could attempt to use Gettysburg College for our convention as we tried to use it for our Summit this year.

December Call

  • Our statewide call this month December 18, 2023.
  • Christian outlined his plan of using it to highlight what our goals were at the start of this year & how successful we were in hitting them.
    • Likewise in the January call, he plans to highlight our goals for 2024.

 

Executive Committee Meeting

  • Secretary Valimont noted that we have only had one dedicated Executive Committee Meeting this year. Our Bylaws state that there must be a minimum of four. He noted that the bylaws have only been in effect for half a year which should be able to justify having only two this year, but that means we do need to have another Executive Committee Meeting.
  • After some discussion, it was decided that our leadership meeting will be divided & that at 6:30 we will switch to a dedicated Executive Committee meeting.
    • At our first meeting it was decided that the Executive Committee meetings will not be recorded.
Benjamin Valimont

About

I am an advocate for democracy & making our government work for us.