Meeting Minutes

Juneau (2), Soldotna, Fairbanks, Petersburg, Denali, Kenai

• Talked more about the shape of the organization.
• Indivisible partnership? (More resources)
• Getting a chapter together
• Communities who are already doing this: write up how they do events, lessons learned
• Survey out to individuals. Aggregate out at state level. Push back down to community levels.
• Allow people to fund specific projects instead of party general fund.
• Not reliant on outside funding
• Ways to track in-kind or volunteer hours.

Reviewed Disposition Rubric – Developed by the Dispositions Task Force.

Reviewed meeting agreements from First Alaskans Institute

Proposed structural elements for statewide Gatherings (Frequency/Monthly)

• Alaska Neighbors Party allows anyone to participate in our community, social or work groups, and statewide gatherings. Participants in our statewide meetings will adhere to our norms for civil discussion.
• A group of at least 3 members may call a meeting.
• At least one of those members should be residing in a different city than the others. 
• Share the date, time, and link at least 5 days before the proposed meeting posted in Discord/Signal
• Group must keep notes on who attended and what was discussed
• Place to share what has been worked on in Work Groups/Social Groups/Community Groups
• Members who cannot make the specific date/time may send in items for consideration
• Any member may propose agenda items
• No hierarchical structure, but there should be a facilitator (rotating role)
• Statewide will work on surveys to push down to community/workgroups/social groups
• Statewide will aggregate information from community/workgroups/social groups and send back for feedback before publishing on website
• Website information will reflect the gradients in thinking. Areas where most members agree and areas of concern that some members have.

Work Groups/Social Groups
-At least 2 members meeting together in-person or online

• Best efforts to share date, time, and location before proposed work group
• Notes/Work Product to be shared at the Statewide Gatherings

Community Groups

• Group of at least 2 members (or if a small community: paired with another small community or neighboring community)
• Deeper discussion of local issues, discuss survey/small group questions
• Summarize important topics to share at Statewide Gathering
• Workgroups/Social Groups and Community groups may propose their own local structures

Potential Partner Organizations / Individuals:

• Standup Alaska
• Matsu United for Progress
• Local ANB/ANS
• Current independents in AKLEG

Stance

• Collaborating with partner organizations with things already in motion
• Inviting experts in field to share information
• Inviting dissenters

• Reviewed last few weeks of conversations, looked at draft timeline, finished first run through of that organizational DNA chart

As summer started to pick up with travel, subsistence, field work, and good weather, work stalled a little in June and July.

Articulated current roles people are playing, started working on organizational DNA, looked at potential subgroups for summer work.

• Identified need to update our “welcome” documents for new folks, which prompted group decisions on our tech use, resulting in a new Tech & Comms Plan and the transferring of docs over to a new Proton mail and drive account (now in progress)
• Met Savannah Fletcher and talked about her desire/work for new political party and discussed joining forces.

• Juneau, Dillingham, Soldotna, Fairbanks, Petersburg, Denali
• Heard updates from Fairbanks, organizing ahead of NANA corp meeting April 30th, severe federal workforce cuts in rural communities as DOI consolidates hits Dillingham, FBX PFLAG saved at last minute from admin issue, Juneau, FBX, PSG planning MayDay, no critical mass in Dillingham this time
• Pat has copies of this book from Center for Artistic Activism we may want to add to book club queue https://c4aa.org/resources
• Dandhi’on initiating a group portraiture project “All Humans of Alaska” to highlight people impacted by current events, she will share procedures so anyone can participate
• Cook Inlet in last month of Kenai electrical co-op campaigns, working on organizing, door knocking, and messaging to make the economic argument for renewable-supporting board candidates in communities started by oil & gas projects – we can learn from what works there
• Report on Denali activated by fed cuts, 90 folks rallied and ongoing organizing is happening
• Discussion on future of our new alaska party
  1. Time to get to nuts and bolts
  2. Pat started spreadsheet timeline working back from active in 2026 elections
     1. Website/name by this summer.
     2. First draft core documents by this fall.
     3. Online weekend party convention possibly Sept 20-22???
        1. Hammer out further docs and processes via organized online convention
     4. Work on townhall, endorsement plans Fall of 2025
     5. Ready for Townhalls & Endorsements 2026
• More chatter about names and Alaska Neighbor’s Party or Alaska Friends and Neighbors Party which could be AK FAN like we’re fans of Alaska (who wouldn’t be!?)
• Consensus around increasing nuts & bolts time and less casual time in our meetings
• Next zoom Sunday May 4th COFFEE time 10 am

Forgot to take notes! Generated a new book club around Let This Radicalize You.

• Present: Juneau, Dillingham, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Petersburg, Soldotna
• Malena shared some visual organization of our ideas on Canva.
• Resource: Article about mutual aid based landless farmer organizing in brazil
• Resource: Snowflake organizing model
• Report from Fairbanks, gays on the fair board! Goal of adding ICE prisons to list of things Nana corporation won’t do, hard given how spread out shareholders are
• Our party needs a skill set for modeling healthy conflict, breaking apart hyper individualism that keeps Alaskans separated and experiencing the state through screens, how do we mesh our experiences of political Alaska via skillful communication?
• Resource: Communication skills book recommendation
• De-escalating training should be a thing we can offer. To help people feel they can engage and feel safe. Our values are not just ideological but are also community building skills.
• Fairbanks Climate Action does a lot of trainings and may have some on that topic
• In this difficult time, we need to be visible as people proposing the ideas that can replace maga, we need to have speakers at events with those ideas (ie AOC and Bernie). Use arts and food to bring people together, and also have those speakers with the vision. This can mean flagging and recruiting folks as we find them
• Can we put a lot of focus on local leaders – identifying, training, etc
• Need: help with community meet ups and dialogue driven events as supplement or alternative to rallies
• USPS privatization teach in template: https://usps-teach-in.carrd.co/
• Need a response for Trump’s plans to declare insurrection before it happens
• People have already lost due process, so none of us have it. Violence is already here in the form of rights being stripped away at a fundamental level. Indivisible article on being prepared for trump declaring insurrection
• Agreement to meet at 8 pm April 20 and use next week’s zoom as a work party to organize our description & survey

We reviewed Hands Off events in Fairbanks, Juneau, Dilllingham, Petersburg

• Dillingham had a good cross-section including elders who spoke to the group. Janelle is looking for additional ideas for continuing to organize there. We talked about holding a follow up debrief event, identifying future organizing activities by checking in with how people are feeling and starting conversation that way, and we reviewed the townhall event idea and how it went in Fairbanks and Juneau 
• Ryan cooked food and gave it away at the Fairbanks event, raising $500 to give to breadline, yay!
• Will future protests get more specific? Is it time to make more localized demands with our protest? The excitement is national, but maybe demands have to be more local
• We talked about books for learning more about organizing:
  1. Starting Somewhere: Community Organizing For Socially Awkward People Who’ve Had Enough” by Roderick Douglass
  2. Let this radicalize you: Organizing and the revolution for reciprocal care by Kelly Hayes and Miriam Kaba
  3. Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea Hardcover – by Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor 
• We talked about the importance of establishing group norms and formalizing some aspects of roles so that we can intentionally bring people into a culture of care and respect and build out from there
• Homework: review Malena’s attempt to synthesize our new party project!

Juneau (2), Soldotna, Anchorage, Dillingham

• People have curiosity towards new party since there isn’t something representing them. Feel like current parents are stuck in polarizing corners/ loops
• Active Now: Protests, postcards (Dave Musgrave) Statewide & regional issues.
• Longterm: Tied to grassroots Alaska issues.
• People getting together and having a conversation. Ways to Guide conversation.
• Manageable conversations in small groups that becomes part of a bigger conversation.
• Small groups. Stitching together into a larger picture.
• Goal: Good discourse and good political thinking
• Have people running in every race because rank choice exists.
• CQI: Send out survey. Conversations. Aggregate and report. New Survey. New Conversations. Aggregate & Report.
• First draft of survey was shared and discussed.

Gustavus, Kodiak, Juneau, Soldotna, Anchorage, Dillingham

• Stand Up Alaska statewide zoom is Tuesday at 5:50 pm.
• Gustavus and Petersburg having planning meetings, Gustavus will march April 5
• Alaska division of elections page on starting a party
• We build community and not just protests
• As we build our group processes for identifying values and actions, we want to build in continuous reflection and quality improvement (iterative)
• We want to be a political group that centers people, not just interests
• Riffing off Pat’s governor survey, we want to expand and use it to build party via community conversations etc
• We see surveying as a definitional aspect of being a party – constant communication from the bottom up is what defines us
• What values are people seeing in their communities/ wanting to see personally? Dillingham – fish, public education, functional infrastructure that keeps people alive “We deserve better quality of life” Kenai – focus is on fossil fuel based economic opportunities (LNG as a property value booster) Energy transition is a needed goal there
• Same time next week Sunday at 8 pm.