I'm now on the UFPJ-Palestine caucus listserv, but I'm not on the UFPJ listserv that you mention above. Is there an archive accessible to the public? If not, how does one sub to it?
BTW, in the course of discussion about the UFPJ conference on some Solidarity listservs, I offered a couple of more thoughts about it -- see below:
I (as an individual delegate) proposed an amendment to the UFPJ strategic framework: UFPJ make concentrated and coordinate efforts to increase political participation of people of color and develop campaigns with a view to doing so. I thought that fighting against budget cuts, as well as rolling back the world's biggest prison state (the expansion of which predates 9.11 and the USA Patriot Act), is exactly the kind of campaign that can draw upon and in turn build up the strength of activists who are currently left out of UFPJ. Somehow, my proposal was left out of the discussion of amendments to the strategic framework (I don't know why -- I thought I made the deadline). I made the same proposal in the post-conference evaluations collected by the conference organizers; I have no idea if it will reach the ears of the national UFPJ organizers through this route.
The Solidarity contingent at the conference was probably too small to make an effective intervention on the spot to make a major change in the political direction of UFPJ like this. What would it have taken to make such an intervention?
(1) Develop a proposal a couple of months before the conference. (2) Seek allies within the conference organizers so that the proposal will be sure to come to the attention of all delegates, discussed in all relevant sections (the plenary for the strategic framework, mini-plenaries for campaign proposals, and the plenary for campaign proposals), preferably with plenary and mini-plenary facilitators favorably disposed to it (this is a necessary move, as conferences like this are more or less stage-managed). (3) Contact allies who are not the conference organizers but who are going to attend the conference and get their agreement to back it before the conference. (4) Work the conference to increase allies on the spot.
Well, hindsight is 20/20.
We may still mount organized pressures from below to win the hearts and minds of the steering committee and move them in this direction. It's not like "action priorities" (@ <http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=1755>) are set in stone, I think. UFPJ will have to adapt itself to what's happening nationwide.
One obstacle, however, is that the participation of activists from (or with strong links to) "the labor movement" appeared to be minuscule at the conference, whereas rallies against budget cuts at state capitals have been mostly led by organized labor (I'm extrapolating from my experience in Ohio). -- Yoshie
* Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>