Legal Committee Meeting Minutes November 19, 2011
Topics discussed:
Low attendance at meetings: Decrease meetings from three per week to two. Have one meeting online and another in-person. Decided to keep the Saturday meeting to facilitate attendance at GA following at 3pm. (Please see Juliana’s prior email).
Meeting Minutes: designate one person per meeting to take minutes and post them by sending an email to the group and posting minutes on the OA website.
Bottomliners: Juliana and Lauren are designated as the two bottom-liners for the Legal Committee.
Prior Notification of Actions to Legal and Jail Support: The bottomliners will notify Lisa and the Research group of upcoming issues needing to be researched.
Website: advising members to check the http://www.occupyatlanta.org website for the most current and up-to-date news and events of Occupy Atlanta.
Arrestee Meeting Saturday @5pm and Monday @8pm. Tentatively set for 60 Walton.
Videos and images of actions present issues of evidence custody and the conflicting values of activism and attorney/client representation.
Finance: the money available is being used to pay the filing costs and fees for filing the law suit.
Anna informed us the Finance committee is looking to establish a non-profit organization which serves to support the OA movement.
Keeping funds in separate accounts was raised as an important consideration.
Attorney Coordination:
Develop a list of attorney’s who are available to represent arrestee’s at first appearance/bond hearings.
Attorneys need to ensure a signed and dated Agreement exists between themselves and any OA Client they are willing to take on.
Brainstormed:
How to foster additional involvement within the legal community?
What can we do to increase involvement and share responsibilities?
form subcommittees to support various roles of the committee
Subcommittees: areas identified as requiring more attention
Media Contact – write press releases and coordinate media notifications and contact. Jason will be focusing on this area.
Research – conduct or coordinate research on issues which may arise or need to be known to support the actions of OA. Lisa and Shayna will be focusing on this area. Lisa will conduct research coordination. Lisa and Shayna will begin researching topics raised from the list serve email sent by Juliana.
On-the-Street Team –
Evidence – gather, identify, label, and maintain evidence for court proceedings. Madelyn and Shayna will be focusing on this area. Shayna will be scouring online for posted videos and images of arrests.