UNA-SF Women's Committee Regular Monthly Meeting

Bronwyn Galloway is chair of the United Nations Association of San Francisco Women's Committee. She is heading to Washington DC for the Women's March there on Jan 21 and that sets the theme for this month's meeting: What can we do locally to backup the Jan 21 Women's March in DC? Please bring your ideas for what we might do on the 21st here in San Francisco.

The meetup is free, but we normally order some food - if you share it may end up costing you $10 plus whatever you spend for drinks.

Here is our agenda for Monday evening, Jan 9, 2017:

• Minutes of Dec 5, 2016
• Local action to support Women’s March on Jan 21 – bring your suggestions!
• How are we doing at UNA-SF? There is a UNA-SF Board meeting Saturday Jan 7. We are expecting to report that the Board is supporting us and also what ideas were presented for International Women’s Day.
• International Women’s Day, March 8, 2017
• Looking ahead: 5th World Conference on women (5WCW) and the Global Women’s Strike
• Set date for February meeting

And here are our Dec 5, 2016 minutes

UNA-SF Women’s Committee Meeting, Dec 5, 2016
Soluna Café, San Francisco Civic Center 7:00-9:00 pm, minutes by Roger Eaton

In attendance: Bronwyn Galloway, Chair * Roger Eaton, Secretary * Ana Maria Sanchez * Nahid Aria * Divya * Molly * Sandy Chaves

Following up on Ana Maria’s suggestion at our November meeting, we set up a Meetup ( https://www.meetup.com/UNA-SF-Womens-Committee ) and scheduled our first meetup for December 5. Attendees Molly and Divya found us through Meetup and were new to the UNA-SF WC. Welcome!

Discussion:

We decided to continue using Meetup for at least the next six months. We will meet Monday evenings at Soluna Café once a month. Each meetup will have its own theme, but two continuing threads will be organizing for a global women’s strike and the need for a Fifth World Conference on Women (5WCW). Next meeting is Monday January 9, 2017.

Ana Maria Sanchez focused on the possibility of making a UNA-SF Women’s Committee side presentation in New York at the annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) conference in March right after International Women’s Day. In discussion, it agreed we would be pleased to have Ana Maria make a presentation on our behalf. We thought she would concentrate on two or three topics: 1) How to bring the experience of the CSW home? At the global level, women are decided for gender equality, but locally, many women are so caught up in daily affairs that they don’t realize there are systemic forces at work against them and that they need to work together for empowerment of women and girls. 2) Global Women’s Strike. This is what the world needs to wake itself up, but getting there is going to be a long process. What issues do we concentrate on? Women’s issues? Which ones, then? Save the Children? Peace? 3) 5WCW for 2020? How can we make it happen. Organizing for the 5WCW can be a vehicle for energizing the women’s movement. Ana Maria and Bronwyn will put together the needed application by the Dec 9th deadline.

Roger Eaton spoke of his desire to bring in women as board members for his Collective Communication, Inc. non-profit. He described CCI’s Voices of Humanity project and how it has the potential to unify humanity on the basis of gender equality and bring together communities to support issues.

It was mentioned that at the last UNA-SF Board meeting President Pablo Castro tried and was unable to close down the Women’s Committee (WC) – the subject was tabled until the next UNA-SF Board meeting. Bronwyn is confident the UNA-SF Board will support the WC as it is currently constituted.

end of Dec 5 minutes