AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION of Champaign County

Steering Committee Minutes

March 6, 2008 at 7 p.m.

Present: Bill Brown, Esther Patt, Marsha Woodbury, Carol Inskeep, Richard Schnuer, Stephen Portnoy, Susan Cohen, Elaine Gehrmann, Lynne Rudasill

The meeting was formally brought to order shortly after 7 p.m.

The minutes of the February meeting were approved.

Old Business:

We debriefed "Talking Back to the First Amendment: A Community Forum on Free Speech and Hate Speech", on Feb. 28th, the panel discussion at the law school, and ways we might improve upon it next time, such as firmly limiting the time each speaker had to present material.

Planning for the April 6 Annual Meeting

The meeting will be a brunch at The Great Impasta on Sunday, April 6, 2008. Bob McChesney of Media Matters on NPR will be the speaker.

We planned the agenda of the annual meeting and assigned volunteers.

We set the honorarium for Bob McChesney at $200. Carol Inskeep will be giving the Stone award to Bob McChesney and Esther Patt will present Rachel Dietkus the Norton award.

David Gehrig, Stuart Laird and Carol Leff have agreed to join the steering committee.

New Business:

We talked about the ACLU Annual Membership Conference on April 5 in Peoria. We will work out a car pool by email.

Legislative Report-The newsletter updates members about current state of legislation, and Esther Patt highlighted some of these issues.

On Tuesday, March 11, 2008, five restaurants in Champaign-Urbana will participate in Share-A-Meal with Community Shares to help raise funds for dozens of non-profit organizations including the Roger Baldwin Foundation of the ACLU.

Note: Of interest to all members:

The Illinois Policy Debate Team is hosting an intramural debate tournament to be held on March 29th and 30th in Lincoln Hall and April 2nd at a location to be determined. The resolution for the debates will be--
"Resolved: That the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign should issue punitive sanctions for students who engage in expression that degrades, intimidates, or incites violence on the basis of race, sexuality, gender, ethnicity, religion or disability."

University of Illinois law students will present "Know Your Rights: How to Deal with Cops, Money, and Your Boss". The Free Seminars take place at Champaign Public Library, Room A: March 1, 8 & 15.
Organizations doing the seminars are Street Law the Black Law Students Association, and the National Lawyers Guild.

The meeting was adjourned at 7:50 p.m.

Note: The time of the regular monthly meeting has changed to 7:00 p.m.

The next meeting is on Thursday, April 3, at 7 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Marsha Woodbury