Meeting Notes from March 4, 2205 DFNH-Souhegan Valley by Nancy White and Andy Sylvia
-The meeting took place at 7pm at Nancy White's home as the Amherst Public Library was closed due to miscommunications.
-The people in attendance were Andy Sylvia from Merrimack, Jan Borgia from Hollis, Nancy White from Amherst, Betty Hall from Brookline, and Sid Hall from Brookline.
-We held a moment of silence, then remembrance to begin the meeting in honor of former Wilton State Rep. and fellow Souhegan Deaniac Hal Melcher, whose memorial was today.
-We feel that the geographical boundaries of our meetup unofficially look like: Brookline, Merrimack, Amherst, Hollis, Wilton, Greenville, Mason, Milford, Mont Vernon and Lyndeborough, with New Boston, New Ipswich and Temple being added later to the list. Any people that we know who are from these areas are encouraged to join us, as we seek others to expand our representation.
-The group wishes to make decisions by coming to consensus due to our small size and ease at the moment with conversation about ideas and action.
-The DFNH-Souhegan Valley group's affiliation to Nashua-DFNH (CASNH) remains nominal as we have stated before in the past. There continues to be a different set of issues with the small towns that we represent than does Nashua. The group believes our smaller size is an asset rather than a liability, and the smaller size contributes to getting our tasks accomplished.
-The group did want to focus on one big group project at a time to "make a name for the group," thinking this would draw in attenders, thus creating positive accomplishments while utilizing the energy that we have presently, and just getting started on things, since the energy of the 2004 election has passed. Others, who were not at this meeting, have helped in the past with similar tasks and with similar focus, i.e. it works for us.
-The project (now known as The Film Project) that we want to focus on is this: continuing to develop the film footage that was gathered on election day 2004 and get it into a usable, workable form beyond what was originally filmed as footage for possible inclusion in the documentary, "Votergate." We agreed that it needs to have professional consultation, (development of a story line, story boards, voices, additional interviews-possibly from Secretary of State's office and Bill Gardner.) It was also mentioned that DFNH-SV, National Ballot Integrity Project, and individuals helped to fund the initial filming, film crews, and transportation costs......we have a vested interest in seeing it through. We, along with others who were not present at this meeting, would like to develop this footage into a film that shows New Hampshire's exemplar voting process. This project could be used to educate voters in NH, students in schools, newcomers to the area, as well as toot our own horn about NH's emphasis on promoting voting with fair and open voting practices, rather than discouraging it. DFNH-Fair Elections Committee (FEC) is also interested in creating this film from the footage.
-A beginning of viewing of some of the raw footage will be the main focus of April's meeting, which will take place at 6:30pm, Tuesday, April 5th at Nancy White's (12 Main St. Amherst) since Nancy has available DVD and VHS machines. It will take a number of hours to complete this process, but felt we must begin, even though we will not finish it at this meeting. Discussion about the project continued: Jan said she would look into examples of video editing experts' costs so we have ballpark figures; Betty said she'd talk with Bill Gardner about the idea of a film for NH and possible additional use of archive materials from Secretary of State's office; with Sid's skills in writing/editing/printing he suggested we could all think about storylines and come prepared with some thoughts as well as be able to jot down ideas as we are viewing footage; Nancy said she would get in touch with Sharona Merel, who has the footage stored at her house, and notify DFNH-SV of our interest in working on this project.
-Tom Deery from the Alliance for Retired Americans will be added to the email list from Nancy Tobi; was unable to get to tonight's meeting, but will
will tell us about ARA's fight for Social Security and Medicare at the next meeting, April 5th.
-More Action Alerts: We voted to co-sponsor Amy Goodman's talk: Tuesday evening, May 3rd at 7pm at the UU Church (South Church) in Portsmouth. Nancy offered to get in touch with Dave Diamond who is in charge of arrangements. Co-sponsorship means that we mark our calendars now, encourage people to attend this talk, tell others about this award winning journalist, who is currently on tour promoting her book, "The Exception to the Rulers." Nancy has room for five in her van, if we want to car pool. Directions will be available later.
-We also agreed to give our enthusiastic encouragement from our organization to the board of trustees of NHPR to syndicate the program, "Democracy Now!"since Nancy said there will be a group of people talking with the board on March 22. However, we need to have a letterhead with written organizational endorsement to George Corrette of Marlow, NH by March 15. Sid agreed to make the letterhead; Andy agreed to write the letter of endorsement; Nancy said she would get letterhead with endorsement mailed to George. Nancy also said that she has had email correspondence with Michael Arnold, VP of programming at NHPR with some favorable response to the idea of having "Democracy Now!" considered. Now is the time to help NH promote the truth in the media.
-Andy also told the group about the possibility of starting an internet radio station since he has equipment and some knowledge. He will report about these possibilities at the next meeting. Each of us could have a great time being a host on our own talk show!
We were all amazed and energized by the amount of work that we accomplished tonight!
