Minutes from SPEAC Meeting on 3/16/06

Roundtable Notes:

• Talk to other organizations: i.e the Tang Center, Free Clinic, Clinica Del La Raza…
• Need to come up with TANGIBLE proposals in order to really achieve results
• Having computers at Clinic – provide locks, maybe students could bring in theirs to borrow, write to Intel or HP for laptop donations. Make sure we take them home at the end of the night. Have volunteers facilitate that process
• Ask if our clients can use the computer lab in the Church
• Organize further against Campus restriction on outside internet use. Get together with other student groups i.e. Calpirg to “protest” this restriction/access on the internet
• Example for an action: we can get students to sting in for 15 minutes and homeless people can come in and use the computers. Similar to people swiping homeless people into the dc
• Another example for an action: have a Picnic-Internet Campus Access Day. Where we can buy food with unused swipes and get people online
• Through all of this we want to communicate dignity
• People thought the name SPEAC was okay
• We identified sources such as the Daily Cal that made homeless people look bad. Ways to overcome that include: writing on Cal Stuff or submit part of the Suitcase Newsletter to the Daily Cal
• We wanted to come up with ways to humanize homeless people because often students feel a social distance and alienation from them.
• Idea: Write a Suitcase Press Release to overcome some of these
• Amit suggested a T-Shirt campaign- buying and wearing T-shirts each having one number from 1-850 (or whatever it is) of how many people are homeless in Berkeley on a given night and have a statement and something that people can do about it on the back
• Chelsea suggested getting an ASUC mini-grant to fund some of our projects. ASUC Bill- opinion statement and funding (?)
• Events to raise awareness: Speaker’s Bureau, Street Retreat-Faithful Fools style, Day in the Life (Roy style), educational videos- movie nights, speakers (Andrew)