Traveller Solidarity Network

The brutal eviction of 90 Irish Traveller families at Dale Farm in October showed how prepared the government are to use force and violence against communities, using planning law technicalities as an excuse to cover the deeep racism that runs in this country against travelling people. This is happening throughout the UK – the time for action is now!The 18th December will be a day of to make plans for the future, and for different groups to feed in and find out what we are all up to. All are welcome if you care about Travellers’ rights.

The rough outline of the agenda for the day is:

10am PEOPLE ARRIVE
10.15am RECAP FROM LAST MEETING (Need to get someone to do this)
10.20am UPDATES FROM WORKING GROUPS AND LOCAL GROUPS
10.50am LOCALISM BILL and the current political situation/shout outs

11am POLITICAL STRATEGY
-What niche are we filling that isn’t being done right now?
-What are our long term aims and goals of the network?
-How do we want to maintain or introduce a radical voice into the issue of Travellers Solidarity

11.50am 10 MIN BREAK

12 PROCESS I- ISSUES AND PROBLEMS
-10 min (maybe longer if we have an hour?) open chat/ brainstorm about process problems we think we have
-Discussion of the problems that we have identified:
email/ internet heavy organising
London centrism
Accesibility in working groups
~Capacity~
-Maybe moving onto proposals/solutions if we have time

1pm LUNCH

2pm “MEATY” BUSINESS
-Working Group Proposals- Finance and dissolving Land Group and any others raised so far
-Name Discussion

2.30pm PROCESS II- PROPOSALS AND MOVING FORWARD
- guidelines for working groups to address process issues previously outlined
-more proposals (from working groups)

3.15pm EMAIL LISTS info-share

3.30pm PRIORITISING
-trying to prioritise as a network in order to guide working group work, develop a few more details overall strategy we discussed at 11am

4.15pm OUTREACH WORKING GROUP speaking to the whole group- HOW DO WE BUILD THE NETWORK

4.45pm WORKING GROUP TIME
-Fightback
-Traveller Liaison
-Maybe should be pretty flexible in terms of what comes out of strategising, process and prioritising? Keep the groups the opportunity to take it on board?
-Maybe split the time up and have two sessions of working group time?

5.30pm END

A collection of proposals submitted will be available at http://travellersolidarity.org/18-december-network-meeting shortly

There will be refreshments but biscuits will only be put out from 10am- 10:10 so arrive on time!! Unfortunately we can’t provide lunch so please bring your own If you need somewhere to crash in London please email lozenger@riseup.net there will be plently of space for everyone.

And most importantly please SPREAD THE WORD about this – it’s a great chance to widen the reach of TSN.