Attending: Norman G. Kurland, Dawn K. Brohawn, Michael D. Greaney, Harriet Epstein.

Materials Distributed: Core Values, Code of Ethics, 11/24/04 Executive Committee Minutes, “Initial Planning Ideas” for the ARP Federal Reserve event.

Meeting was called to order at 10:25 AM by Norman G. Kurland, Rotating Chairman. A silent Opening Prayer was offered. The Core Values and Code of Ethics were read.

Approval of Board and Executive Committee Minutes. Dawn K. Brohawn moved to accept the minutes of the 11/24/04 Quarterly Board Minutes with corrections. Michael D. Greaney seconded the motion, which passed unanimously.

News/Information Items

Schnuck’s Supermarket, E. St. Louis. Regarding the proposed employee/customer buyout of the East St. Louis Schnuck’s Supermarket scheduled to be closed, Norman Kurland spoke on December 21 with Rep. Wyvetter Younge, who arranged for Norm to speak with Ken Hall, manager of the local store. (Norm had previously sent him a 3-page description of the proposed turnaround strategy along with information on Justice-Based Management and Norm’s biography.)

In the conversation Hall reacted positively to the proposal Norm described, in which the store could serve as a model for a community revitalization project that would also incorporate a Community Investment Corporation. Hall, who has had 40 years of experience in the supermarket business, is the sort of person who could provide the leadership needed to launch the project and to serve as a CEO during the transition phase. Under the turn-around scenario, the project would also need his assistance in the selection of a qualified CEO who would agree to incorporate Justice-Based Management into the company.

Presently the East St. Louis Schnuck’s is unionized, losing money and losing its customer base. The community is largely African-American and low-income. The proposal calls for the parent company to sell the store to an entity owned by an ESOP/CSOP representing the employees and customers. The plan hinges on whether the store can be made profitable.

Hall gave Norm the name of Schnuck’s Public Affairs person, who is close to Craig Schnuck, the CEO and one of the family members who owns the company. When Norm and Wyvetter called the public affairs representative, the PA rep mentioned that she was familiar with the proposal because Schnuck’s lawyer had presented “the ESOP idea” to Craig Schnuck, who rejected it out of hand. (Craig Schnuck said that Schnuck’s is a family-owned company and they want it to stay that way.) Norman Kurland explained that the proposal was only for a new employee/customer-owned store, not for the parent company, and asked for a meeting with Craig Schnuck to explain the proposal directly. After Norm’s explanation, the public affairs person said she would present the idea again to Craig Scnuck and see if he would be willing to meet. Norm and Wyvetter intend to appeal to Schnuck’s civic conscience. The new store will need a new name.  Some suggestions offered by the executive committee: “Thirdway Foods”, “Jubilee Foods” (using the acronym for “Justice-Based Initiatives for Life, Equity and Empowerment”), “Justway” (as an alternative to Safeway).

Meeting with Dr. Ali Alyami, Ctr. for Democracy & Human Rights in Saudi Arabia. In early December, Norm Kurland and Dawn Brohawn met with Dr. Ali Alyami who heads the Washington, DC-based Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia. Norm had met him previously at a meeting of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy. Dr. Alyami travels extensively throughout the Middle East. He has lived in the U.S. for 37 years, and received his Ph.D. from Claremont College in California.  At age 10 he started working for Aramco, which was later nationalized.

Dr. Alyami views the Saudi Royal family as corrupt and in control of all aspects of Saudi society, and believes that Saudi Arabia is the primary nexus for terrorism in the region and the world. His group places special emphasis on promoting democracy and the participation of women in politics. He is reaching out to women’s rights organizations and leaders in Saudi Arabia.  He said that he agrees with the Just Third Way and likes the Abraham Federation ideas he heard Norm describe (including the Iraq Oil Proposal), but that he wants to stay focused on reforming Saudi Arabia.

Norm arranged a meeting for him with Norman Bailey, and has set up a meeting for Dr. Alyami on January 7 with Bob Crane and Norman Kurland. Norm wants to get him together with Rabbi Kranz.

Norman Kurland Meeting at the National Cooperative Bank. Later today (December 22, 2004) Norman Kurland will be meeting with Dawn Carpenter of EOS, affiliated with the National Coop Bank which is interested in financing the ONEEEA-led buyout. There are some bugs to work out in the arrangement between ONEEEA, NCB, EOS and EEI.  ONEEEA has written a letter to Eos, indicating that they should deal with Equity Expansion International (EEI) as their agent.

Stu Theis and Oglebay Norton. ONEEEA organized a letter-writing campaign in which sixty letters from employees were sent to Stu Theis to convince him to become the CEO of the proposed worker-owned company. About 25% of the total employees sent letters. Stu Theis was very impressed. Stu Theis likes the idea of upgrading the fleet to biodiesel in order to deal with rising fuel prices. Dean Price has a proposal for the Great Lakes area to convert waste into hydrogen-based fuels. Norman Kurland wants to present the information to Stu Theis at the appropriate time (Rob Woodman is concerned about diverting Stu Theis’ focus from the buyout). The due diligence process for the deal may start in January.

Focus Topic: April 2005 Celebration and Tie-In Events (Meet-Up at the Fed)

What do we want to do? Norman Kurland said that there should be a definite tie-in between CESJ’s April 16th gathering and the American Revolutionary Party’s proposed April 15 “Meet-Up at the Federal Reserve.” Norm also emphasized that the Fed event is ARP, not CESJ, and has to be organized by ARP members. (Action item:  Send Dawn Brohawn’s “Initial Planning Notes” for the Fed event to Rick Osbourne and Bob Scanlon.) The executive committee members suggested that the morning business meeting could be devoted to discussing the ARP platform, with the afternoon celebration being more free flowing than last year, with people encouraged to talk amongst themselves.

Several potential nominees for the Soldier of Justice award were raised: Rick Osbourne (Joe Lunch Buckett,), Rob Woodman, Steve Nieman and Richard Foley, for their heroic organizing efforts. Harriet mentioned that we wanted a place in which it’s easy to move around. Dawn has reserved the Party Room at Lakeside Plaza for the full day of Saturday, April 16. Harriet also suggested pre-arranged seating so that people (e.g., CESJ board members and out-of-towners and spouses) would be “mixed up.” Dawn thought that having the celebration held in the Party Room would allow for easier interaction among the guests, and would have the business meeting and celebration at the same location. One possibility would be to have the celebration catered, for example by “Red, Hot and Blue” (to have a “Joe Lunch Buckett”-style barbecue, complete with lunch buckets).  We need to select the menu and get prices.

Dawn said we need to know how ARP will be organizing the April 15 Fed event in order to plan a tie-in to CESJ’s April 16 event. Norman Kurland said the planning will have to come out of the Chicago and Just Faith groups who are starting to organize local ARPs.  Dawn mentioned that we need to discuss this as soon as possible with Rick Osbourne and Bob Scanlon, so they know that their groups will be primarily responsible for organizing the Fed event, and so we can adapt our CESJ plans appropriately.  (Also, if there are a lot of people coming in for the Fed event, someone will need to arrange places for people to stay, transportation, meals, pre-event meeting, etc.)

Mike suggested that a subcommittee be set up to develop a contingency CESJ celebration plan, under three scenarios for the Fed event: (1) “Worst” case with only a small representative group (Norm and Rick) at the Fed, (2) about 30 people at the Fed (more than 25 may require a demonstration permit), or (3) “Ideal” case with 100+ people that may be big enough to attract media attention. Harriet and Dawn raised concerns about whether there is enough time to plan a major event with media coverage, and would like to raise these concerns with Rick Osbourne and Bob Scanlon who are just starting to organize their own ARP groups. We will tentatively schedule a conference call with Rick Osbourne, Bob Scanlon, Harriet Epstein, Dawn Brohawn and Norm Kurland for Wednesday, 29 December, 11 am EST.  The major items to be discussed:

•     What kind of event will be held on April 15 at the Fed?

•     What kind of media coverage and publicity (pre- and post-event) do we want?

•     What are the core functions to be carried out?

•     Who will be responsible for those functions?

Decision/Follow-Up Items

Marketing Capital Homesteading.

Status report on efforts to date. Dawn Brohawn drafted a letter that Mike Greaney sent to about 100 web logs interested in the topics of social justice, economic justice, Social Security and other relevant key words.  Mike responded to about 6 bloggers who expressed interest in the Capital Homesteading ideas; some posted excerpts from Mike’s letters and links to CESJ on their web logs.  One significant contact was with Steve Johnson, who turned out to be the son of the late Rep. Byron Johnson, an early supporter of ESOP on Capitol Hill.  Steve, who has an M.B.A. from Stanford Business School and who was involved with a worker-owned cab company in Denver, indicated some interest in developing an econometric model to look at the macroeconomic impact of Capital Homesteading.  (On a different level, Harriet suggested that to illustrate the effects of Capital Homesteading, we give a few hypothetical examples of how a poor or middle-income person would fare under Capital Homesteading.  Norm mentioned that one appendix in the book gives a projection of how a citizen’s capital accumulations would build up from birth until age 65.)

Michael Greaney also made an effort to introduce concepts of social justice and Capital Homesteading to the University of Notre Dame. He used the firing of Coach Willingham as a way to show how Fr. Ferree’s concepts would help ND’s situation. He also received a telephone call from Martin Browne of the NYPD, who came across a copy of Mike Greaney’s pamphlet, Social Justice Betrayed, and who is now interested in Capital Homesteading as a practical distributism for the 21^st century. Mr. Browne has purchased at least two copies of Capital Homesteading. Michael D. Greaney also distributed “gift certificates” for free downloads of the .pdf of Capital Homesteading from the CESJ website, and distributed them to the St. Thomas More Cathedral Choir. One or two members of the choir expressed interest.

To date, we’ve sold 15 copies of Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen through Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.  Norm reiterated that we need to get more “reader reviews” and put more of the testimonials we have received on the Amazon.com site (and B&N, if possible), in addition to what appears in the “Search in the Book” section.  This needs to be inserted in the publisher’s or writer’s description section (maximum of 1000 words).  Dawn will get Mike a text file of the endorsements.

Next Steps. Congressional offices are a target. We should send Congress a variation of the blogmail we developed. We need to get the CESJ membership to send e-mail to blogs. We can draft a paragraph for them to use. We need to ask for suggestions on the most influential blogs to target. Steve Roy may have a personal situation that has diverted him from marketing Capital Homesteading.  He said he plans to get back to it, but we have no idea from him whether the Capital Homestead web site will be launched or not.

American Revolutionary Party (VA meeting; IL meetings and Joe L. Buckett. 9 people (4 from the Olney, MD Beyond Just Faith group) attended the VA ARP meeting on 12/17/04. The next meeting is planned for 7:30 pm, Saturday, January 22 in Olney. The meeting went well. Dawn said that it was more an educational rather than an organizing meeting.  It became apparent that there needs to be an efficient way of educating people about ARP, the Just Third Way and Capital Homesteading before meetings or it will be difficult for ARP to move into action. The Just Faith group (which we met through Bob Scanlon) looks like a good group to build from. They’re a national network whose members can reach out to Catholic leaders. Joe and Elise Bizup weren’t able to attend the first meeting but are interested in ARP. Rick Osbourne’s group in Illinois had 10 or 13 people show up to their recent meeting, where everyone attending reviewed the ARP Draft Platform. One person raised a question about the inclusion of the “gay marriage” issue, but said he could live with it. Rick is elated at the results of the meeting. They are trying to grow their membership by having every person bring in no more or no less than 2 other committed people.

Oglebay Norton Employee Buyout (Update). Covered above.

Social Security Privatization. Harriet said that liberals are marshalling forces to defeat Bush’s proposal to “privatize” Social Security. Many people are worried about the risks of the stock market. We should emphasize the “protections” part of the Capital Homesteading program. Dawn said that for some of the audiences we’re addressing (e.g., retirees), we should describe the Capital Homesteading program as an add-on or supplement to, and not a replacement of, the current level of benefits under Social Security. (Some Democrats are now using this language.) Capital Homesteading would automatically expand the tax revenues covering Social Security benefits by taxing all forms of income over the poverty level (with no ceiling or salary cap). It would cover the risk of default through capital credit insurance, and the CH credit could only be used to purchase newly issued, full dividend payout, full voting rights shares. Rather than financing speculation in the secondary stock market, CH credit could be used only for new capital investments that pass the “feasibility” test. Norm suggested the following points to go into the letters to be sent to Congress:

• We have to fight against taking money out of Social Security and putting it into Wall Street

• A number of Republicans are opposed to increasing debt to cover the Social Security obligations.

• Under the Bush proposal (as well as the others), the system remains defective.

• For the average person we have to emphasize the social safety net.

• Nobody else is focusing on the Fed as a source of the solution.

• Possible title for an editorial: “Capital Homesteading: How the Fed Can Help Save Social Security”

Focus topic for next meeting. Planning the April 16, 2005 business meeting and celebration; tie-in to the April 15 ARP “Meet-Up at the Fed.”

The next Executive Committee Meeting will be will be combined with the next Board Meeting, which will be held Saturday, 15^th January 2005 at 9:30 am.

A motion to adjourn was made by Dawn K. Brohawn and seconded by Michael D. Greaney. The motion passed unanimously and the meeting adjourned at 1:00 pm.