Laura Douglas led the first of five Youth Caucus Business Meetings. The first order of business was for Jacob Larsen to talk about the Board of Trustee observer position that will be opened when Amir Fouad leaves. This position will be filled by a youth elected at the end of General Assembly by the Youth Caucus members. Jacob also discussed the UUA Bylaw change which will come up during Saturday's plenary which would create a two-year voting position on the board for youth. This position would be filled in the same manner as the at-large board positions are filled, with the additional requirement that those running for election must be between the ages of 14 and 20.
The next agenda item involved Chris Trace (a member of the Commission on Social Witness) briefing the group on the Study/Action Issues appearing at GA this year and discussing the procedure by which one will be selected. He fielded a question about the early date of the SAI selection and defended it by saying that the CSW had become more deliberate about allowing the advocates of each SAI to speak about that issue so that the debate and selection could take place on Friday.
After Trace left, Maia Cudhea spoke to the group about SAI #5, Prison Reform.
The Youth Caucus last year chose this issue by consensus to be their Working
Action Issue for the year to come, with the goal of making it into a Study/Action
Issue for the UUA as a whole. Shea Schachameyer had succeeded in getting this
topic as one of the five options before plenary at this GA. Cudhea talked about
the wide variety of issues which are covered under this issue, such as racism,
classism, the death penalty, and political prisoners such as Mumia Abu-Jamal
and Leonard Peltier.
After accepting Prison Reform as the Youth Caucus issue once again, the question of delaying the selection of the SAI came up again. The only concerns about this which were expressed involved whether it was feasible, and the youth quickly came to consensus in support of delaying the SAIs.
Finally, the Youth Caucus reminded itself that it had decided last year not to support any one candidate, as it preferred to support platforms instead of people.
Reported for the Web by Phil Morse-Fortier
General Assembly 2001 · Program Grid
