Notes From The Underground: Our First Meeting

Notes From The Underground:
The First Historical Event

Let it be known that on Sunday afternoon on November 14th 2004, at Starbuck’s Coffee Shop in downtown Geneva, IL the new 21st century edition of the American Revolutionary Party held its first ever, sit down and talk about it meeting to discuss the future direction of the United States of America. Seven people showed up and discussed the following items...

· Why the concept of democratic capitalism, which from now on will be referred to as Capital Homesteading, was potent enough to bring them to the table today.

· Why the task of recruiting new participants (partners) requires a handshake to handshake, eyeball to eyeball, first hand experience with someone whose knowledge, understanding, enthusiasm, and conviction for this new concept has rendered them contagious. In other words conventional, mass- media marketing techniques alone will be insufficient to light the fires required for our success.

· Why in order to succeed, this new party will require a sufficient degree of credibility and seriousness for people to take it seriously and to become engaged. In this light it was decided that the connotation given by the www.americanrevolutionaryparty.us (ARP) was better than Joe Lunch Buckett (JLB), which can easily, at first glance, be construed to be a mere spoof.

· Everyone decided that all the current attendees would like to have the opportunity to weigh in on the construction of the ARP platform, which JLB promised to email to everyone, along with the notes from the first meeting.

· Everyone also agreed that the goal of getting Senator Barak Obama to OUR TABLE within the first year of our existence was a viable goal and that we should plan to get that done. JLB promised to invite Obama to all meetings from now on, and to send him updates from the previous month’s meeting.

· We also agreed that each current partner would be responsible to bring (no more than) two new partners to the next monthly meeting, which was officially set to be the second Sunday of each month for the next 48 months.

· We also did the calculations and found that if each partner brought two more partners (they doubled themselves) that we’d grow from 3 to, 7, to 15, to 31, to 63, to 127, to 255, to 511, to 1023, to 2047, to 4095, and to 8191 partners within our first year of existence. And we felt if we could stick to these monthly projections that Mr. Obama would definitely find a way to OUR TABLE.

· Pam suggested that something like Cliff’s Notes (called Joe’s notes), developed to explain our concepts quickly and simply, would be a great asset to the organizational efforts of the new party.

· Jennifer agreed and added that if they could be made up into a mailer friendly brochure it would add a degree of practicality.

· Jim said that he had some graphic design expertise that he could throw into the pot for such an effort, and JLB promised to work with all three on developing a Joe’s Notes brochure.

· Carol suggested that we needed some structure and organization such as officers and committees, and she volunteered to bring suggestions along these lines to the next meeting. She was appointed head of the committee to explore this topic.

· Jennifer is a master organizer, and Pam is a natural border collie, and both volunteered to help Carol out in her pursuit of structure and organization. JLB admitted to being anything but organized, but volunteered to help when possible.

· Carol also suggested that we may need more space and more quiet for meeting #2 and volunteered to track down a meeting room in the Geneva Public Library.

· JLB announced that the ARP was planning to officially announce its existence to the world on the steps of the Federal Reserve in DC, on the third Friday in April, 2005, and that Fed Chairman Allan Greenspan would be invited to attend. Carol promptly grabbed her cell phone and called her travel agent to book her flight.

· Carol said she had some friends who wanted to contribute money to the party, but suggested that we needed to clarify the issue of our bank account before we could accept contributions. JLB promised to check with Joe’s treasurer, Al Robinson to see what was in that kitty, and to bring some suggestions to meeting # 2 with regard to the creation of a bank account.

· Carol asked JLB to check with Al over updating Joe’s merchandise page, moving from the 2004 election to 2008. With that change she said that she’d like to give some Joe Christmas gifts this year. JLB agreed to check with Al on this.

· Carol also suggested that we keep an eye out for a local business that’s going bankrupt, with which we might partner up and wrestle through the challenges of establishing a correctly done ESOPS with them, for their benefit and ours. We all agreed to keep an eye out for such a business.

· In discussing the meeting with Norm K Sunday evening, Norm suggested that JLB should think about bringing a busload of Chicago area people to the April announcement in DC…reminiscent of the Freedom Rides of the 60’s. Being a child of the 60’s himself, JLB thought that would be great fun and that he’d mention it in his Notes From The Underground.

· If anyone has anything to add or delete from these notes, please take the liberty to make the corrections and send them back to JLB who will add them to our official Notes From The Underground historical journal…JLB