Annual Meeting, 17 September 2014

Sixteen people attended PPro’s 2014 Annual Meeting, including several who were new to PPro and had come to find out what we are about.

Jason Gold first summarized recent activities: support for a panel at 2014 Reunions, travel and other support for students attending the XL Dissent rally in Washington, support for the student publication Princeton Progressive, and newsletters, emails, a Facebook page, and a website to keep members and others generally informed.

He turned next to current plans for the upcoming year: participation in the People’s Climate March, support for an on-campus Beyond Wall Street Career Panel, support for a two-day on-campus Forum on Effective Activism featuring Sally Frank ’80, possible support for students’ trips to support national candidates, and various Open Houses on campus. Details on all of these events are on our website.

The main focus of our discussion was the need for substantial fund raising, so that we can support constant short-term needs, including students’ efforts, without having to dip into our very limited finances, which consist simply of membership dues and occasional modest donations. Many good ideas came forth, including:

• send solicitation emails stressing the need to counteract funding from the Kochs
• send solicitation emails to people associated with Whig-Clio
• send solicitation emails to people associated with Princeton Progressive and its predecessors
• have a Reunions panel
• get something into PAW
• get the art community involved, possibly with an art work donation which could be auctioned
• use Facebook not just for information but also to build communities of involved classmates
• use Twitter and/or Tumblr similarly to build communities
• make PayPal readily available for smaller donations

Further discussion stressed the importance of making personal rather than mass approaches to potential substantial donors. To do that requires a larger group of activists within PPro, and so discussion turned next to that.

Expanding the number of active members is going to require each existing active member to reach out to her or his similarly minded classmates in an attempt to get them also involved. One good way to do that is for each attendee to submit to his or her Class Notes editor a blurb about attendance at tonight’s meeting; another is to use our Facebook page to connect with others; yet another is for everyone reading this to do the same, even if you did not attend. With these efforts, we hope to reach the people who can reach the people who are in a position to make those needed substantial donations.

Finally, we named Samuel Alito ’72 to receive the second annual Head in the Sand award, “honoring” the Princeton alumnus who best typifies rigid right-wing anti-democratic extremism. Alito succeeds, and by way of his position on the Supreme Court is in some ways even more dangerous than, Ted Cruz ’92.