Meeting Summaries/2008-01-24 Shibuya
From FRANCA
Summary of first FRANCA meeting Shibuya Jan 24 2008
By Arudou Debito
Meeting started at 7PM, but due to a train mishap requiring welding the train rails themselves, the Den'en Toshi Line from Youga wasn't working for hours, and convoker of this meeting Arudou Debito was 45 minutes late.
Eleven members and one guest (of those willing to be listed online here: Doug Norman, Jeff Dionne, Stephanie Coop, Ralph West, Bob Stockwell, Isabelle Dee, Nick Wood, Jason Topaz, Dave Gutteridge, Arudou Debito, and guest Chris Pitts of Amnesty International) convened an agenda organized by Debito (and it was agreed that opinions expressed here were not for attribution within the minutes of the meeting).
The first item on the agenda was a discussion about membership. FRANCA polls indicate that a majority of members favor limiting voting rights to certain people within the membership (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/francajapan/surveys?id=12693239), not the least because many would want to avoid a hijacking and stacking of the group by unsympathetic people (and because we'd like people to have been here a few years and have worked through their "honeymoon--we're only guests here so don't complain" periods). The best way for people to be voting members would be to have people who agreed with our goals. And with that we turned to the topic of our Mission Statement.
Mission Statement Draft Two, which had not received much critique on list (it's at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/francajapan/message/121), was dissected by the membership. Some parts were seen as "going without saying" (such as the belief that people should be cordial towards one another during debate), another person said our goals could be pared down to something much more simple and succinct. Others expressed the worry that our section saying that we would respect the laws might unavail us of the tool of civil disobedience, or tie our hands when we wanted to change an established law. The counterarguments were that this list of fundamental principles would be something we could point to incontrovertibly as "our accepted ways of doing things" in case somebody decided to be uncordial or run counter to the aims of our organization. Regarding civil disobedience, Debito pointed out that we would be working within the law to change the law, and that "respect" doesn't mean blind obedience.
There was also an issue with what language we should take, given that if we want to be an effective lobbying NGO we'd better have materials in Japanese sooner or later, and what about the majority of NJ who are not Caucasian English speakers--how would they fit in eventually? Debito mentioned that the group's interests should be based upon those who were willing to attend, give time and energy to establishing the group, so for the time being, we'd do our establishing business in the lingua FRANCA, and cross the other language bridges when we came to them in future. Time grew short, so we moved on to the next items in the agenda.
Debito gave an overview of our organization, based upon our polls. According to those who voted, our group is close to a majority based in Kanto, then Kansai, then Chubu (Okayama), followed up by Nagoya on down. We have 45 members on-list, with tenures in Japan all over the map (a quarter here for 7-10 years). Members who attended tonight's meeting were generally from the corporate and educational fields.
Two more quick orders of business followed: Our group name, JOIN-CPR was clearly outvoted in our online polls by FRANCA after a month of polling, and since the Japan Times Osaka was itching for an article about our meeting and would need a group name, we decided that we would just switch the name to FRANCA, as it was easy to say in E and J, it was representative, and popular. We asked Isabelle Dee to be our Kansai spokesperson and be in contact with reporter Eric Johnston. Should have an article out on it shortly.
The other order of business was about leadership. Debito was happy to take a post of some sort involving publicity, but didn't really want the mantle of chair, as he didn't want FRANCA to be seen as "Debito's group" , images both good and bad. But it was suggested that that wasn't such a bad thing anyway. We need at least four people to formally register as officers when we apply for NGO status from the government (something we'd like to accomplish by year end), and two people--Jeff Dionne and Dave Gutteridge-- stepped forward for the time being. Debito would act as honorary warm body in the leadership if necessary, but other people who did attend the meeting and are reading this online, if you 'd like to be in leadership positions, please speak up! Most important post- -Treasurer--was to be filled by Steve Koya (as he agreed to in our December lunch date in Sapporo), but to Debito's knowledge he never joined our group online, and did not attend our Tokyo meeting despite confirming schedules last December. Emails sent to his corporate address are bouncing, so it looks as if the post is open.
In the end, the raison d'etre for the group would be to give people like us--those with international, multicultural backgrounds (meaning for the most part foreigners)--a voice in this society. We are very disenfranchised (we aren't even legally recognized as residents, what with no juuminhyou and no proper listing on any koseki), and we need somebody to lobby and represent our interests, making people aware that people like us do contribute and are not simply to be tarred with a "terrorist etc." brush. Japan for many of the people there (one gentleman has been here for 35 years!) has become very scary in recent years, and since there are other groups out there which represent minority and ethnic interests (Mindan, Mintoren Utari Kyoukai, Gaikiren, IMADR, SMJ), it's about time we had one of our own.
It was a good start. Debito is proposing that during his late March Book Tour, he hold two meetings in Tokyo and Osaka each to promote the group. Attendees tonight wanted to know what other interest groups of our ilk are out there and what they have accomplished. Debito can speak on that with some experience and aplomb, so the latter half of March, let's hold those two conferences. Meanwhile, we need to draft a bedrock Mission Statement we can agree upon, to show potential future members what we stand for. Let's get to work on that presently.
