Legislators, Recap on Meeting w/ Mayor, Rally, and beyond.

Hey all, I got back from a coalition meeting a couple hours ago and thought I would post about some of the things that went down.


Just some quick additions to what Maya posted about the mayor's meeting:

-It was noted that at one point, after arguing about why we wouldn't take a stance on the wage freeze, the mayor said "You've lost me on this one," and rolled his eyes. More awesome behavior on his part.

-His opinion on the wage freeze was that it is the only immediate resolution to our problems. We discussed in the coalition, however, that this would only be one year taken care of.

-He signed our petition without reading it.

-We got support from Jennifer, his liaison with the Boston chapter of the legislation.



Strategy

-keep in touch with Jennifer

-have individual meetings with the legislators (which are more effective), but then also have a meeting with as many as possible together in the same room.

These would include

• "How do you feel about these taxes, and would you vote to give Boston the opportunity to set its own taxes?


• some kind of contract?


• the legislators having leadership/mobilization (spread our ideas to their suburban legislator pals; many rural areas in the state don't have too many restaurants or people coming in, so these taxes wouldn't be a help OR a hindrance to them. Therefore, they need to be made aware of what a substantial difference this could mean for Boston.)


• we need to go public. For example, if it seems as though they are just saying what we want to hear and don't really plan on following through, we say "Great! We are so excited to tell our 10,000+ contacts that you support us fully!" (Hyde Square Task Force and Sociedad Latina alone probably make up 10,000)

Strategy/Next Steps

-The coalition was invited to have another meeting with the mayor in 4 weeks. (Is anyone opposed to this idea? I think it would become more of a 'keeping him updated' sort of thing, rather than a proposal, considering how the last meeting went)

-Rally

• Jennifer from the mayor's office wrote us and mentioned there is a hearing on the meals tax on April 7th. We have determined it won't be at least until a week later that they vote, but it's likely it will be MUCH later than even that. As a result, we decided we are going to hold off on planning the rally until the coalition agrees on the main message aim of the rally. We will NOT hold off on planning with the coalition, but it seems SAFE will have a bit more time than we thought to work on the details.

Anyway, that's it for now. I will let people know if there are any email updates sent out this week!

-Emily