HDSA General Meetings

General Meeting Minutes 2026-02-20

Chapter:	Humboldt DSA
Meeting Type:	General Chapter Meeting
Date of Meeting:	February 20, 2026
Number of Members in Attendance:	25
Were Votes on Substantive Resolutions Taken?	Yes

Adoption of Minutes from January 23 general meeting

Minutes adopted unanimously

Guest Presentation: Digital Security for Socialists

Sam Silbory

Officer Reports

Co-Chairs Report

Full Report 

It is imperative that we begin building a strong DSA that can act with a unified vision. If you’re not a member, join DSA. If you are a member, join the discord and contribute to the chapter. If you are in discord, get involved with the committees! If you are involved with the committees, come to the strategic campaign training on Feb 25! (Or the leadership intensive on March 7+8)

Treasurer’s Report

Mark will be drafting procedures for disbursements to working groups and individuals for chapter necessities, so that we don’t have to have a general meeting vote for every reimbursement

Chapter funds stand at $437. Recent expenses were $20 for the Labor Temple rental and $20.94 for an easel pad for our meetings.

Motion: Reimburse Mark 20.94 for an easel pad.

The motion passed unanimously.

We are approaching the season of tabling again, and that requires a greater outlay of funds. Please donate!

YDSA Report

YDSA PRESIDENT Madeline presenting

YDSA has officially applied for status, both as a CPH club and a YDSA chapter!

First general meeting last week, nine new members attended.

Member development committee organizing reading group and protest marshal training.

Student protests have been occurring at CPH about divestment from Israel and campus sanctuary policy. Won a public forum with the vice president!

Committee Reports

Mutual Aid Working Group

Phillip Sutter presenting

MAWG has been mapping out food sources and offering transportation to events. Chapter members are encouraged to carpool to optimize resources. A request-a-ride form is being created.

Healthcare

Full Report

Vee Loring presenting

Palestine

Paul Presenting TKTKTK ALSO ANOTHER NICE OLDER LADY CYNTHIA?

Redwood oil deadline is coming up! Their response will determine whether the boycott is total or focused on other chevron stations. Currently crafting a letter to send to chevron station managers explaining the purpose and function of the boycott.

Outreach and Member Development

Renee presenting

Website has been updated with information and minutes from general meetings. Committees and working groups now have their own information pages. Members-only section has calendar with all events including members-only pages.

“Graduation” moved to the monthly brews event.

Motion: recognize Rebecca and allow her to introduce herself as the new HGO

Motion carries unanimously

Bylaws

Bylaws were successfully reviewed and returned to the chapter. It’s time for the vote! Electronic voting will require steering to set things up and require at least 15 members to vote via email. After a bit of paperwork our chapter should be officially voted in as a chapter of national DSA!

T-minus-2 months to this, roughly.

Interest in forming a Red Rabbits organization to work on protest safety.

Rationale for a Strategic Planning Committee

Vee Loring presenting

Proposal for opening an Electoral Committee

MC Chavez presenting

Motion: Open an electoral committee to manage endorsements, electoral organizing, voter registration, etc.

Amendment: Amend the above to charter a working group not a committee.

Amendment carries.

Much debate, for and against

Question called

Question called successfully.

Motion passes unanimously.

Member Announcements

Some kind of movie thing Sunday night with a TAG person involved. TKTK DETAILS?

Red Rabbits Signal group established: contact Renee

Digital security related questions? Contact Sam on discord.

Greetings,

Folks

Current Events

This past month has felt like a constant bombardment of bad news. Epstein’s friends walk free. The affordability crisis deepens and ICE continues to terrorize our streets. We believe the best way to combat this is through getting organized in DSA. 

Organization

To this end we have been working in steering to solidify our organization. We have worked to better coordinate YDSA with HDSA. Madeline is meeting with us in the steering committee now. Marlee, myself, and Mark have been preparing to do a Strategic Training with our national liaison. We have begun to discuss how best to set priorities to strengthen and move the chapter forward. 

Call to Action

I challenge members and non members to get involved. We ask all members to join the strategic campaign training which will be held on February 25th at 6:30pm. There is a QR code to RSVP. Those who are not members please come chat with me after the meeting. I will help get people into the Discord and help folks join DSA. Finally, if you want to get involved with any of the working groups you can chat with the leaders after the meeting.

Mark will be drafting procedures for disbursements to working groups and individuals for chapter necessities, so that we don’t have to have a general meeting vote for every reimbursement

Chapter funds stand at $437. Recent expenses were $20 for the Labor Temple rental and $20.94 for an easel pad for our meetings.

We are approaching the season of tabling again, and that requires a greater outlay of funds. Please donate!

The healthcare committee is currently exploring the possibility of campaigning for trans sanctuary city resolutions in other local jurisdictions. To do this, however, we need members of these communities who are willing to serve as the ambassadors for these resolutions, presenting them to their city council and speaking about why protecting trans people is important to them. If you live in Fortuna, Blue Lake, or Rio Dell and are willing to take on this important task, talk to me after this meeting or come to the next Healthcare Committee Meeting on March 2nd!

Hello Comrades, today we are here to both inform and request your assistance with your various experiences and purposes for being here listening to us today.

At our next scheduled meeting we will be discussing and voting for a co-chair to work as other groups operate and keep in structural integrity of DSA work. Co-Chairs divide duties such as taking notes, reviewing, researching, and planning out agenda items that the working group discusses and votes on. Unless otherwise delegated for internal purposes. This has been an honor to be helping facilitate in the chair position. But I am concerned about it’s efficiencies with being led by myself only. It is not fair to the group, organization, or you as individuals. This experience is worth while. It creates times of empowerment and accomplishment. As well as we need the robustness of two in case of situations which incapacitate one of the facilitatorizers because the group should be able to check in with each other and the assignments with little interruptions.

This working groups purpose is to locate community and membership needs, facilitate plans to provide support. Recently we implemented the Ride-Pantry share program. We are here to provide transport to the membership, as our immediate community and their work. Please reach out to us in the Links provided if you need transport to any Pantry, grocery, food assistance, All DSA meetings, events or supported protests! Our next meeting found in this email is open to all DSA members as is the Co-Chair position. Please come join our work, facilitate our community and consider joining leadership positions!

A biweekly reminder! Do not drink and drive. If you need a DD, please contact your comrades! We support each other.

Peace if you’re willing to fight for it. – F.Hampton

Good evening comrades!

The Outreach and Member Development Committee has been chugging along in our efforts to make the chapter flourish! We have much to share with you all.

Starting off, the website has had some major updates! There is a page called General Meetings where you can find minutes and reports from previous General Meetings and view the agenda for this month’s General Meeting. By the end of each month the minutes and reports from that month’s General Meeting will be available on this page.

There is now a page for each of our committees and working groups- we plan to flush out these pages with more information about each group and related media (images, videos, etc.) to make them more engaging.

The members only section of the website is also open now! If you are an HDSA member, you can see the passcode at the bottom of the weekly email you receive. If you are having trouble accessing this section of the website for any reason please don’t hesitate to DM me on discord or email HumboldtDSAcomms@proton.me

In the members section there is a calendar where all of our events can be RSVP’d for (the public calendar does not include all HDSA meetings and events). This is also the information to contact the HGO if you are being harassed.

We have completed the first round of the member orientation series. All of the sessions went well with only some minor hiccups that are being addressed and fixed before the next round.

The next round is as follows:

Monday, March 9th at 6:30pm is the next HDSA 101. If you are curious about being a DSA member or you just joined this is a great place to start your journey with us and learn more about how you can engage in our organizing work.

In April the 102 and 103 will also take place on weeknights, tentatively they are scheduled to take place on Thursday, the 23rd and Friday, the 24th of April but the finalized dates and times will be shared at the next General Meeting, and will also be available on our website calendar soon.

As a reminder- each round of the orientation series alternates from weekends to weeknights in effort to accommodate people’s schedules. The 101 is open to the public- but the 102 and 103 are closed to members only. 

We decided to drop the “graduation” part of the orientation series for logisticial reasons.

The Reading Discussion Group continues to meet bi-weekly at Old Town Coffee & Chocolates in Old Town Eureka. The next meeting is tomorrow and starts at 10am. We will be discussing the essay in the ABCs of Socialism titled “Wouldn’t a more Democratic World Just Mean a Bigger Environmental Crisis?”` Thank you Mark for facilitating this event.

We have now had 2 movie nights. We are still working out the kinks of this event. Currently this event is closed to members only, so members stay tuned for updates on the next movie night which will be Friday, March 13th. Thank you Rebecca B for facilitating this event, and thank you Mark for hosting. 

Felicity is now our facilitator for a monthly recurring RPG Game Night! This Monday the 23rd starting 6:30pm at Next Level Games, Felicity will be DMing the first in a series of related one shots based on D&D fifth edition rules (including expanded sourcebooks) set in a classic fantasy world. They are asking players to come prepared with a 5th level character; however, a number of pre-made characters will be available for those new to D&D. Thank you Felicity for facilitating!

Topping off our social events for this month is the Monthly Brews! This month we are meeting at Bigfoot Taproom in Mckinleyville next Thursday, the 26th, at 6:30pm. In effort to not make everyone always drive to Eureka we will rotate which town we are meeting in. Thank you to Eryn for facilitating!

All of our events can be RSVP’d for using the QR codes OR through the calendar on the website.

On the Outreach side of things…

The stellar interview Marlee and Sam gave to Redwood News boosted our social media presence, drove traffic to our website and increased RSVPs to our events. Thank you to Marlee and Sam- you both did a really wonderful job representing our chapter and spreading the good word. 

To the members of the public who are attending this event because they found out about us through this interview or from our social media pages- thank you for coming out tonight and spending your Friday evening with us. I sincerely hope you will stick around and work with us to build a better future here in Humboldt County. 

Hello Comrades, today we are here to both inform and request your assistance with your various experiences and purposes for being here listening to us today.

On March 22nd at 1:00pm at the Pedestrian bridge in Arcata, we need you to join us in the next stage of the previously voted on purpose of this group. We are moving forward together on the Banner Drop! And we will need you to make it clear to everyone who has been opposing the divestment plans which have been put forward that we need to pursue these ends. But even more urgently with the recent Iran war we are further pursuing ends together across an agenda which is significant across the pivotal support which Isreal and our war machine receives to perform these harms across the globe! This is in conjunction in timing with the other National Boycott Chevron Campaign! And it will be family friendly with lots of people.

In preparation of this we will be publishing the now reviewed letter to the editor announcing our purpose and the ends which we have pursued.

We will be approaching other orgs and activist groups to work with us to draw attention to the broad effects and specific purposes we are organizing for. Please come and make friends!

If you would like, please bring food, clothing or other donations for people in the area suffering duress, those who will be assisting us in broadcasting this message and for DSA’s overall mission to Socialism here at home.

The Bylaws Committee was reopened at the last General Meeting. This was because the chapter pipeline reopened and our draft bylaws were (finally) reviewed. It was our responsibility to review the feedback and make corrections. In our 80 minute meeting with about 8 attendees we were able to successfully review all of the changes. Many of them were non-substantial changes related to fine details, such as punctuation. A few paragraphs were changed to reflect a larger steering committee and the exact roles once we reach chapterhood. We also clarified we are the Humboldt County, CA chapter and not Humboldt County, Nevada.

Now that the edits have been made and the Bylaws Review Team has  approved them, it is time to vote on our bylaws! This vote is required to be electronic, so we cannot hold the vote today, unfortunately. DSA National wants us to use specific software that will take a little bit of legwork to set up. We need at least 15 members to vote. Please watch your emails for further information and a link to vote! 

Once the vote is completed, the Steering Committee has some administrative paperwork to do: a Chapter Member Sheet. It should not take long. We will submit the voting record, bylaws, elected officer information, and Chapter Member Sheet to the Bylaws Review Team. The Bylaws Review Team will confirm that we sent everything in correctly. 

Finally, the Bylaws Review Team will pass the application to the National Political Committee (NPC). The Bylaws Review Team stated that it typically takes the NPC 2-4 weeks to vote on a chapter application once it’s been received. 

Comrades, it’s been a long road and we’ve worked hard to reach chapterhood status. We are so close! Based on the timeline we were given, we are looking at becoming a chapter in the next 2 months. This will be something to majorly celebrate! Thank you all for your hard work and dedication as we officially move from an Organizing Committee to a fully fledged chapter! 

General Meeting Minutes 2026-01-23

Chapter:	Humboldt DSA
Meeting Type:	General Chapter Meeting
Date of Meeting:	January 23, 2026
Number of Members in Attendance:	35
Were Votes on Substantive Resolutions Taken?	Yes

Adoption of minutes from Nov 21 general meeting

Minutes Adopted Unanimously

Guest speaker – Humboldt Tenant’s Union

Bradley is speaking for the tenant’s union

Humboldt county is extremely rent burdened

The Humboldt tenants union has resources and a tip line to help renters and fight predatory landlords

Co-chair report

We have a response from the National Bylaws Committee! They have given us their recommended edits. 

Three steps remaining before our bylaws are fully ratified: Make suggested changes, Ratify the amended bylaws and Resubmit to National.

Motion: Reopen bylaws committee to work on recommended changes to the bylaws.

Motion Carries Unanimously

The plan is to make this a closed membership committee, as last time.

Treasurer’s report

20/hr rate for the labor temple will be continued under the new building manager.

Please donate, this is still our only source of cash!

Committee reports  

Mutual aid working group

Offering rides to meetings.

Healthcare committee

Passed transgender sanctuary resolution.

Palestine Committee

Paul and Phillip are new co-chairs. 

First action in the pressure campaign to convince Redwood Oil to disaffiliate from Chevron: delivered letters to local chevron stations owned by Redwood oil demanding they divest from projects supporting Israel. Without a response, in three weeks the campaign will progress to next steps including banner drops and boycott calls.

Outreach and member development committee

New website functionality including committee sites and members only calendar.

Orientation is now a three meeting series: 101, every month 102 and 103 in odd months along with an in-person “graduation” and new member mixer event.

Reading and discussion group is now hybrid, in-person at OTCC

Movie night: Last Thursday of the month: social meeting at the speakeasy.

Interest in facilitating a D&D game but seeking a facilitator. Sam or Felicity are interested

View all reports in full below.

Upcoming Strategic Campaign Training – Feb 25 6:30-8pm

Marlee, Mark and Matthew are working with a national facilitator to run a training on planning strategic campaigns. This is a very important training that as many comrades as possible should attend.

HGO Appointment

The steering committee appointed Rebecca to be our harassment and grievance officer. Membership is required to ratify the HGO appointment.

Motion: Appoint Rebecca as HGO

Motion Passed Unanimously

The role of the HGO is to consult with people who are in conflict and report to the steering committee. There will be an email and a discord role for her.

Interim Steering Committee Election

The three month term seemed to work quite well. Three months might also align well with when the bylaws will be ratified.

Longer terms were proposed to ensure this is the last ISC we have to elect.

Concerns about burnout also apply.

Motion: elect the ISC to a four month term with a simple  vote to extend the term after that.

Motion passed unanimously

Motion: amend to make the term extension vote at three months

Motion passed unanimously

ISC Election Results

Co-chair: Marlee

Elected unanimously

Co-chair: Matthew

Elected Unanimously

Treasurer: Mark

Elected Unanimously

Secretary: Vee

Elected Unanimously

Membership Coordinator: Renee

Elected unanimously

Member announcements

Bruce lives in Chico, and is forming a DSA chapter. He is also the field manager for Rose Penelope Yee who is running for Congress in Humboldt’s newly redistricted district 2.

Rose Penelope Yee:

• Grew up in the Philippines under the Marcos dictatorship.
• Bernie Democrat.
• Running against Jared Huffman
• supports single payer.

Greetings,

Folks

Over the last two months we have had a lot of success. We have gained 11 dues-paying members in that time. Our November breakout rooms helped spur new members into the organization. We have enhanced our listwork process. 

As for bylaws we have received an email detailing extensive suggestions to our bylaws. These will need to be reviewed and either adopted or adjusted through dialogue with DSA National. The next step after that is to do an online vote to adopt the byways. Finally, we can then complete and submit our final application. 

DSA national has reached over 95,000 members and Zohran continues to be a beacon in our decrepit political system. However, we have seen the Trump administration accelerate their operations of oppression. We have seen people killed in the street and Venezuela’s leader being kidnapped. 

We believe building power in DSA is the solution to these problems. We believe only together can we stand against this threat. I hope you will join DSA today if you have not. I hope if you are a member you will get more involved. We only have each other. 

Hum DSA has $194.29. Donations are encouraged. We had an informal (i.e.. undocumented) arrangement with the previous manager of the Labor Temple for a discounted rate of $20 for the room rental. I will follow up with the current manager to see if this still holds.

In anticipation of chapterhood, I have been reviewing the DSA treasurer’s guidelines, suggested spreadsheets, and reporting requirements.

I am pleased to be able to report that the Eureka City Council has passed our Transgender Sanctuary City resolution!

This is a significant accomplishment for the chapter and shows that we have the ability to make change for the better in our community. It has also driven a significant amount of attention from local media, which we can benefit from in our efforts to increase membership and build a political coalition for the working class in Humboldt county.

For the Healthcare Committee, this is a time to celebrate, but also one of change and reevaluation. My Co-chair Sophia Nyx has stepped down after nearly a year of excellent work chairing this committee, and I wish to thank her personally for her steadfast commitment to the chapter. None of this would have been possible without her.

This means that not only do we need to start searching for a new healthcare-related campaign for the Healthcare Committee to pursue, there is an opportunity for someone new to lead that campaign from the beginning! Both of these topics will be discussed at the next Healthcare Committee meeting on Jan. 27th at 7pm.

MAWG committee has officiated the itinerary, map and list starting Jan 2026! We began this prospective committee in October, 2025. Through many discussions of ideas which we were excited to take on! We came to offer a variety of perspectives, organizing experiences, & preferred skill sets to fulfill a number of community benefits and support. Immediately we realized how passionate, informed, and equipped with preferred tool sets everyone had! And we also realized that we didn’t have an immediate understanding of what was needed to provide support to those who were going to be most affected be the upcoming up heaval of systems and available services.

So, after working with Renee and Sam we were able to get three questionaires made to be available as individual polls and then implemented in the Weekly email. This was done in hopes that even if we missed members in the initial polling in the creation of the poll. But that we could continue taking note of any changes in these polls to quantify the immediate communities direct need.

Once we had the polled results we came to note that Food access had a result of 15 people marking needing assistance. The interesting quirk that directed our priorities was that at almost the same rate, the Travel accessibility had a result of 14 people needing assistance. So after some discussion we found that the most immediate and adaptable program we could put forward is to provide tools such as an Interactive map, a list of available known resources to fulfill a variety of food needs, and our list of volunteers to provide that assistance.

Shortly after discussing the concept Becca, Matthew, Merissa and others took to discussing what was available. Listing and creating slide decks of all of the available ads. Then once it was listed Merissa mapped and depicted the results in the excel list. At this most recent meeting we went over and confirmed the final results of these documents. We intend to be able to continue editing and updating. And the Notices and the documents were made available to DSA Members in the Pantry-Ride-Share channel in Discord on 1/23/2026.

Hello Comrades!

The Outreach and Member Development has been hard at work since our last general meeting. We have a few items to share and a couple of asks to make.

New updates are coming soon to the website. Each working group and committee will have their own page and we will be adding a members only calendar that will have all of the links to all of our events. This calendar will exist in a “members only” section of the website, for which a password will be emailed to you. The working groups and committees will now have the option to have their meetings open to non-members. If they opt for this the RSVP links for their meetings will be put onto the public calendar. 

The Outreach & Member Development Committee is offering a myriad of social and educational events that will take place throughout the year.

We have broken our orientation series into three virtual meetings followed by an in-person “graduation” event. The orientation series is as follows:

The 101

Audience: non-members and brand new members

Topic: basics of DSA national and Humboldt DSA. 

Frequency: odd months

The 102 

Audience: all members

Topic: HDSA organizing strategies and communications.

Frequency: even months

The 103

Audience: all members

Topic: Socialist theory and parliamentary procedure.

Frequency: even months

The graduation will be a casual celebration of the members who have worked through orientation series. The long term goal is that the graduation will be treated as a new member mixer where our seasoned members and newbies can connect. Although the content for the orientation series will mostly stay the same throughout the year, we really encourage all of our members to attend the 102 and 103 at least once regardless of how long they have been a member!

The Reading Discussion Group has restarted after our break for the holidays. We are meeting tomorrow at 10 am. Reading Group happens every two weeks and will now be offered as a hybrid event. So you can attend in person or call in via Zoom. Thank you to Mark for being the main facilitator of this event.

For our comrades who don’t like to read we are hosting a monthly Movie Night the first Friday of the month. We will watch a movie followed by a political discussion. We are looking for an in-person location for this event which will be communicated over email to you. Thank you to Rebecca for being the main facilitator of this event.

The last Thursday of every month we are doing “Monthly Brews”, a social event at a bar or brewery. This month we are meeting at The Speakeasy at 6:30pm. We will bring some easy games (dice, cards, etc.) so we can play or just chat and enjoy each other’s company. 

Finally, Outreach and Member Development want to help facilitate a recurring RPG night but we don’t currently have any one on the committee who can run it. If you are interested please come to our next meeting or get in contact with the committee on our discord channel. 

On the outreach side of things- we canvased at the most recent No Kings protest and had the 101 the next day which was great timing and we definitely had at least two people who we met at the protest attend. 

Thank you,

Outreach & Member Development Committee

Palestine Solidarity Committee Report 

First organized action took place this week for our Boycott Chevron pressure campaign 

Tues-Wednesday letters delivered to every local Chevron operated by for Redwood Oil franchise owner 

Letters request a show of support publicly for divesting Chevron from projects financially supporting Israel & its military through displaying a sign on their property supporting the change and or signing on to a public pledge 

Letters call for action by franchise owner in response to Humboldt DSA by 3 weeks from letter deliveries date, which would be February 12. 

Next step on pressure campaign revolves around whether franchise owner sticks to corporate position or not, and is expected to involve a local education & media campaign, along with banner drops & other actions and activities 

Next Meeting Monday 1/26 7:30-8:30 

Thank you