Tribal--council--news

TRIBAL - COUNCIL - NEWS

TRIBAL COUNCIL MEETING NOTES

This week first of all before we get Into the discussion of what went on at the past two Tribal Council meetings we should begin with a few community reminders about upcoming community happenings that people will probably want to check out. This coming weekend, March 31 - April 2nd is the weekend before elections here in Ann Arbor and there are going to be a couple of events happening where people can come together and get high and have a good time! Sunday afternoon there will be an Easter Be-In at a park that will be announced later this week - watch the streets and listen to the radio for more complete details! - there will be a lot of freeks getting high and playing frisbee and dogs and kids and all the usual high energy spontaneous events that occur at be-ins! Since winter finally seems to be on the way out and spring is on the way in, it should be a great chance for people to get together and celebrate and get their energy up to vote on Monday - we hope that everyone will try to make it, it's going to be great !! Then, on Sunday night there will be an election boogie at the Union Ballroom with lots of good rock & roll and carrying-on, gettin high together! We want to urge everyone to get out and vote for the HRP candidate in your ward and also to vote NO on the Ashley-First alias Packard-Beakes by-pass that will also be on the ballot.

The other event that is coming up in the near future is the Open House on April 9th at the new Community Center. Anyone who has artwork that they would like to donate to be sold to benefit the Artist's Workshop should contact Robin or Walden at 769-6540. We'd like to mention here that brother Dan Enerson, who is a prisoner in Jackson, sent the Artist's Workshop a $10 donation - a super righteous donation considering prison wages these days. We'd like to thank brother Dan.

The first important news from the Tribal Council is that we are moving the Community Feasts to the first Sunday of every month begining in May. We felt that we really needed to have four Steering Committee meetings a month instead of three that we had been having because of the Tribal Feasts. The April Tribal Council Community meeting we'd just like to remind everyone again will informally take place at the Be-In, so we hope to see you all there!

The Radio Workshop has been really working hard and getting a lot of things done. The 1/2 hour special program produced and directed towards sisters and their problems etc. was aired on WCBN March 26th at midnight. Hope a lot of you caught that show. If you're interested in Radio Workshops, there are meetings Saturdays at 4:00pm at the community center.

As a result of the recent article that appeared in the Sunday edition of the Ann Arbor News concerning brother Dirk Fisher and his death last December, the Tribal Council has decided that the only way to present the news to our people in a realistic manner is to write the articles ourselves. We are now in the process of scheduling meetings with the A2 News concerning a proposal that we have to make to them about a Tribal Council column to be run once a week in the A2 News. All the people's committees would be able to use this column to make reports to the community and inform people about what was going on in that particular committee etc. We would stipulate that it would be our column and that anything that we write should not be subject to editing by the A2 News. We feel that this is the only way that people n Ann Arbor are going to be able to really know what s going on among out people and it would help eliminate misrepresentation etc.

A second plan that we developed as a result of the police department's outrageous report of Dirk's death and just a general state of police harrassment that exists in this community for anyone who is Black or a freek (police standard definition is long haired youths), is a community investigation of the police department. If you see anyone being stopped on the street find out what is going on, why the person was stopped, the police officer's badge number, how long the person was detained, whether there was a warrent issued and just anything that you can think of that would help in the investigation. Please make notes of all this and turn the information over to the Tribal Council at the Tuesday evening meetings at the Community Center or bring them to the Rainbow House and leave them for Jeanie Walsh or Genie Plamondon. Once we get enough information together we will be able to formulate a plan of action to deal with the harrassment and totally expose the police department and bring pressure upon them to stop.

We just want to remind people about the bail fund that exists for the community to use. If you get busted for a misdemenor and need help with bail, call Ozone House.

Tuesday evening at the HRP office we held another Tribal Feast Community meeting. There were about 100 brothers and sisters there and lots of good food! It was a good meeting and most everyone stayed around to see the slide show about the air war in Indo China by Brain Mistrust. We hope that by the time May rolls around we can have the Feasts in the new people's ballroom and since it should be warm weather by then we should start having rnusch larger crowds and involving more people with all the different Tribal Council committees! Right now the ballroom progress is being held up by the contractors unions who are getting their donations together and trying to figure out how much they want to help us with our ballroom. There is an important issue coming up though in the community in the area of the Free Clinic and their efforts to put pressure on the hospitals in the city to be more responsive to the true needs of the people. The latest project is to exposé the "Community-Advisory Board" that exists at St. Joe Hospital which is a group of rich honkies who sit around and decide what the priorities of the hospital are for them and then enforce those decisions. Now, although this is a 'community' advisory board the meetings are closed to the community and when a group of our people from the Free Clinic tried to attend the meeting to represent some community health problems to this board they were threatened that if they didn't leave the meeting the police would be called!! So we're going to publicize the next meeting scheduled and urge everyone to attend! Watch the SUN for more details!

LIFE TO THE LIFE CULTURE!

HELP ITGROW!

- Jeanie Walsh - for the Tribal Council Steering Committee

In line for some eats at last week's community dinner