NFWM Board Meeting Collides with Historic Winter Storm

The NFWM Board encountered a bump in the road – or rather a very big snow pile – on the way to holding our bi-annual winter meeting scheduled for January 21-23, 2016 in Chevy Chase MD. Winter Storm Jonas (not related to our staff person Alexandria Jonas) barreled in and about half of the expected participants could not join us. But the plucky NFWM board and staff, being used to going up against big corporate ag, was undaunted by the challenge of facing the power of Jonas and we forged on.

The Executive Committee was able to meet on Thursday; and the Board did make the necessary quorum on Friday to pass the 2016 budget and do other business. We were also fortunate that our scheduled farm worker partner presenters, all from the D.C. area, were able to join us. Bruce Goldstein (President, Farmworker Justice), Giev Kashkooli (Political and Legislative Director for the UFW), Michael Szpak (AFL-CIO Strategic Campaign Coordinator for the FLOC Reynolds American campaign), Peter O’Driscoll (Project Manager for the Equitable Food Initiative) and Reid Maki (Child Labor Coalition Coordinator) all spoke and had discussion time. And staff presented updates on our partners CIW, FWAF and FUJ. Then the snow began to fall in earnest and NFWM Board President Sylvia Campbell adjourned the meeting at 2pm.

Gratefully, all who were traveling away from the 4H Center on Friday made it home safely and those Board and staff who could not travel had a warm and safe place to stay – for longer than we planned!

For a longer report on the meeting, please read YAYA Coordinator Nico Gumbs’ report ; and for photos visit our flickr page.

Thank you to the presenters, to the National 4H Conference Center and to Board members Sam Trickey and Felix Garza (for shoveling out the rental car – twice)!