At-Large 3 Monthly Report 10/16/22
General Notes:
This report covers the period between September 17th and October 16th, 2022.
Notes for Audit: No notes to add to Chairman Gilmore’s report.
Notes for Platform: Still need a new committee member.
St. Lucie County update: Mr. William Van Helmond has completed LPF membership. No additional news to report.
Hurricane Ian Support: On September 25th during the LPF officers call, Pat Ford (Chair LP National Affiliates support committee) and James Toller (Vice Chair LP Kentucky) joined the call to pitch the idea of National Affiliates Support Committee supporting state level actions for disaster relief. I volunteered to coordinate the state effort for these activities.
Based on the model used by the LP Kentucky to relieve tornado victims in late 2021; the concept was to coordinate relief in two vectors 1) to have purchases made online by public with a partnering store we would pick-up and deliver to distribution center in the affected area, and 2) direct cash donations made to Cashapp that would be used to supplement the purchased donations or sent directly to people requiring aid.
Because of store closures in the potentially affected area, a Walmart Supercenter in Chipley, Florida was selected as our partner. The initial ask for donations went out late on Wednesday September 28th via LP national, and was repeated locally early on September 29th by the LPF. This was updated periodically by Matt Johnson, despite Matt being out of power himself. Krystina Baxter also provided some assistance.
Over one pallet of material was collected at the Chipley Walmart, on October 10th, and delivered to a DeSoto County distribution center in Arcadia, Florida. On October 11th. The logistics support was donated by Brian Stevens of Polk County.
$978 in direct relief donations were provided to the Caspapp address. All of that money was directly provided to the family of an activist in the impacted area who had multiple members of their immediate family lost their homes. The relief was used to cover the expense of hotels for temporary lodging. The identity of the activist has been asked to remain confidential, so the name and other identifying characteristics will be left out of this report.
On Tuesday October 11th an after-action review was held with LP National Affiliates Support. I will continue to work with LP National to improve upon the program. The intent of LP national is to get this program working in the ten most natural disaster-prone states. On October 13th I responded to a request for information from Muddied Waters Media, but as of this writing a follow-up to that request has not been received.
General notes: Most of this month has been taken up with Hurricane Ian Support activities. I was unable to attend the LibertyCon event in Miami due to familial schedule conflicts and a decision not to drive Friday because of medical concerns.
Work on Moodle is slowly progressing. Matt Johnson has set-up a working thread in Discord to support the effort.
