Facilitators
NOTE: Being a facilitator is a big, difficult job that requires attempting to control a potentially loud and unruly group of a lot of people. More preparation is needed than for almost all the other people attending the meeting. Please only express interest in being a facilitator if you are willing to put in the preparation work and feel you would be good at it.
The facilitators basically emcee the meeting, making sure to get through the items on the agenda smoothly. Facilitators are elected by the Floor for a four-month term. The four current facilitators are Robert Garcia, David Robinson, Karl Soehnlein, and Liz Tracey. Normally, two of the four facilitators run any one meeting. Tonight, though, Karl is stepping down temporarily as facilitator to recover from injuries from a recent mugging. So just for tonight each of the facilitators will co-run half the meeting in pairs, and a new facilitator will be elected.
The facilitators should arrive at 7pm at the latest to review the agenda with the Administrator (Jason Heffner). Here is a link to facilitator instructions to go through at the beginning of the meeting.
At the meeting
Your job is to make the meeting run smoothly, not to steer the discussion or advocate for any position. Confidently control the room, but encourage debate.
Encourage comments and debate from the Floor, and make sure that the people on the agenda ask the Floor for comments when that's appropriate. But, to the best of your ability, don't let people talk forever. Limit comments from the Floor to 90 seconds, and if they go longer say something like, "I hate to cut you off, but we have to let other people speak." Note, this 90 second limit does not apply to people on the agenda.
Try to call on people to get a diversity of opinions, and don't call on anyone a second time until everyone who wants to speak has spoken.
Keep things moving and keep things fun! Be sarcastic, be campy, be queeny!
Call people on the agenda up to the microphone (Alan Klein will handle calling people up for the Target City Hall report); anyone else making comments from the Floor can just speak loudly from their seats.
If anyone proposes any actions, endorsements, or expenditures, after debate the facilitators should run an ayes/nays voice vote. When it comes time for an election for a facilitator to replace Karl, the other facilitators should ask for nominations, ask the candidates to give short speeches from the front, and then conduct a voice vote.
ACT UP meetings are run on a modified version of Robert's Rules of Order (affectionately referred to within ACT UP as Roberta's Rules of Order). Basically that means following the spirit of the rules but not being sticklers about the specifics. Not everyone in the room knows the rules, and they shouldn't be at a disadvantage during discussions because of that. But the facilitators should be familiar with the rules, even if they depart from them. Here are some resources to get the basics:
David Robinson goes into great detail for about 13 minutes about being a facilitator starting at the 41:20 minute mark of this interview. I highly recommend that anyone who is interested in being a facilitator listen to at least this section: https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/082-david-robinson