In attendance: Jackson, Marc, Ty (secretary)
Meeting start: 7:03 PM

1.) August Event: Description has been approved, so we got it posted tonight!

2.) Website Reimbursement: It’s time to renew our domain name, which Jackson is handling. It will be $33.99 to do so, which we’ll reimburse him for.

3.) Library Donation: Jackson had multiple library donations, including graphic novels, quick-read informational books, and several contributions for the Kitten Corner.

4.) Email: We received an email from an online used bookseller that Jackson recently purchased from. This seller drew the connection between Jackson and The Black Cat House, and sent a list of other books that they would be willing to send to us for free for the library. We looked over the list and all seemed like good titles, stuff definitely right at home on the library shelves. Ty drafted and sent an email to accept the offer.

5.) Fall Calendar
Sunday, September 11, (1-3 PM?)
Urban Gardening Plant IDing Tour (title pending)

September, date/time pending
OutNE workshop

Monday, October 10th, 4:30-6:30 PM
Anti-Columbus Day Protest (at the Federal Building, 16th & O)

Friday, October 28, 7:00-? PM
Halloween Movie Night
Ideas = Candyman, Us, Nope (Peele), Posessor (B. Cronenberg), Crimes of the Future (D. Cronenberg)

November 10th, 7-8:30 PM
“Intersectiona-LEE-ty”: How Bruce Lee Embodies Intersectionality (a Jitsi talk by Professor Lori Dance)

Date/time pending:
Prison Abolition for Beginners
Movie Night: Judas and the Black Messiah

Possibilities: pro-choice event, documentary

Blackout dates: 9/3, 9/10, 9/17, 10/1, 10/8, 10/29, 11/5, 11/19

Meeting adjourned: 8:28 PM

In attendance: Wyatt (secretary), Ty, Jackson, Brian
Start time: 7:20 PM

1. Website Updates- Scheduled an August 22^nd meeting for website stuff. We need to prioritize content ideas and make something everyone likes.
2. Library Donation – Dr. Collette donated a large box of books to the library. Thank you!
3. Fall Calendar –

• We have not heard anything for certain about a collaboration with OutNebraska in September. We will keep our ears open on this channel. If it happens too late to get on the calendar we can simply host and leave it up to OutNebraska to advertise. We would prefer to get it on the calendar.
• We had a lot of enthusiasm for follow-up pro-choice event. We are thinking of formatting it like a support group talking circle for activists. We can print out some more abortion zines and share this file with interested parties.
• An open discussion: the Prison Industrial Complex. Event about mass incarceration prison abolition based around. Use info graphic. Why are so many people inside in this county? What is this doing to the families that are missing all those people? Does it have to be this way?
• “Intersectiona-LEE-ty”: How Bruce Lee Embodies Intersectionality; talk by Professor Dance; Jitsi discussion recorded for YouTube; November 10th, 7-8:30 PM. Jackson can moderate.
• Movie night in November: Judas and the Black Messiah. This bio-pic is about Fred Hampton.
• Anti-Columbus Day protest. Monday October 10^th at the Federal Building, 16^th and O.
• Halloween Movie Night. Could do the Jordan Peel Candyman movie. Or the movie NOPE! Maybe we should ask Eric Holt for suggestions.
• DIO Fest is October 8^th. Located at the Bay, probably. We might throw up a rain barrel, if possible.
• Possible garden plant ID tour thing. Sunday September 11^th

Blackout Dates:

Husker home football games are on: 9/3, 9/10, 9/17, 10/1, 10/29, 11/5, 11/19

Meeting adjourned: 8:23PM

In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Ty
Start time: 7:05 PM

1. Event Review – We had our abortion rights discussion on Saturday. We had eight new people in the room, who all found us through the Facebook event. It was a great discussion that everyone seemed very engaged in, even with a self-described theocrat in the room trying to prosletyze us. (Thankfully, they left early when the attempt went nowhere.) Jackson collected emails from several of the attendees and needs to get an email out to them soon with a DIY abortion care zine we have access to. He will also use the opportunity to follow up with them about a suggestion made at the discussion to hold more of these pro-choice meetings in the coming months, possibly formatted as a “social activists’ support group” as one of our guests suggested.
2. Library Donation – Jackson is donating a book about anarchism to the library.
3. Fall Calendar

We still are planning on collaborating with OutNebraska in September, but Ty needs to follow up with Aryn soon.

We may do more pro-choice events, since there was a lot of enthusaism for follow-up on that issue at our discussion this month.

Marc suggested via group chat last week that maybe it’s time for us to do an event about mass incarceration/prison abolition.

“Intersectiona-LEE-ty”: How Bruce Lee Models/Embodies Intersectionality (Working title); talk by Professor Dance; Jitsi discussion recorded for YouTube; November 10th, 7-8:30 PM

Possible movie night(s): Judas and the Black Messiah

Recurring events to renew: Anti-Columbus Day protest, Halloween Movie Night

Collaborative idea: DIO Fest is supposed to be returning on October 8th

We have also heard from some close friends that they’d be interested in running an event, showing a movie, inviting colleagues, etc.

Blackout Dates:

Husker home football games are on: 9/3, 9/10, 9/17, 10/1, 10/29, 11/5, 11/19

DIO-Fest will also be on October 8th, so we don’t want to compete with them on that day.

Meeting adjourned: 8:35 PM

In Attendance: Jackson, Ty, Marc (secretary)
Meeting Start: 7:24 PM

Upcoming Event: Abortion Rights Discussion
The discussion will be this upcoming Saturday, July 16. So far, the Facebook event has pretty decent interest generated so far. We will promote the event through this week.

Ty suggested sharing the event alongside good news about abortion rights across the country—e.g. today a Minnesota judge ruled that abortion restrictions in the state were unconstitutional. Basically, emphasizing how people are already fighting back against SCOTUS’ decision.

Library Donations
Jackson donated a lot of books to the BCH library, including a novel and graphic novel. Thank you!

Website Updates
Marc talked about plans for making the site more interesting and with more focus on what BCH is, what the space is, what resources are available, etc. Marc discussed plans for totally revamping the homepage, as well as developing ideas for regular blog posts and promoting other groups’ events.

We brainstormed some ideas for what the site could look like and what the purpose of the home page should be. Ultimately, everyone’s on the same page that a big change in the design, layout, etc. needs to be reviewed by core/usual members, particularly any content changes. Marc will also explore how to update the site’s layout in the back-end so that it doesn’t change what our visitors see.

Marc will take point on website updates and creating dummy/private pages to bring to the group for review. He’ll also figure out how to fix the current calendar widget.

Fall Events
We still are planning on collaborating with OutNebraska in September.

Potential event themes/ideas: Anti-Columbus Day protest, Halloween Movie Night, reaching out to DIO-Fest organizers and seeing if we could collaborate somehow? We have also heard from some close friends that they’d be interested in running an event, showing a movie, inviting colleagues, etc.

Husker home football games are on: 9/3, 9/10, 9/17, 10/1, 10/29, 11/5, 11/19

DIO-Fest will also be on October 8^th, so we don’t want to compete with them on that day.

Meeting Adjourned: 8:47 PM

In attendance: Jackson, Wyatt, Conner, Marc (secretary)
Meeting Start: 7:40 PM
Note: There will be no planning meeting on July 4th, 2022.

Event Review: Pride (2014)

• We showed Pride (2014) on the 25th. Folks who attended seemed to enjoy the movie and we had OK turnout. We figure it will be an uphill climb to get people to attend in-person events again due to COVID concerns.
• For future events, we can plan on putting COVID safety requirements (masks) near the top of the event description, so it’s clear that we’re taking precautions.

Upcoming Event: Abortion Open Discussion

• Ty wrote up the event description draft; Jackson will edit it. The event posting should be live soon.
• We anticipate that attendees may still be in a reaction/venting mode during the event. We want to make sure to make space for that during the event, but also provide a space for tangible takeaway.
• Conner offered to provide the Powerpoint slides for a past event he attended, which could be used to inform the discussion.
• During the discussion, we want to make sure to talk about a few elements: some historical context as well as the failure of the Democratic party to do anything meaningful to protect abortion access.

New Projector

• We used the new projector for the first time on Saturday for the Pride showing. The picture looks great, but the HDMI ports are dead. Other connectors/ports work decently, but since the HDMI port was the whole reason we upgraded, we need to get it repaired.
• Jackson will contact repair shops to see if they can fix the HDMI port. Marc has offered to transport the projector wherever it needs to go.

OutNebraska Event

• Aryn reached out to us regarding hosting an event later this year, August at the earliest. We will be able to host, though we are anticipating that the 1st half of September will work best since August is so busy.
• We will include the OutNebraska event in our Fall calendar when we discuss it in the coming weeks.

Accessibility

• The living room, entry way, ramp, and driveway have been cleaned up and are more accessible now.
• We still need to improve the threshold between the porch and front door, but this may be part of a larger project that we hope to get started on in Fall.

Tabled: Further accessibility discussion (furniture), library donations, YouTube video tour

Meeting Adjourned: 9:15 PM

Meeting start: 7:20 PM

In attendance: Jackson, Ty (secretary)

1. Upcoming Event: We have a movie night, “Pride” on Saturday! Have to continue tidying the room, but otherwise we have everything we need.
2. Library Donations: Jackson got some more donations for the library! Ty sorted through them a bit, and there are some stacks that we’d like some other members’ opinions on, but some of the books got accepted into the library outright. Thanks, Jackson!
3. Projector: Jackson got us a new working projector! He spent $160.88 on it. He got preapproved by other members for reimbursement on this, but this is officially documenting the total for reimbursement. He also highly recommends buying a remote for it to serve our ambition to get this projector mounted instead of on a cart, as well as an extra bulb for it to have on hand. These are also OK’d for reimbursement when he finds them at a good price.
4. OutNE: OutNE reached out to us regarding our interest in volunteering and/or hosting future events of theirs. We’re opting to volunteer as individuals rather than as a group. But as far as hosting, assuming schedules work out we’re down to host future events. If any get scheduled for fall, we can potentially put it on our fall calendar.

Meeting adjourned: 7:45 PM

Jackson and Wyatt were the only ones available tonight. We had some discussion about making the space more accessible, and then committed time tonight to actually cleaning up parts of the space indoors and outdoors towards being more ready for our next public event on June 25th.

In Attendance: Jackson, Ty, Marc (secretary)
Meeting Start: 8:00 PM

Accessibility

• The driveway is temporarily full of supplies. We discussed moving the supplies to the east yard of the house. We will be reconstructing the rain barrel array in the east yard, which should give us more space and also use up some of the supplies currently in the driveway.
• We discussed organizing the inside of the space as well. Folks will be able to assist depending on availability and time constraints. Ty brought up that we would need to make sure that paths are at least 3′ wide to be ADA compliant, so we will keep this in mind as we clean/organize the inside and outside space.
• We also talked about ways to make the free food table indoors more accessible and organized so visitors can quickly see what’s available and take what they need.

Movie Night

• Jackson will write up the description for the movie night sometime in the next week or so.
• Our current projector encountered an error during/after a power outage and likely needs to be replaced sooner than we originally anticipated. We’ve already approved Jackson spending funds from the treasury to replace it once he does the research and finds a proper replacement projector. Marc will also assist with research.

Calendar Distribution

• Jackson took care of everything downtown and in the Everett/Near South neighborhood. Wyatt also did his usual route, and Marc and Ty will take care of hanging calendars in other locations.

Meeting Adjourned: 8:30 PM

In Attendance: Marc (secretary), Ty, Jackson
Start: 7:15 PM

Dropbox:

• We have no planned online discussions that will need to be recorded in the near future. Ty cancelled the paid subscription to DropBox.
• We still have the files archived on DropBox, as well as Marc’s HDD from editing/posting the videos to YouTube.
• We discussed getting a SSD or HDD for BCH recordings in the future which these could be archived on.
• Final total for reimbursement: Subscription was $11.99/month for 3 months, for a total of $35.97. Ty accepted a round $35 as reimbursement and we approved reimbursing Ty for the cost.

Calendars:

• Marc completed the draft of the color version/full-size of our summer calendar and the handbills.
• We reviewed the content and design of the calendars and double-checked for errors. All looks good, so we’re ready to print. Ty will send the documents to the print shop tomorrow. Jackson will pick up the prints.
• We decided to get 35 full-sized calendars and 20 sheets of handbills.
• We divided up the calendar distribution between members.

Meeting Adjourned: 8:30 PM

In attendance: Wyatt (secretary), Marc, Ty, Jackson,
Start time: 7:05 PM

1. Yard Sale. We had a very successful yard sale, clearing about $1200! Just about matching our record year. Thank you everyone for your donations and purchases. The collective will be well funded and be able to make multiple donations to causes throughout the year. We lost a few garage sale signs this year. We do need a few more sign wires for more yard sale signs. Marc will plan on making yard signs for next year.
2. Projector Modernization. We would like to use some of the funds to buy a nice new projector. We want something that will last us for a long time. We want one that we can replace the lamp easily. Its worth spending money on a really good one. Jackson will take care of this.
3. Summer Calendar Finalization. August zine workshop is finalized.
   1. For June: Movie showing, Saturday, June 25^th – 7p – 9p
   2. For July: Abortion Rights: What Now? discussion on July 16^th – angled toward projected ramifications, which states have/had trigger bills, which states will keep it legal, what to do now. Marc will reach out to a university professor he knows regarding the abortion discussion; we may consider other folks to reach out to.

Meeting adjourned: 8:30 PM