In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Nate
Start time: 7:10 PM

1. Event Review – We just held our annual protest of Columbus Day at the Federal Building. Our turnout was a bit lighter than usual; this is likely because many of our friends most interested in this may still be busy cleaning up the Niskithe Prayer Camp’s 2026 fall encampment (which was also this past weekend in Iowa). Construction on O Street downtown also reduced traffic and visibility to a degree, but there were still plenty of people to see our message. We will likely do it again next year.
2. YouTube – We had an extended discussion further fleshing out the proposal to create short, weekly YouTube programming. Jackson is still gravitating towards a “This Week at the Black Cat House” format, with a mixture of hype for upcoming events and recaps of things that we’ve just done. Brief reviews of movies that we just ran might be particularly interesting. We’d still need a few “standby” themes for episodes on slow weeks around here, but we came up with a handful of ideas for those in the course of our discussion as well.

Meeting adjourned: 8:30 PM

In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Salem, Simon
Start time: 7:08 PM

1. Upcoming Event – Our annual Columbus Day protest is next Monday afternoon. Jackson will need to remake a few of last year’s signs, but we’re otherwise ready for it.
2. October Reading Discussion – Our October reading discussion is coming up rapidly, and Simon raised the concern that we haven’t finalized our decision on what the reading will be. We spent most of our meeting looking at and discussing the available candidates. Jackson really liked how Salem’s piece from The Guardian was very plain and accessible in discussing how the reduced food harvest projections from the coming Super El Niño are likely to make groceries much more expensive the next couple of years, as well as the psychological discussion of climate anxiety from Simon’s recommendation. We will move forward with both of those pieces.
3. Winter Calendar – Unfortunately, we once again didn’t have enough time to begin this important discussion. We are starting to fall behind on scheduling!

Meeting adjourned: 8:30 PM

In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Nate, Salem
Start time: 7:15 PM

1. Event Review – We had our “Surviving Climate Change on a Budget” workshop here on Saturday. The turnout was limited to Black Cats, but we still had an inspired discussion. Salem took notes on a posterboard, and is looking to clean those up for something a little more permanent.
2. Email – We got an email from Earth First asking if we were interested in buying some of their current journal magazines. We are not interested in doing so at this time.
3. YouTube Channel/Podcast – Nate strongly advocates for us doing more programming on YouTube. We already have a Black Cat channel on YouTube, and both Nate and Salem have experience with personal YouTube accounts as well. Jackson shared a little bit of our history of sharing videos sporadically to our YouTube channel; Nate stressed in response that building a viewing audience will go better if programming is offered more consistently. Nate proposes a commitment to a weekly five-minute video. Jackson wonders if it could be something like “This Week at the Black Cat House”, and could possibly be a mix of hyping upcoming events, recapping recent events (movie reviews?), reactions to current events, or Salem’s poetry.
4. Winter Calendar – We didn’t have time to start this discussion tonight, but we need to soon!

Meeting adjourned: 8:30 PM

In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Simon
Start time: 7:10 PM

1. Event Review – We watched Dolores since our last meeting. The turnout was just Black Cats, but we enjoyed the film and the discussion afterwards.
2. Upcoming Event – Our “Climate Survival on a Budget” workshop is this Saturday. There’s a little bit of an odd feeling about our original concept of “keeping cool”, since the weather has actually been pretty mild this week. (A credit to the Super El Niño?) We’re still looking forward to the discussion on Saturday, and had a few ideas tonight that we’ll bring to the workshop.

(We mostly spent our time tonight on off-topic conversation again…)

Meeting adjourned: Officially short, but we were on the porch talking for a couple of hours…

Nobody showed up to the meeting tonight. We’ll try again next week!

In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Nate
Start time: 7:10 PM

1. Bonus Event – Jackson celebrated the 60th anniversary of Star Trek with a couple of friends here on Friday night. It also doubled as a going-away party for Jessie. It was a good time, and she will be missed.
2. Upcoming Event – Our regularly scheduled September movie is coming up this Friday; we’ll be watching the documentary Dolores. Jackson traded a couple of Signal messages with Anthony during the meeting to make sure that he still has the movie logistics handled for Friday. We’re ready for it!

(We mostly spent our time tonight on off-topic conversation…)

Meeting adjourned: 8:05 PM

In attendance: Anthony, Jackson (secretary), Simon

Start time: 7:10 PM

1. Calendar Distro/Reimbursement – We are underway in getting our fall calendars up around town. Jackson got them printed last Tuesday, and will be reimbursed $25.30 for doing so. (There was also a minor issue at the library when our first batch of them accidentally came out in grayscale; the librarians were nice enough to let us keep those at no charge.) Jackson got calendars out to Salem and Jessie, and they have made progress around town (although neither was present tonight to report more specifically). Simon got his up around UNL City Campus, as usual. Anthony took a couple, and Simon grabbed some extras. Jackson will take the rest of our grayscale copies to Nate later; Nate has been suggesting at recent meetings that it may be worth printing extras in black and white and putting them up in more places, so we figured that we’d let him see where he’d put up these extras.
2. Bonus Event – The 60th Anniversary of Star Trek’s television debut is this weekend. We didn’t quite find space for it on our official fall calendar, but with encouragement on the porch tonight, Jackson committed to having an extra event this Friday where he’ll show a couple of episodes from The Original Series. It should be fun for whoever shows up.

Meeting adjourned: Late (but we were mostly discussing off-topic things on an otherwise slow business night)

In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Jessie, Salem, Simon

Start time: 7:10 PM

1. Event Review – We had Winslow’s Wardrobe back in our space last Saturday. They served a couple of folks, including a young UNL student who was very enthusiastic about the experience. We agreed to tentative plans to do another distro here in December.
2. Fall Calendar Update/Distro Plans – Our new designer has created some gorgeous new calendars for the fall season, but the work wasn’t completed in time for Jackson to get them printed for this meeting. (Everyone was pretty impressed with the new design, though.) Jackson pledged to get those printed tomorrow morning, and we discussed plans to get those up around town. Salem will tackle downtown again. Simon will handle UNL as usual. Jessie pledged to hit the far-flung stuff around town as she can drive. Jackson will get calendars to all of them when he was them printed.

Meeting adjourned: 7:40 PM

In attendance: Anthony, Jackson (secretary), Jessie, Nate, Simon
Start time: 7:20 PM

1. Upcoming Event – Winslow’s Wardrobe returns this Saturday, and we’re happy to have them back. Simon will pass word along to UNL’s queer community.
2. Fall Calendar – We have FINALIZED it!

SEPTEMBER

Friday, September 11th, 7-10 PM: Movie Night: Dolores (2017)
Documentary about Chicana labor organizer Dolores Huerta

Saturday, September 26th, 1-3 PM: DIY Keeping Cool Workshop (final name TBD)
Climate Survival on a Budget?

OCTOBER

Monday, October 12th, 4:30-6 PM:
Columbus Day Protest [get details from previous years]

Saturday, October 24th, 1-3 PM:
Climate Change Horror Show (a reading discussion)

Friday, October 30th, 7-10 PM:
Movie Night: His House (about Sudanese immigrants/refugees struggling in the UK),

NOVEMBER

Saturday, November 7th, 1-3 PM: Linux for Luddites (workshop)
Helping you cut corporate software out of your life!

Friday, November 20th, 7-10 PM:
Movie Night: Hacking at Leaves

Meeting adjourned: 8:31 PM

In attendance: Anthony, Jackson (secretary), Jessie, Nate, Salem, Simon
Start time: 7:00 PM

1. Event Review – We had our special Tuesday night movie last week, as we hosted the co-directors of the new documentary The Elements of Mutual Aid. We had one of our biggest turnouts for a movie night ever, and we struggled to fit all of our friends in the space (but we made it work!). Our guests were excited and impressed by our turnout for their movie; they even said our crowd was bigger than some of the audiences they’d drawn in larger cities. Most of the Black Cats in attendance tonight also came for the movie, and everyone had a really good time and would love to see more of that here.

Jackson gave $200 in Black Cat treasury funds to our guests to help with their traveling expenses. He had to propose this last week via Discord because we waited too long to discuss it officially in a Monday night meeting. There was no opposition to this contribution in the room tonight, but we will try to not make a habit of spending money in this way. Jackson is hopeful that our community’s generosity with time and money might put Lincoln and our space “on the map” for other traveling anarchist presentations. Our guests on Tuesday told Jackson that they would be recommending us to their friends.

2. Website – Jackson reports that one of our website domains was renewed last week. He needs to be reimbursed $36.19, and that was approved. Jackson believes our hosting will not be up for renewal until next summer, as we currently pay for it three years at a time because there is a significant discount for doing so.
3. Treasury – The two previous items led to a spontaneous discussion about the general state of our treasury. Salem asked for a current balance, which Jackson could not immediately provide as he hasn’t made a full update in several months. Jackson knew then that we had at least $2000 and committed to working on a full update.

While we were on the subject of money, we had some discussion of what we would like to be doing with what we have. Jackson wants to be sure that we keep about $1000 saved for the likely website hosting renewal next summer. Jackson also thinks that it’s time to replace/upgrade our event chairs, which was a sentiment shared by others in the room. Jackson is also interested in upgrading our projector again, since we still don’t have one with working HDMI ports (and that’s a potential issue if we have presenters wanting to run stuff from their laptops). Salem also asked about the possibility of paid storage to free up more space in our event space, but Jackson was worried that storage units could deplete our treasury in a hurry.

4. Fall Calendar – (Our conversation was so productive that we volunteered for a little bit of overtime on this week’s meeting.)

SEPTEMBER

Date TBD: Movie Night: Dolores (2017) [if we get our hands on it… Anthony’s looking into it]

Saturday, September 26th, 1-3 PM: DIY Keeping Cool Workshop (final name TBD)

OCTOBER

“Climate Change is a Horror Show” / “Climate Change Horror Show” (Rocky Horror parody)
(reading discussion about climate change…)
-> Salem now wonders if the title is too pessimistic?
-> Salem has a few article contenders; they will go into our Discord
-> Simon may have a reading about climate anxiety…
-> Jackson: maybe combine a discussion of climate anxiety with something about people pushing back with solutions?

Columbus Day Protest

Horror Movie Night: His House (about Sudanese immigrants/refugees struggling in the UK)

NOVEMBER

Saturday, November 7th, 1-3 PM: Linux workshop is ON for November (Anthony/Simon) [confirm date next week?]

Movie: Hacking at Leaves

September 26th is only Saturday available in Sept (Huskers play on road); October 17th (road game) and 24th (bye week) available; November 21st is only Saturday with home game, but Nov 7th might be best option for discussion since the football game that week is on Friday the 6th.

Meeting adjourned: 8:48 PM