No one was available to meet tonight. We’ll try again next week!

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

1. Really, Really Free Library – We further discussed the idea of adding a “Little-Free-Library-esque” library with books, zines, grocery items, and our calendars. It was suggested that we could possibly make the donations box look like a miniature version of the Black Cat House. (Complete with a miniature water barrel?) Ty is playing with design ideas, and we’ll see what Wyatt can build.

2. Summer Events – Thursday, June 17th, 7-9 PM, outdoor discussion, Working Title: “Pride on the Porch”; Marc to lead discussion, will hopefully spearhead online advertisement

Friday, July 16th, 7-9 PM, outdoor discussion, “With Jackasses Like These… Who Needs the Elephants?”; hopefully to focus on local Lincoln Democratic politics; Jackson volunteers to write up the advertising

Saturday, August 14th, 10 AM – Noon, garden workshop, Harvest Day in the garden

3. Fall Calendar Brainstorming – Possible reading discussion for September; Garden Day… clean-up and planting of winter cover crops?; Columbus Day protest in October; open discussions?; bring back movie nights?

Events could be outdoors in September or possibly October, but should definitely be indoors for November. We haven’t done an event themed around feminism or religious skepticism in awhile. Ty wonders if we should do something around Halloween on paganism and/or the Christianization of Europe.

Meeting adjourned: 8:45 PM

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

1. Yard Sale Review – We had our biggest haul ever at this yard sale. We raised a total of $1286.35! It’s possible that the lack of yard sales last year and economic uncertainties around the pandemic gave us a boost. Wyatt built some tables, and that was very helpful in giving us more space to display our wares. We also had a lot of help from several new volunteers and that probably contributed to our success as well.

2. Little Free Library/Pantry – Wyatt is interested in building a donation-holding little box a la the Little Free Libraries/Pantries around town. We do often give away food and literature as it is, but this could also be another piece of our public outreach by having our latest event calendar taped up inside the door. Wyatt really wants us to call it something other than a Little Free Library, but Jackson also points out that it could be beneficial for us to piggyback off the existing networking/advertising for Lincoln’s Little Free Libraries.

3. Refugee Fundraiser – Since we made so much money off of our yard sale, we are going to contribute another $250 towards our Swedish friend trying to save refugee families there.

Meeting adjourned: 8:05 PM

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

1. Yard Sale – Is supposed to be this Friday and Saturday, but it might rain! We’re going to watch the weather very closely this week and set our final plans accordingly. We also discussed our advertisement strategy: Facebook event, FB marketplace, Craigslist.

2. Library Donation – Jackson has a bunch of books for the library, and several of Richard’s yard sale donations would be a good fit for our library as well. We’re adding a big haul today!

3. Donation – We’ll contribute $200 to the refugee fundraiser that we’ve been discussing over the last couple of weeks.

4. Yard Sale Worktime – We spent the rest of the evening sorting and prepping the donations for the yard sale.

Meeting adjourned for Worktime: 7:30 PM

In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Ty (moderator)
Start time: 7:00 PM

1. Upcoming Event – We are doing a workshop this Saturday at the Hawley Hamlet. This was only confirmed via chat late last week, and worktime was spent at the top of the meeting getting an event created for that.

2. Library Donation – Aleisha brought us a book last week, and Jackson has another stack of books as well. They look good to us and are going into the library.

3. Library Update – Jackson reports that Naomi was here last Friday cataloging one of our bookcases for the new database.

4. Yard Sale – Our Facebook event is up and we have started collecting donations and promises of further donations.

5. Fundraiser? – We have been asked by a close and trusted friend of our good friend (and Jackson’s surrogate mama) Dance to help raise money for a refugee family in danger of deportation in Sweden. This family will likely be put to death if they are forced to return home. We can’t make any commitments on this with so few of our group represented in the meeting tonight, but we’d like to come back to this very soon with the full group together. We need to decide if we want to make a direct donation from our treasury, if we want to donate a chunk of our yard sale proceeds, and/or if we want to do a public push for donations. (Ty mentions that our bank account should be ready to go if we need it.)

Meeting adjourned: 8:05 PM

No one was available to meet with Jackson tonight, so there was no meeting. We’ll try again next week!

In attendance: Grant, Jackson (secretary), Ty (moderator)
Start time: 7:00 PM

1. Hawley Hamlet – Grant from the Hawley Hamlet met with us. We had a broad discussion on the history of our respective projects, and we brainstormed the possibilities of doing a workshop at their space. We are tentatively looking at late April or early May, as Grant thinks there will be greater opportunities for hands-on activities at that time.

2. Event Review – We had our reading discussion on Saturday. The turnout was a little low, but it was a really good discussion for what was a late addition to our calendar.

3. Black Musicians and Liberation Video – Monte has sent us an edited version of our panel discussion for YouTube, and it looks incredible. Jackson noticed one typo on one of the cards, so he will review the video once more for possible minor errors and see if Monte can fix those and send an updated version. Ty will get a YouTube channel started, and look into getting accurate closed-captions added to the video. Ty will also look into how to edit YouTube videos to add links, so that we can link to the music videos that we deleted from the panel. We are very eager and excited to finally get this video on YouTube.

Meeting adjourned: 8:35 PM

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

1. Hawley Hamlet – Ty has reached out to the folks about a meeting, but we haven’t heard anything back yet. We’ll keep our channels open, but we may need an alternate event for March now.

2. Reading Discussion? – Marc thinks a reading discussion may work better on Jitsi than an open discussion. Marc suggested a gender-themed issue to tie into Women’s History Month, but he doesn’t have a specific article yet.

Jackson also had the suggestion of doing the developing direction of the Republican Party and/or current American Right. He has two recent articles that may facilitate a good start on that issue:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/01/30/what-ulysses-grant-can-teach-joe-biden-about-putting-down-violent-insurrections-463976?utm_source=pocket-newtab&fbclid=IwAR3w92DDuVoyQNCBwa-5Dl5MUn77Nu1QdcWo2EHGvC6YgvPfKYcP0ya34rM

Or

https://bostonreview.net/politics/jacob-whiton-where-trumpism-lives?fbclid=IwAR3odYPGj93qf3Tgu_Bi2f_N_Re-xdq6CX1Doh7xOseZk_KwhI4JKKQZYMA

Jackson emphasized at the end of this discussion that we really need to make a decision on this next week, if we’re going to pull this off this month.

3. Black Musicians and Liberation Video – Marc hasn’t made much progress yet, because he hasn’t found good software yet to edit the video.

Meeting adjourned: 8:00 PM

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

1. Event Review – We had our Black Musicians and Liberation panel last Thursday. It went really well! We got rave reviews from many of our audience, and the panelists were all really excited to be part of it. There are many tentative plans moving forward to repeat this format, both as in-person workshops and as further digital panels. We are very interested in hosting another one of these next February.

Follow-up items for this year’s edition:

1) Marc recommends sending each of the panelists a hand-written card to thank them for their efforts. Dance also suggests sending each of them the really slick intro cards that Marc made for the event.

2) We have a recording and we need to get it online! There’s a little bit of editing we want to do to the raw video that we are currently working with. We will probably need to remove the full YouTube clips of the copyrighted songs. We probably want to replace the intro that cut off, and have the cards for the event flier and the panelists better inserted into the final video. Oh, and we’ll need to start a YouTube account.

2. March Event – Ty needs to make another contact with the Hawley folks. He will suggest that we either meet with them during next week’s Black Cat meeting, or ask them to offer an alternative if Monday nights are bad for them.

3. Yard Sale – We started a discussion on whether we feel it will be safe or appropriate to attempt our annual-ish yard sale fundraiser in May. Jackson reports that several of our regular sources are offering donations, so that will not be a problem. We’re not ready to make a decision tonight, but we realize that we need to figure this out soon.

Meeting adjourned: 8:10 PM

Tabled items: Black Musicians and Liberation video, Hawley Hamlet collaboration, Other Spring Events?, Yard Sale?

In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Ty (moderator)
Start time: 7:02 PM

1. Upcoming Event – Black Musicians and Liberation is this Thursday! We will be recording, as we have the consent of the whole panel. Ty is confident that he can handle the technical stuff on the backend. We need to check with Marc to see if he got the graphics made for introducing the panelists.

2. Hawley Hamlet – Ty has made promising contact with Grant of Hawley Hamlet. We should try to get a meeting with Grant and/or other Hawley representatives very soon and see what kind of event they’re interested in doing and when.

Meeting adjourned: 7:55 PM