In attendance: Bailey, Brandon (secretary), Jackson, Marc (moderator), Will, Wyatt

Start time:  7:17 PM

1. Event Review

Jackson was the only Black Cat in attendance. There were several other people as well. There were a few new attendees. Perhaps we should be more careful about picking movies that are readily available.

2. Upcoming Events

Gardening day is this Saturday. We will meet at Black Cat House, then go to the two other spots. There will be a potluck at the third place. The event page will get spread around so that people know about it. The Ferguson movie is being screened on Monday. We are still figuring out where they will sleep, but they are not too picky so it should be fine. There was some discussion of how to get more people to show up for anti-Columbus day.

3. Free School Update

The free school calendar is ready to start in October. Details were confirmed with Wyatt and Marc for their classes: Research for Writers – Marc, October 9th Seize the Power Tools – Wyatt, October 24th

4. Winter Calendar

Opportunity to do Know Your Rights trainings with help from people in Atlanta World AIDS day is a good time to do an event. We should base something off of that. We can also include a more medicine theme to the month of December. Would also include: Herbalism Citizen Doctors How to get the care you need from your doctors Autonomous emergency medical support January could be climate change month February could be a month of love: Consent, Free love, and other topics

5. Next Week’s Meeting Cancelled

Our normal meeting time next week (October 7th) is exactly when we have a movie screening planned. As a result, the meeting is cancelled and we will next meet on October 14th after the Columbus Day protest.

Meeting adjourned: 8:30 PM

Tabled Items: Library Labels, Wellred Books, Event Outreach, What to do about $80 ISO bucks, Library Readership Development, Reviving the Email List, Stuff to Buy (canopy, stuff to secure bike rack, new SSD hard drive for public laptop), procedure for posting things on Facebook (when do we allow it)

In attendance: Bailey, Brandon (moderator), Jackson (secretary), Marc, Ty, Will
Start time: 7:10 PM

1. Upcoming Event – Love Your Library is this Saturday. We’ll meet here early on Saturday morning to straighten up the room.

2. Library Donation – We got three new books for our library. One was from Jackson, one was from Dance, and one was from the Hargesheimers. Thanks, y’all.

3. Toner – Jackson got a toner cartridge in the mail. It was a generic one instead of the name-brand one he ordered, but he got a refund so maybe we’ll use it anyways as long as it doesn’t damage this copier.

4. Web Advertising – We had some much-needed work time on getting our September movie and the gardening day onto Facebook and our website.

5. Free School – Bailey updated on us on the state of the new Lincoln Free School. We are moving forward with our gardening day on October 5th as a Free School workshop. Bailey wants help from Marc on designing a flier.

6. Ferguson Movie – Jackson has been in contact with the folks touring with the Ferguson documentary. Their preferences align almost exactly with our standard movie night format: free admission, discussion afterwards. They would appreciate donations to offset their travel costs, and they have requested a place to stay the night. We will continue to consider our options on the latter request, but we’re sure we can figure something out. We are moving ahead with our plans to do the showing here on Monday, October 7th in place of our weekly meeting.

7. Red State – We are only a few weeks away from the first Red State 3 meeting! Jackson wants everyone to start thinking about that, and continue work on recruiting more new blood into building the next conference. Also, Marc has prepared a draft for an apology letter for Michelle at the Church and we took a few minutes to review that and discuss our next steps on that.

Meeting adjourned: 8:15 PM

Tabled Items: Library Labels, Wellred Books, Event Outreach, What to do about $80 ISO bucks, Library Readership Development, Reviving the Email List, Stuff to Buy (canopy, stuff to secure bike rack, new SSD hard drive for public laptop)

In Attendance: Bailey, Brandon (secretary), Jackson, Will, Wyatt (moderator)
Start time: 7:10 PM

1. Event Review
The “What are Borders?” discussion went well. We had a new person and enjoyed talking to them, and got to hang out with them after. There were lots of different opinions, so the discussion went differently than expected.

2. Library donation
We have several books donated from Prof. Dance. Some of them were textbooks, so those 6 were given for a prison book distribution instead. 8 new books were added to the library.

3. Ty got an interesting email
Some folks from St. Louis want to screen a movie about Ferguson in 2014. We are extremely interested, so Jackson will send an email tonight to have that screening happen on Monday the 7th.

4. Facebook posting
We may need to make a post about the Ferguson movie screening event as soon as it’s confirmed. Wyatt still needs to do the description for “Queer and Undocumented.” That movie is toward the end of this month, so Wyatt will get on top of that.

We also need to start thinking about our Columbus Day events, both the protest and the Standing Rock event.

5. Printer ink
Will will pay for half of the ink that he used.

6. Library sorting
We plan on putting identifying tags for the sections in the library. The library is organized, but only to people who understand the system already. We had a discussion about tags for the sections on the bookshelf

Meeting adjourned: 8:30 PM

Tabled Items: Library Labels, Wellred Books, Event Outreach, What to do about $80 ISO bucks, Library Readership Development, Reviving the Email List, Stuff to Buy (canopy, stuff to secure bike rack, new SSD hard drive for public laptop)

In attendance: Brandon, Jackson (secretary), Jo, Marc, Ty (moderator)
Start time: 7:12 PM

1. Upcoming Event – What is Borders? is coming up on Saturday. There is some cleaning to do in here, but we’re pretty much ready for it.

2. Calendar Distro/Reimbursement – We’ll reimburse Ty spent $18.46 on getting our fall calendars printed. It sounds like we got our important distro done, and the few leftovers will be done in the next day or two. Yay!

3. Free School – Bailey is supposed to be emailing out an update to the interested listserv tonight. We’ll keep a lookout for that!

4. Parade – Most of us joined the art workshop on Saturday to help Tony make his “Black Snake.” It was fun, and we’re looking forward to the parade.

5. September Events – Jackson will get the Love Your Library event up tonight. Ty volunteers to get the movie event for the end of the month drafted in the next few days.

Meeting adjourned: 8:05 PM

Tabled Items: Library Labels, Wellred Books, Event Outreach, What to do about $80 ISO bucks, Library Readership Development, Reviving the Email List, Stuff to Buy (canopy, stuff to secure bike rack, new SSD hard drive for public laptop)

In attendance: Brandon, Jackson (secretary), Jo, Kyle, Wyatt (moderator)
Start time: 7:13 PM

1. Event Review – We ran Chicken Run on Friday night! We enjoyed it. It had a good turnout, and had a good discussion afterwards.

2. August Events – We still need to get both of our movies up online.

3. Fall Calendar –

September

ICE/immigration discussion – Sep 7?
Movie – Sep 13?
Library Focus: AK Press – Sep 21, 1-3 PM

October

Indigenous discussion (emphasis on positive contributions of Natives to this nation’s history) – Oct 12?
Anti-Columbus Day Protest? – October 14th (@ the Federal Building or Capitol)

November

Inhabit reading discussion – Nov 9?
Movies? – Nov 15/22
Anti-Thanksgiving Dinner – November 29th (7 PM)

Is Popcorn Politics continuing?

4. Red State – We spent the last part of our meeting catching each other up about the state of the Red State conference we are working on.

Meeting adjourned: 8:22 PM

Tabled Items: Fall Calendar, Library Labels, Wellred Books, Event Outreach, What to do about $80 ISO bucks, Library Readership Development, Reviving the Email List, Stuff to Buy (canopy, stuff to secure bike rack, new SSD hard drive for public laptop)

Introductions

Jackson (People’s Commissar of Getting Shit Done), Brandon (People’s Commissar of Writing Shit Down), Marc, Ty, Will, Kyle

Start time: 7:17

Event Review

Didn’t stay on subject very much. There was not as much attendance as usual because it was promoted late. We should promote events sooner.

Upcoming Event

Chicken Run screening. We already have the DVD. We just have to clean up the room. Perhaps we should advertise it by saying that we are kid-friendly.

Library Donation

2 new books to put in the library.

Block Party

No updates.

August Events

We are light on events for August because of Red State and school starting. There are only 2 events: both of which are movies. The first one is a documentary on the 9th: White Light Black Rain. It’s a documentary interviewing people who lived through the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The other movie is Pan’s Labyrinth. We will have to add a disclaimer for the blood and gore in that one. Jackson will take point on the description for White Light Black Rain and Ty will write the description for Pan’s Labyrinth.

Fall Calendar

Husker Home Gamedays: September 14th, September 28th, October 5th, October 26th, November 16th

Discussion idea: Remembering the genocide of indigenous peoples. And/or about missing and murdered indigenous women. Either in October (Columbus Day) or November (Thanksgiving). Maybe a discussion in one month, a film in the other?

Anti-Thanksgiving dinner on Black Friday?

Indigenous Peoples’ Day Celebration/Anti-Columbus Day Protest?

Discussion idea: Historical Disconnect between our bodies and medicine. / Commodification of medicine. Do we even recognize if we are sick? What do licensing and doctors orders really mean? How can we learn to listen to our bodies?

Pairing the above with a citizen doctors skill share? Perhaps a little too ambitious at this time.

Library Focus: AK Press (Saturday afternoon 1-3 format)

Reading Discussion: Inhabit booklet: After pasting into a word document, it seems like it might be doable within the format. Will thinks he’ll have a bunch of booklets, and he has a pdf to make copies of. September would work best for him.

Will proposes a Thursday screening of Trouble, available on subMedia. They’re ~30 min., and with a donation the website sends out question packets and various swag.

Will would like a September discussion on What is Autonomy.

He would also like an October discussion on Communization Theory? We’d need to unpack that and figure out how we’d advertise such a discussion.

New idea: ICE discussion about recent events. We will discuss the concentration camps and what individuals can do.

3 discussions: ICE discussion, Indigenous people discussion, Inhabit reading (voted on by people present)

We need to start figuring out movies to screen and make some decisions about the other stuff.

Homework: Bring movie suggestions.

Categories/Holidays to consider:

Trans Day of Remembrance (November)

Veteran’s Day (November)

Thanksgiving (November)

Columbus Day (October)

Mischief Night (October)

Red State

Brandon interviewed Tyler Magnuson. They seem like a cool comrade with a good breakout.

Wyatt wants to host a breakout session with Maria, a native elder water protector. The breakout would be about the legacy of Standing Rock.

Jackson, Brandon, and Wyatt are the Programming Committee. We will decide what time slots each breakout belongs in.

Mail

We got some stuff in the mail. We sang Blue’s Clues songs in our excitement. The mail was from the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Spaces. They gave us a bunch of zines and stickers.

Meeting adjourned: 8:45 PM

Tabled Items: Fall Calendar, Library Labels, Wellred Books, Event Outreach, What to do about $80 ISO bucks, Library Readership Development, Reviving the Email List, Stuff to Buy (canopy, stuff to secure bike rack, new SSD hard drive for public laptop)

In attendance: Brandon, Jackson (secretary), Will, Wyatt (moderator)

Start time: 7:15 PM

1. Event Review – We ran the documentary How to Survive a Plague. We had a great turnout and discussion. We seemed to have struck a nerve choosing this event.

2. Upcoming Event – Our next event will be the Manufacturing Consent documentary night on July 12th.

Meeting Cancellation – We are not having a meeting next week, because we’ll be coming back from Socialism Conference in Chicago. We will resume normal meetings on July 15th.

Will’s Updates – Will reports that the Commune has a 1 year subscription rate available to Infoshops for $90, and he offers to pay half of it himself. Jackson and Wyatt need to talk to Ty and Marc, since our budget is pretty tight.

He also had ideas about local groups doing a alternative to FoodNet in local food distro. We had a discussion about it, but we’re not ready to commit to it at this time.

Money – Jackson will be reimbursed $50 for writing a check for the security deposit on the Unitarian Church for the Red State Conference. These are the first $50 of our $200 commitment to the conference. We will put the rest towards our commitment to catering the breakfast. We also decided to continue tabling the $80 in limbo we’ve been discussing.

Fall Calendar

Husker Home Gamedays: September 14th, September 28th, October 5th, October 26th, November 16th

Anti-Thanksgiving dinner on Black Friday? Maybe a movie about Indigenous issues? Remembering the genocide?

Discussion idea: Historical Disconnect between our bodies and medicine. / Commodification of medicine. Do we even recognize if we are sick? What do licensing and doctors orders really mean? How can we learn to listen to our bodies?

Reading Discussion: Inhabit booklet (excerpt? two parts?)

Library Focus: AK Press (Saturday afternoon 1-3 format)

Free School / Skill Share Idea: Citizen doctors conference / training thing.

Will proposes a Friday movie night Trouble Screening.

What is Autonomy?

Are we continuing with popcorn politics?

Working class anime

Tabled Items: Library Labels, Wellred Books, Commune Subscription, Event Outreach, What to do about $80 ISO bucks, Library Readership Development, Reviving the Email List, Stuff to Buy (canopy, stuff to secure bike rack, new SSD hard drive for public laptop)

Meeting adjourned: 8:20 PM

In attendance: Bailey, Brandon, Jackson (secretary), Will, Wyatt (moderator)

Start time: 7:15 PM

1. Upcoming Event: We’re showing 1984 on Friday. We’ll be ready for it.

2. Library Donations: We have a new book from Jackson and several from Will. Thank you!

3. Calendar Distro: Wyatt reports that we still need to get calendars up at Hub Cafe and Unitarian Church.

4. Red State: We spent some time catching up on the current planning of the Red State conference.

Meeting adjourned: 8:10 PM

Tabled Items: Wellred Books, Library Readership Development, Reviving the Email List, Stuff to Buy (canopy, stuff to secure bike rack, new SSD hard drive for public laptop)

5/27/19 Minutes

In attendance: Jackson (moderator), Marc (secretary), Ty, Wyatt
Start time: 7:10

1. Event review:

Aragorn! came here Thursday and Jackson purchased $155 worth of books. We also received $60 for hosting the event. We have a whole bunch of books to sort through and add to the library; most of it is more contemporary.

Wyatt said that we liked having folks come by and speak if it’s convenient, and the BCH could be used as a gig space more often because of its position on I-80 between major cities. We also want to figure out ways to reach out to younger folks interested in politics.

The conversation attendees and Aragorn! had were fruitful and intriguing, and it was a great event.

Young Karl Marx movie night was on Friday; a few people showed up and spoke afterwards. The movie served as an introduction to the politics of the 19th century for some folks in attendance.

2. Upcoming events:

Our open house is on June 1st. We’ve gotta hype it up. Wyatt has offered to bake cupcakes for the event. Jackson is going to handle the punch. Ty is gonna also schedule tweets for the event.

Ty and Marc are going to table at the Feed the People grill-out event at Peter Pan Park. We’ll show up with material to pass out at the event, such as zines, publications, etc. We’ll also take the table banner with us.

3. June events

Wyatt got a description of the movie 1984 for the upcoming Popcorn Politics event with DSA. We edited the description to pertain to the event itself and include more information and will send it to the DSA for approval. Jackson will take care of this part.

What is Revolution is already up; How to Survive a Plague is not yet up. Ty has offered to write up the description for HtSaP.

4. Library donations

We had 17 leftover books from yard sale donations to add to the lending library, plus the books from Aragorn!. The zines from Aragorn! will be going into the zine archive.

5. Calendar distribution

Wyatt has already done part of his route; Ty and Marc will distribute calendars tomorrow, and Jackson will distribute calendars later.

6. New flyers

Marc made drafts of a new flyer and bookmark design. Wyatt proposed updating the mission statement and “about” information for materials in the future.

Marc will complete the design for the bookmark to be printed by June 1. He will also contact the print shop to get a price estimate for printing them.

We also discussed creating more Black Cat House swag in the future, and getting an interest check on buttons and T-shirts.

We’ll talk more about the wording update in the future.

Meeting adjourned: 8:20 PM

Tabled Items: Library Readership Development, Reviving the Email List, Stuff to Buy (canopy, stuff to secure bike rack, new SSD hard drive for public laptop)

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

1. Event Review – We had our reading discussion for Lucy Parsons’ “I Am an Anarchist.” We had a lively discussion, but maybe we should have moderated a bit more. We discussed whether we should have appointed a moderator amongst ourselves before the event.

2. Upcoming Events – Aragorn! is speaking here on Thursday and we’re running Popcorn Politics on Friday. We sent out some questions to Adam, our contact with Aragorn! The movie will be standard stuff.

3. Reimbursement – Ty spent $14.93 on getting our readings and summer calendars printed, and we will reimburse him for these necessary group expenses.

4. Calendar Distro – Wyatt will do South Street, the Bay, and the Unitarian Church. Marc and Ty will do the Haymarket, the Hub, and the Hub Cafe. Ty will also do relevant spots on campus. Jackson will do the main downtown area.

5. June Events – We need to get our BCH Birthday Party advertised online. We spent meeting time working on it. Also, Feed the People-Lincoln is having a fundraising cookout on the same day at an overlapping time, and Marc and Ty may table for us there.

6. Calendar/Flier Re-design – Marc has some ideas for new fliers and updating our calendars. We talked a bit about this, but are mostly excitied to see what he comes up with. There was discussion of possibly starting with a bookmark design.

Meeting adjourned: 8:30 PM

Tabled Items: Library Readership Development, Reviving the Email List, Stuff to Buy (canopy, stuff to secure bike rack, new SSD hard drive for public laptop)