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)

In attendance: Jackson (moderator), Wyatt, Marc (secretary), Martin, Austin, Mikeyla

Start time: 7:10 PM

1. Event Review
Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster – only 1 other person showed up. It was all organizers. Popcorn Politics has lost a lot of steam; Jackson reached out to DSA to publicize events more in the future. The low attendance might have also been because it was the Friday before finals week.

Next popcorn politics: Young Karl Marx!

Jackson brought up using the Death of Stalin as a future Popcorn Politics flick. It’s not explicitly leftist, nor is it that historical, but it’s entertaining.

2. Upcoming Events
Marc wrote the call for donations for the yard sale, and we’re not 100% certain if the post has been posted or scheduled. Marc checked past BCH chat logs, and Ty said it’d be posted on April 10. Wyatt suggested reaching out more to solicit donations.

Martin suggested collecting clothes anyway, and then donating it rather than selling it at the yard sale. Jackson and Wyatt confirmed that the house probably physically doesn’t have the space, but it’s a good suggestion that’s worked in the past. Next week, we’ll sit down and price items for the sale, organize stuff, etc. On Wednesday or Thursday we can start moving the collection from storage.

The Lucy Parsons event needs to be posted on Facebook. Jackson also needs to write up stuff for Young Karl Marx.

Turtle Island
Adam messaged the BCH Facebook page to ask us if we’d be interested in hosting a book tour for an author. The author is Aragorn! who has written a book about anarchist Native Americans. Martin suggested platforming Native writers on the issues that the book brings up; Jackson also suggested reaching out to Aragorn! to learn more about them as an author. Wyatt also expressed interest in reading the book first. We’ll have time to discuss this again next week. Mikeyla also researched more about the book while trying to figure out more about Aragorn!, but didn’t find much new info.

Jackson is going to reach out directly to Aragorn!; if people have questions for Aragorn!, let Jackson know. Martin also suggested asking local Native groups whether the name of the author/book is familiar.

Lucy Parsons reading
Marc read aloud Ty’s description of the event. Wyatt suggested adding the elements of how Lucy Parsons also spoke about her own personal and political development and editing the writeup a bit. Wyatt will publish the post with some additions to our Facebook page.

Jackson will write up the description for the Young Karl Marx screening.

3. Summer Calendar
We need dates for upcoming summer events!

(Copied from last weeks’ meeting with edits.)
Blackout dates:
June 7 and 8 Star City Pride
June 15 Juneteenth
July 4 – 7 Socialism Conference
August 24 Red State Conference

Definite Events

Saturday, June 1st Black Cat House 6th Birthday Open House (times TBA)
Movie Night: How to Survive a Plague (need description/queer/AIDS/etc) – Friday June 28 (anniversary of riots!)
Popcorn Politics (June) [1984? for the 70th anniversary of the book being published] – Friday June 14? First Friday is also this day. Book was released June 8. Jackson will have to run this by the DSA Popcorn Politics folks.

Movie Night: Manufacturing Consent (do before mid-month; 6 PM start; description?) – 2nd Friday; July 12
Popcorn Politics (July) – Chicken Run on July 26

Movie Night: White Light, Black Rain (atomic bombings commemoration) – Friday August 9 (anniversary of Nagasaki bombing)
Popcorn Politics (August) – Pan’s Labyrinth – Friday August 16

What is Revolution? (a community discussion) – Saturday June 22

Open discussion of U.S. imperialism’s relation to Iran/Middle-East fundamentalism – Saturday July 20

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)

In Attendance: Jackson (secretary), Marc, Ty (moderator), Wyatt
Start time: 7:18 PM

1. Event Reviews – Our events didn’t quite go according to plan!

Jackson reports that only one person showed up for the advertised Stars Over Latin America reading on Friday night, and he hadn’t seen the Motorcycle Diaries film so they did that instead. The book actually only showed up today, but we’re still happy to have it for our library. We agree that Jackson will be reimbursed $13.37 for buying that for us.

We had a moderate turnout for our Kurdish discussion on Saturday, but due to a miscommunication our intended discussion leader was unable to come! We were forced to improvise towards a much more general discussion, since our specific knowledge of Kurdistan wasn’t good enough. We had a pretty good discussion once we transitioned to a broader discussion of U.S. imperialism and how we should be resisting it. Wyatt suggests that we need to have more direct contact with guests leading events here in the future.

2. Upcoming Event – Popcorn Politics returns this Friday with Godzilla vs the Smog Monster. It should be less complicated than our events last weekend, and we are relieved!

3. Moderator/Secretary Rotation – Marc will be joining the moderator/secretary rotation.

4. Library Update – Wyatt and Jackson spent meeting time last week finishing the current round of library sorting. Jackson also suggested that we should consider expanding our DVD selection, which was well received.

5. May Events – Ty will draft a description of the Lucy Parsons discussion in the next week. Jackson volunteers to tackle the Popcorn Politics for The Young Karl Marx.

6. Summer Calendar

Blackout dates:
June 7 and 8 Star City Pride
June 15 Juneteenth
July 4 – 7 Socialism Conference
August 24 Red State Conference

Definite Events

Saturday, June 1st Black Cat House 6th Birthday Open House (times TBA)
Movie Night: How to Survive a Plague (need description/queer/AIDS/etc)
Popcorn Politics (June) [1984? for the 70th anniversary of the book being published]

Movie Night: Manufacturing Consent (do before mid-month; 6 PM start; description?)
Popcorn Politics (July)

Movie Night: White Light, Black Rain (atomic bombings commemoration)
Popcorn Politics (August)

What is Revolution? (a community discussion)

Suggested Event

Open discussion of U.S. imperialism’s relation to Iran/Middle-East fundamentalism

Meeting adjourned: 8:51 PM

Tabled Items: Library Readership Development, Discussion on U.S. imperialism’s relationship to fundamentalism in the Middle East, Reviving the Email List, Stuff to Buy (canopy, stuff to secure bike rack, new SSD hard drive for public laptop)

In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Wyatt

Start time: 7:05 PM

1. We discussed our events upcoming this weekend: the children’s book reading Stars Over Latin America and our community discussion on the Kurdish Freedom Struggle.
2.  We spent the rest of our meeting sorting our library books.

Meeting adjourned: 8:35 PM

Tabled Items: Summer Calendar, Library Readership Development, Discussion on U.S. imperialism’s relationship to fundamentalism in the Middle East, Reviving the Email List, Stuff to Buy (canopy, stuff to secure bike rack, new SSD hard drive for public laptop)

In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Ty (moderator, via video chat), Wyatt
Start time: 7:05 PM

1. Event Review – We hosted the “Who Owns Politics?” discussion here on Saturday. It was a really good talk. Maybe we should do it again at the next election cycle?

2. Upcoming Event – Our movie night for Boom! is this Friday. We’re good to go for it!

3. April Events – We spent the rest of our meeting working on online descriptions for our upcoming April events.

Meeting adjourned: 8:09 PM

Tabled Items: Library Readership Development, Discussion on U.S. imperialism’s relationship to fundamentalism in the Middle East, Reviving the Email List, Stuff to Buy (canopy, stuff to secure bike rack, new SSD hard drive for public laptop)

In Attendance: Jackson (secretary), Ty, Wyatt (moderator)
Start time: 7:05 PM

1. Upcoming Event – We’re showing Hidden Figures for Popcorn Politics on Friday night!

2. Calendar Distro – Wyatt still needs to hit up Bodhi and the Unitarian Church. Ty still needs to hit the Haymarket. Jackson still needs to go to The Bay and The Hub.

3. Online Presence – Ty will be assuming more responsibility over our inactive Twitter account. We are debating an appropriate way of reviving the use of our email list. Ty will contact Ju Ping regarding helping us create an account for Wyatt on our website. Item TABLED.

4. Library – We spent the remainder of our meeting working on re-organizing our lending library.

Meeting adjourned: 8:30 PM

Tabled Items: Library Readership Development, Discussion on U.S. imperialism’s relationship to fundamentalism in the Middle East, Reviving the Email List, Stuff to Buy (canopy, stuff to secure bike rack, new SSD hard drive for public laptop)