Not enough people showed for the meeting to have any formal agenda. Jackson had a good discussion with those who did show about our gardening efforts. We’ll try tackling other projects next week!

There wasn’t enough folks that were going to be at the meeting, so it was cancelled. Better luck next week!

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

1. Upcoming Event – Our Strange Victory movie night is this Friday. We think we’re ready for it.

2. Lincoln TRUE 2024 – Last night, Salem met with organizers of an event called Lincoln TRUE (Tour for Rewilding Urban Environments). The event is happening in late September, and our yard seems relevant. Salem brought us an application, and we’ll discuss this again soon.

Meeting adjourned: 7:25 PM

In attendance: Chien-Chi, Jackson (secretary), Matt
Start time: 7:10 PM

1. Events Review – We had our yard sale a couple of weeks ago. We raised $921! We also had Winslow’s Wardrobe back here on Saturday. We had a couple of folks pass through and get some new clothes. Winslow’s Wardrobe confirmed then that they will be back here in August.
2. June 1st Sale – Chien-Chi will be using our yard for a sale during the Near South Neighborhood-wide sale on June 1st. We’ll be putting leftovers from our sale a couple of weeks ago out there.
3. Summer Calendar – Matt has provided a draft for our summer calendar that looks good! He will finish the handbill version ASAP, and Jackson will get them printed in the next few days.
4. Upcoming AI discussion? – Chien-Chi is envisioning a panel discussion, and may have the first panelist already. She thinks a larger, more professional venue may be more appropriate for the event. We have a lot of workshopping to do as far as determining who else we should collaborate with and what we should try to prioritize for such an event.

Meeting adjourned: 7:45 PM

In attendance: Chien-Chi, Jackson (secretary), Matt, Salem, Ty
Start time: 7:10 PM

1. Yard Sale – It’s time to advertise like crazy that we’re taking donations. Chien-Chi is helping to spread the word. The Black Cats are looking for donations in their own homes. Jackson will try to coordinate with Wyatt on rounding up tables again this year. Ty will put something about the yard sale in the info box on our homepage.

2. Reimbursements – Ty will be reimbursed $29.96 for hardware to hang our new blackout curtains, and $7.14 for picking up some printing that we cut and pressed into new pins.

3. Summer Calendar
Friday, June 14th, 7-10 PM: Movie Night: Strange Victory
Saturday, June 29th, 1-3 PM: LGBTQ Damage Report (a community discussion)

Friday, July 12th, 7-10 PM: Movie Night: To Wong Foo
Saturday, July 27th, 1-3 PM: Anti-Amazon Discussion [still needs a final title]

Friday, August 9th, 7-10 PM: Movie Night: Godzilla (1954)
TBD?: [Winslow’s Wardrobe; possibly off-calendar]

Save for further consideration on Fall Calendar:
The Breadwinner movie for September? (Salem)
Come and See anti-war movie (Marc)
Discussion about upcoming election for October? (Matt)
Something about Internet/Web3/AI (Chien-Chi et al.)
Howl’s Moving Castle or Porco Rosso (Chien-Chi et al.)

Meeting adjourned: 8:20 PM

In attendance: Ty, Marc (sec), Salem, Matt, Chien-Chi

Event Reviews:

• Israelism – Issue with the disc – sound was slightly off. Marc will see if he can figure out what went wrong. Not a huge turnout
• Earth Day – Jackson and Matt held down the booth for the event. About 20 folks signed up for our newsletter. Folks loved the buttons and stickers; as usual, the “compost the rich” sticker was a hit. 🙂 We’ll add folks to the Riseup newsletter soon. We probably handed out about half the materials, and it seemed like the event itself was well-attended.

Upcoming Events

• Yard Sale – We can pretty much start taking donations for the yard sale now. We’ll begin advertising for folks to donate items.
• For donations, we accept:

Home goods
Kitchenware
Dishes, plates
Collectables
Wall art
Books, DVDs, CDs, other media
Small appliances
Decor
Tools
Small furniture
Toys, puzzles, games (please make sure any puzzles and games have all their pieces)

• We do not accept clothing; we encourage you to donate clothing to Winslow’s Wardrobe or other similar community organizations instead.
• Jackson will be at the yard sale for both days. Ty will also be at the yard sale. Chien-Chi can also help out on both days.
• Chien-Chi also mentioned getting involved with the Near South Neighborhood Association’s annual yard sale; the deadline for letting them know is June 1.
• Collaboration with Winslow’s Wardrobe will be in May; weather permitting, the giveaway will be outdoors.
• May 31: Cesar Chavez movie showing. This will be the 2014 biopic.

Other

• We met with Chien-Chi, who is very knowledgeable about local places and contacts. She had lots of suggestions, advice, and experience with outreach and similar work!
• May 30th: Give to Lincoln Day. We can look into this and see if we’d be able to table at it.

Summer Calendar:

• We decided on some dates and events for summer.
• Salem screened To Wong Fu and determined it’d be a good option for a movie, and we’ll make sure to include a link to doesthedogdie.com for any particular triggers.
• Regarding the LGBTQ Damage Report, Matt suggested reaching out to OutNebraska.
• Salem mentioned some potential problems with the To Wong Fu DVD, which Ty and Marc will test to see if it’s an issue with the DVD itself or the DVD player.
• Chien-Chi brought up showing Howl’s Moving Castle as a potential anti-war movie. We discussed other Ghibli films as well – Porco Rosso (as another anti-war thing).
• June 29: Damage Report
• July 12: To Wong Fu: Thanks for Everything movie
• July 14: Strange Victory movie
• July 27: Anti-Amazon discussion. We’ll need a snappier title.
• August 9: Godzilla 1954 movie
• August TBD: Discussion, hosting another event with Winslow’s Wardrobe, etc? We didn’t finalize a second August event this meeting.

Meeting Start: 7:05 PM

Meeting Adjourned: 8:45 PM

In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Matt, Salem, Ty
Start time: 7:10 PM

Upcoming Events – We have two events this weekend! We’re hosting a Garden Day on Saturday, and our “Ancestral Culture and Modern Identity” discussion with Dr. Fredrik Gregorius. Jackson got fliers printed for the latter event, and put them up in the greater downtown/Near South area.

Next Week’s Events – We also have two events next weekend! We have our Israelism movie night on Friday night, and are tabling at Lincoln Earth Day on Saturday. Marc has the sticker order ready to be placed. Marc and Ty have been pressing buttons. Salem is making progress on preparing our display. Matt will be providing transportation to Innovation Campus.

Library Donation – Jackson has two books to offer the lending library. We’re adding them!

Reimbursements – Marc will be paid $227.64 to order our next batch of stickers. Ty will be reimbursed $50.92 for getting blackout curtains for our event space. Jackson will be reimbursed $11.26 for getting the fliers printed for our event this week with Dr. Fredrik.

Yard Sale – We need to get to advertising for it! Ty will try to get something drafted and posted this week. We’ll start accepting donations on April 22nd. Ty will be staffing the sale, but doesn’t know how much help he’ll be for pricing beforehand.

Summer Calendar –

We will not return to Star City Pride this year. We’ll be on the lookout for Free Pride events instead.

Blackout Dates: Star City Pride June 7th and 8th; Heartland Pride July 13th; also check Discord for Matt’s collection of powwow dates

Movie Nights: Strange Victory [June/July?]
To Wong Foo? [June/July?; still wating on Salem’s opinion]
Something Godzilla [1954 vs. Minus One; August]

Discussions: LGBTQ Damage Report?
Anti-Amazon

Does Winslow’s Wardrobe want to do a distro here? Maybe in August (Back to School)

Save for further consideration on Fall Calendar:
The Breadwinner movie for September? (Salem)
Come and See anti-war movie (Marc)
Discussion about upcoming election for October? (Matt)

Meeting adjourned: 8:10 PM

Meeting start: 7:00 PM
In attendance: Jackson (via phone) Matt, Salem, Ty (secretary)

1. Event Review: “Christmas’s War on Us” was a bust. Probably the same issue with our last event, that there was little advertising ahead of time. We need to be MUCH more on top of advertising, both in event descriptions being posted online, AND in getting our spring events decided upon earlier so that calendars can be finalized and printed sooner.
   
2. January Events: In the interest of getting the events online sooner, Ty will share a draft of the 2023 Labor Wins event tomorrow. Matt agreed to write a description for Space Sweepers, and Jackson will work on the counter-protest. The counter-protest may need to be up with more lead time, in order to give us time to organize counter-protesters and volunteers.
   
3. Calendar – Distro + Design: Distro is still ongoing. Salem reported putting up calendars at Matt Talbot, as well as some public transit spaces. Hurts Donuts still, unfortunately, doesn’t have a place to put up calendars. They did miss a few spots but Ty can hit those up on his distro.
   
   Matt whipped up a set of five different cat-head logos to be able to put The Black Cat House name in a more prominent way on smaller prints like our calendar handouts. We’re tabling deciding anything for sure tonight, but we discussed font choice to be dyslexia-friendly.
   
4. Remote Meeting Procedure: After weighing some accessibility issues (internet access, how to spread the word, etc.) we’re opting to just host weekly meetings in-person for now. Obviously, we can call folks in on request (like Jackson tonight and last week), but it will be much easier for folks to keep track of if it’s in-person. We’ll reserve the right to cancel due to weather or other outside factors, which we’ll update on the news box on the front page of our website.
   
   We discussed briefly whether we should move the weekly meeting to a different day of the week, but we’ll have to table that discuss as well.
   
5. Button Parts: Jackson is going to look into buying button parts for us. We’ve got enough in the treasury to order a purchase.

Meeting adjourned: 8:08 PM

Tabled: Logo, weekly meeting times

Meeting Start: 7:09 PM
In attendance: Jackson (over phone), Salem, Ty (secretary)

1. Events Review: “Killing Gaza” on Friday was a bust as far as attendance. We have really dropped the ball for advertising; the calendars were not distributed by that time. It’s also freely available on Youtube so people may have just opted to watch it at home. Winslow’s Wardrobe did much better, we had a few folks stop by to gather some new identity-affirming clothes. We will be working with Winslow’s Wardrobe to host other pop-ups in the future. We also probably could’ve gotten more people from getting the calendar distributed by that time. We did try to improve street traffic by putting up a sandwich board sign on the street corner.
2. Upcoming Event: Christmas’s War on Us is finally live online! Tell your friends.
3. Calendar Distro: Ty and Salem are splitting the majority of the calendar distro. Salem is planning to swing by Matt Talbot and a few other potential 27th street spots that they will report back on.
4. Meeting Cancellations: We will not have a weekly meeting for December 25 and January 1. Ty will update the notice box on the front page of the website with this news.
5. January Events: We’re going to try to draft the January events as early as possible to make up for dropping the ball on the advertising for December, and because we will not be holding most of the rest of the months’ weekly meetings, we want to start work on this as soon as possible. Ty will work on a draft for the Labor Wins event this week, Jackson will take care of the counter-protest, and we’ll see if Matt will be ok with drafting a description for Space Sweepers.

Meeting adjourned: 8:25

Tabled: Remote meeting policy

In attendance: Arya, Jackson, Marc, Rae, Ty (secretary)
Meeting Start: 7:12 PM

Yard Sale: Our yard sale is coming up this Friday and Saturday! We’ll be doing some pricing after the meeting adjourns today. Jackson will make yard sale signs. Jackson will also be out and setting things up on Friday + Saturday really early, at 6 AM, and would appreciate some assistance in set-up and tear-down on both Friday and Saturday. Rae and Arya think they may be able to come over early to help set up.

Calendars: Summer Calendar has been printed, and we split up the handbills and full-size calendars for distro purposes. We also had an extra stock printed for distro at Pride. We’re reimbursing Jackson $30.83 for paying for the calendar prints.

Pride Planning: Marc went over the designs he has for pride buttons, and we’re thinking to make 100 of pronoun buttons and 500 total of the historical buttons. He also showed a design he made that would make for a good sticker if we wanted to get those printed. Ty bought tablecloths for this and future tabling events, as a donation to the House. He also needs to get zines printed, as he wasn’t able to since the House is very full of yard sale donations.

Work time for yard sale pricing!

Meeting adjourned: 7:57 PM