In attendance: Jackson (moderator), Marc (secretary), Ty

Meeting start: 7:10 PM

1) Upcoming Event – We posted the neighborhood cleanup event on Facebook, as well as the website. Jackson’s going to double-check to see if we have enough trash bags; he’ll get some if not. There may be another Everett clean-up happening this Saturday? Ty saw a yard sign about it but we’re not sure about the details. We may also need grabbing sticks, sharp sticks, and gloves.

2) Library Donations – Marc donated a couple books.

3) October Event – Jackson will draft and post the event for Can We Vote Our Way Out Of This Mess on Facebook.

4) November Event – We haven’t heard back from one potential panelist. Jackson is in contact with other potential panelists. We’re going to set a firm date and time soon to make scheduling easier for the panelists.

5) Domain Renewal – Jackson donated the cost of domain renewal and security for the year for the Black Cat website. (Treasury should probably be updated soon)

Meeting adjourned: 7:35 PM

Meeting Start: 7:04 PM

In Attendance: Jackson (moderator), Marc, Ty (secretary), Will

Bail Fund + Further Jail Support: Ty has got the bail fund account website ready to go; it just needs a description. He’s going to also send in a donation of his own just to make sure the account was properly set up to the bank account. We’re making it Lincoln-specific because that’s the most reasonable place for us to give jail support outreach to. Will has invited us to a jail support workshop on Saturday given by some activists in Atlanta in order to further foster a jail support network in Lincoln that we can sustain. We’re going to ask around in the meantime for pro bono lawyers and other people who could offer support. Marc has volunteered to help format any information we want to share into readily accessible and easy-to-distribute formats. Tabled for next week after we learn more at the workshop.

Fall Calendar: We are still looking into potential speakers for our online discussion on police repression. Because of that, we’re leaving the dates potentially open further – not only Saturdays in November, but also possibly considering Friday evenings (we need to remind potential speakers that any scheduling will be done using central time).

For the neighborhood clean-up, Ty proposes September 26. We considered the possibility of having it be in the late afternoon followed by an outdoor gathering/cookout at The Black Cat House but we’ll have to discuss this further.

We may need to get a new canopy for the Can We Vote Our Way Out Of This Mess outdoor discussion.

Scheduled events so far below:

• Everett-Near South Neighborhood Clean-Up (and Cookout?) – September 26 (10/11 AM? Late afternoon?)
• Can We Vote Our Way Out Of This Mess? An outdoor community discussion – October 17, 1-3 PM, Black Cat House (outside)
• Untitled online discussion on police repression of protests – November (Friday evening or Saturday)

Tabled Items: Lincoln jail support, fall calendar

Meeting Adjourned: 8 PM

There was no meeting today. We need to focus this coming week on generating event ideas for the fall calendar.

In attendance: Jackson, Marc, Ty (secretary)

Meeting Start: 7:00 PM

July Event: What is Ecofascism? is on July 11th. Marc had the preliminary idea for the event, so he will write a draft for the event description and send it to the rest of the group to workshop. It will be online via Jitsi Meet again. Marc will get that to the group in the next couple days.

Bail Fund: We got the account, we dropped the ball on the burner phone so we’re going to grab it soon. Lincoln protests are dying down in intensity but there will eventually be the need of bail funds on a broader local level again, so we’re still going to proceed in setting up an Action Network for it.

Fall Calendar: We started talking about fall a little bit – an idea for an October outdoor conversation circle came up. Possibly coinciding with Halloween? It’s still up in the air because how Lincoln will deal with COVID once the UNL fall semester starts has yet to be seen. We’ll table this further.

Tabled: Fall Calendar

Meeting Adjourned: 7:30 PM

Meeting Start: 7:08 PM

In attendance: Jackson, Marc (secretary), Ty, Wyatt

Tonight we had an abbreviated meeting, since there truthfully wasn’t a lot to discuss about upcoming events and the summer calendar due to COVID-19.

Upcoming Event:

• The Image of the Anarchist reading: Ty and Marc will post the PDF of the article and a text transcript onto Facebook so people interested in attending the event can read it well ahead of time, and so it’s accessible for those who use screen readers.

Summer Calendar:

• We are sticking to one event per month for summer.
• Gardening Day: Saturday June 13^th, from 10 AM – 1 PM. This meeting will be outdoors and in-person and be all about working in the gardening and learning certain skills.
• What is Ecofascism? a community discussion: Saturday July 11^th, from 1 PM – 3PM. This discussion will be held online.
• Harvesting Day: Saturday, August 22, from 9 AM -12 PM. Like it says in the title, we’ll be harvesting the fruits of our labor from the garden on this day.
• Ty will create a digital calendar for our summer events and post it by next week, so it can be shared and spread.

Meeting adjourned: 7:34 PM

Meeting Began: 7:00 PM

In attendance: Jackson, Marc (secretary), Ty (moderator), Wyatt

1) Update from Mechelle: The BCH will write a brief summary of how Ricketts lied to the Omaha Tribe about providing aid for responding to COVID-19. We will also post relevant, more recent news articles.

2) Upcoming Reading Discussion: Marc will transpose the article for the upcoming reading discussion on the historical depiction of anarchists in the media. He will also scan images included in the article, and write up descriptions so that the document is accessible for people with vision-related disabilities. Ty will write the description for the Facebook event, and get it posted soon. The discussion will likely be held over Facebook video chat.

3) Summer Events: We will be trying to switch to more digital events for summer, since we want to have a community presence in spite of the pandemic. Instead of group readings, we considered using Facebook video chat. Gardening days may still be possible, since attendees can keep further apart outdoors, but these are very weather-dependent. We also discussed the possibility of making YouTube videos instead of having movie showings. Another option may be to use Facebook Live to have discussions/presentations about various topics.

Potential Topic Ideas: Ecofascism, Looking at formerly rejected ideas and see if there are any topics that can be rekindled or revised, U.S. Imperialism and the Military Industrial Complex

Our calendar will be smaller for summer since some of these “event” ideas may take more planning/preparation than usual. We will also redesign the calendar to be more friendly for mobile screens and laptops, so it’s more easily-shared. Right now, the plan is to brainstorm ideas for these new formats and have proposals for next week’s meeting.

Meeting Adjourned: 8:01 PM

In attendance: Jackson, Marc, Ty (secretary), Wyatt (moderator)

Meeting Start: 7:10 PM

1. Event Review – We showed Tending the Wild via online chatroom on Friday. One person tuned in besides us, and she thought it was a beautiful film. A couple friends of Marc’s asked if we’d be doing similar events in the future, so there is interest in these events. If we do these in the future, it will have to be stuff freely available online/videos that aren’t copywritten. Marc will do some research into future showings. He also volunteered to moderate the chatroom discussions in the future.
2. Upcoming Event – We were intending on doing the discussion “Witch Hunts and the Inquisition.” We’ll probably instead find some videos about the topic to show, then open the chatroom up for discussion. Wyatt is going to put the event up.
3. Rest of Spring Calendar – We’re going to try to make Gardening Day an online/physical event. We’re going to encourage people who want to show up in-person to mark themselves as “going” on the Facebook event so we can maintain a safe amount of people. Then an online version of various ecological/gardening videos in a chatroom.
4. Militant – Joe called saying we’re on our last few Militant papers. We’re going to renew our subscription.

Meeting Adjourned: 8:03 PM

In attendance: Bailey (moderator), Jackson, Marc, Max, Ty (secretary), Wyatt
Start Time: 7:07 PM

1. Event Review: Know Your Rights went super well! It was very engaging, well attended, and provided new material for future events of a similar vein. Jackson brings up a concern that only people who were already savvy on their rights attended; Bailey thinks we just need to normalize doing these on a regular basis.

2. Upcoming Event: Fighting The Black Snake’s event has been posted! It’s going to be an open discussion, and while there’s not a specific goal for the event, there are quite a few options to talk about along that line.

3. March Events: Jackson has a draft for Libertarias, Wyatt is going to message regarding the Tending the Wild.

4. Calendar Distro Update: Calendar distro was going well! We still need to do the Unitarian Church, though.

5. Library Donations: Marc donated some labor history books and trans books to the library!

6. Yard Sale: The yard sale is on May 22nd and 23rd. The May 18th meeting will be dedicated to pricing, and we’ll also have a pricing day on May 21st at 5 PM.

7. Library Development: Marc advocates having a stamp rather than a sticker to mark our books as a reminder for folks to return our books. We also need to invest in a barcode scanner. Ty has a new (to us) laptop to donate for library database purposes. Marc thinks we need a new bookcase; Ty thinks we just need to weed the library. Next meeting we’re going to dedicate to the library.

Meeting Adjourned: 8:07 PM

In attendance: Bailey, Jackson, Marc (secretary), Ty, Wyatt
Start Time: 7:20 PM

1. Event Review: Love Your Library
– Nobody showed up, so we need to promote library & events more.
– Potential ideas:
Post regular photos of relevant displays to site and Facebook
Post book reviews to site/Facebook
Write follow-up posts after events– “if you missed our event, check out these books”
Basically, we need to make progress with our library’s organization.
Set up datacrow for searching/checkouts. The software is already installed on the public laptop, but needs to be filled. We probably need a barcode scanner for this project.
Put stickers with our info inside covers of books
We’re tabling the library discussion, since there’s a lot to cover.

2. Upcoming Event: Black Power Mixtape movie on Friday!
Know Your Rights training afterwards. Bailey and Will are going to practice the skits over the next week.

3. Calendar Distro
Ty printed the calendars and they’re ready to go. We still have two events left on our Winter calendar.
One option is to create separate flyers for Know Your Rights and get the calendars up relatively early/before March hits us.
Will and Bailey offered to create the flyer for KYR. Bailey also let the Dandelion Network email thread know about the training.
Marc will cover the Haymarket
Wyatt will get South Street and Unitarian Church
Jackson will get downtown
Bailey will get Cultiva
Ty will get campus and additional downtown locations (since there are a lot of places in DT).
We also re-counted the new calendar distro sites and figured out which ones to axe (since they take calendars down).

4. March Web Events
We need to write a couple of Facebook event descriptions for upcoming events in March, since they’re coming up. Wyatt and Jackson are taking point on those two events (Killing the Black Snake and Libertarias movie night).
Ty also made an image of the calendar, which we’ll also post to Facebook.

5. Library Donations
Jackson donated a bunch of books to the library. Thank you!

6. Tabled Items Discussion
We are continuing work on developing the library & promoting it. We also need to discuss where the database for the library will be stored, and whether we need a new laptop/SSD/HDD.
Reviving the email list: We have collected a few email addresses officially, but haven’t used it in a long time. At the moment we’ll probably just use the thread that the Dandelion Network provided. ‘Til then, we’re taking this item off the table.
We’re also canceling the radio revival discussion—right now it’s just too much work.
Wellred Books: We know they exist, so we’ll potentially procure books from them in the future.
Items to buy: We have a bike rack now. We have no need for a canopy. External SSD for laptop is needed since the HDD on our current laptop is failing. We’d need the laptop for our library database and to check in/out books. Marc suggested testing out the library system to see where the database could be stored/accessed; now, the potential SSD will fall under “library development” as a tabled item.
Presentations vs. Discussions: Keeping it
Event Outreach: Also keeping
Facebook posting protocol: Keeping it just in case a timely event happens; we’ve gotta explore the theoretical a bit more.

New Tabled Items List: Presentations vs. Discussions, Event Outreach, Facebook Post Protocol, Library Development

Meeting Adjourned: 8:08 PM

4. Global Day of Protest – We got a message about a Global Day of Protest against war with Iran on Saturday, Jan. 25. We’re going to meet that day at 11 AM to 1 PM at the Federal Building, with signs and potentially a few speakers. We’ll be making signs for that during the same sign-making party as the Counter-Protest.