In attendance: Wyatt (secretary), Jackson

Meeting in session: 7:30pm

1. Upcoming Event: Garden Day. Event is posted on facebook and our website. Invite your friends!
2. Critical Race Theory: A Talk by Professor Marvin Lynn. We are on for Thursday, April 21. 7pm-8:30pm. Might be nice to have a flier to post for this. We are looking forward to making another you-tube video about this. This event needs a little more development. We are deciding if we want cosponsors, and other items.
3. Black Musicians and Liberation Video. Ty is working on posting this. Thank you Monte for editing.
4. Marc and Ty are working on drafting our Library Open House Event. Would like to get this posted in the next week or so.
5. Thank you Ty for drafting up our Yard Sale advertisement. We will start taking donations on May 8^th. Posted to facebook and Black Cat website.
6. Jackson is working on the May reading discussion.

Meeting adjourned: 8:00 PM

In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Marc, Ty

1. Event Review – We hosted “Intersectional Feminism for Beginners” on Saturday. We had a small turnout, but did meet two new people and they seemed to have a good time. We may have been able to draw more people if we had advertised the event sooner.
2. Library Donation – Jackson has a few more books for our lending library. Marc and Ty like ’em, too.
3. Black Musicians and Liberation Video – Jackson has reached out to Monte, and Monte has agreed to edit the video for us again this year. He has also declined compensation. Thanks, Monte!
4. Upcoming CRT Talk – Jackson has been in communication with Professor Lynn, and we should have some final details to start advertising soon.
5. Advertising Upcoming Events – We need to get the April 2nd Garden Day workshop posted online ASAP; Wyatt is working on it. Marc and Ty will begin drafting our Library Open House Event, and Ty will also start work on drafting our advertising for the yard sale fundraiser. Jackson will be working on the May reading discussion.

Meeting adjourned: 8:08 PM

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

1. Event Review – We had our second-annual Black Musicians and Liberation on Thursday night with Professor Kwame Dawes. It was really well attended, and there are already people asking when we’re going to get the video up. Marc is working on getting thank you notes for Kwame and Dance. Jackson will reach out to the friend who edited our video last year to see if he can help us edit the video again this year.
2. Upcoming Event – We’re hosting an in-person discussion this Saturday! We’re excited for Intersectional Feminism for Beginners. We have to clean up the event space a little bit, but it’ll be fine.
3. Reimbursement – Ty needed to upgrade his Dropbox storage account to save our video of Kwame’s talk, which is going to cost him $12 a month. He will be reimbursed, and we are tentatively pre-approving keeping his account upgraded at our expense until we’re done getting Kwame’s talk edited and uploaded to YouTube and we get Marvin Lynn’s upcoming Critical Race Theory talk recorded and edited.
4. Calendar distro – Wyatt hasn’t been able to get out to the Unitarian Church. Marc still needs to do his spots, but he’s planning to do it this week.

Meeting adjourned: 8:10 PM

In Attendance: Jackson, Ty (Moderator), Wyatt (Secretary), Marc.

Meeting Started: 7:49pm

1. Upcoming Event.

Big event on Thursday. We are ready to prevent any trolling. Hitting advertising hard now.

2. Calendar Distribution

We have special posters for this Black Musicians and liberation event that need to be hung. Jackson has completed the downtown circuit. Marc and Ty will hit Burnett, English Building, Sociology Department, Old Father Hall, and other campus locations and the “far flung” locations. Wyatt will do South street, ICI, and Union College. All redundant for our seasonal event calendar.

3. Preparation for Spring Calendar Events:

Marc will write up the description for inter-sectional feminism. Jackson will help edit it. Wyatt will make the garden day workshop event.

4. Buttons

Marc made buttons! We have new anarchist and pronouns buttons. Yay! If anyone has button ideas we are going to make more!

Meeting Adjourned: 8:22

In Attendance: Jackson, Ty (Moderator), Wyatt (Secretary), Marc (present for item 1 only), Naomi

Meeting Started: 7:05pm

1. Black Musician and Liberation is coming back. Thursday March 3^rd Professor Lory Dance and Professor Kwame Dawes the Bob Marley expert. Marc is working on the advertising poster, should be done by tomorrow. The poster will not have a QR code, but just a URL to the Jitisi event. We have bios and headshots for our presenters. We need to finish the promotional materials in the next day or two and get these things out.

2. Spring Calendar is lined up!!! Yay. Marc is also finishing up the winter calendar. We are using the same template with new colors.

Thursday, March 3, 7–8:30PM: Online Event: Black Musicians and Liberation
Saturday, March 12, 1-3 PM: Intersectional Feminism for Beginners
Saturday, April 2, 1-3 PM: Garden Day Workshop
Saturday, April 16, 1-3 PM: Library Open House
Saturday, May 7, 1-3 PM: January 6th Insurrection (a reading discussion)
Friday, May 20, 8 AM – 6 PM & Saturday, May 21, 8 AM – 2 PM: Yard Sale Fundraiser
TBA Online talk: Critical Race Theory

3. Critical Race Theory

Marvin Lynn has offered to potentially do an online talk about Critical Race Theory. What is CRT and why all the controversy? He is currently on sabbatical at the University and he is specifically doing several talks on CRT, which he wrote the book on. Jackson will get back to him this week and work on specifics. If he gives us a date, time, and a blurb, we can go ahead and start advertising. We trust his judgment.

4. Library Donation

Ty has brought a generous library donation. Wesleyan Libraries has been weeding a lot of their socialist books. Many of them are pretty old. Some of them might be sale material and some might make it into the library. Even if they are a little old they are still relevant as historical pieces. There are also a few jems in this stack. Several books about socialism and communism in East Asia, which our library currently has very little of. Also several African socialist and communist authors, which our library also needs. Also a stack of books about Christian socialism from a Western perspective. Many very unusual finds. Thank you Ty!

Meeting Adjourned 7:50pm

In attendance: Jackson, Ty

Meeting Start: 7:10 PM

1. Event Review: The discussion drew a spirited group. The writer of the article in question was present, who seemed pretty enthused that we were holding a discussion on his piece. As were many familiar faces to us, though rarer that we have them all for the same discussion day! A little denser read that most of our usual articles chosen, and the reading was finished in about 40 minutes and Jackson reports that they really only got to scratch the surface of the article’s potential discussion material.

2. Buttons: Marc and Ty borrowed the button maker for the week for making pronoun buttons for their wedding. They will pay back the House for all materials used. But in the meantime, Marc is also pressing designs for Black Cat purposes, and wants to know whether he should make others besides political and pride flag designs, and new pronoun button designs. Jackson brings up the new cat logos, and wonder whether some would make good buttons.

3. Black Musicians and Liberation: We have not had much luck in getting in further panelists, and we don’t have a lot of time yet. Also complicating matters is the personal loss suffered by UNL and specifically its Black faculty with the passing of Anna Shavers. We will be getting back to the panelist we were aiming to get on board, to see if he would be willing to do an interview with Dance and Q&A, but given that’s not what we had initially asked him about, he may say no. We do have a potential backup in the form of Marvin Lynn’s offer to do an online presentation on critical race theory, one of the topics he specializes in. This, we’re really intrigued on taking him up on regardless, it’s just a matter of when.

4. Spring Calendar: We basically have the calendar ready to go. For the stuff we’re still waiting on, Marc will work on the spring calendar design so that we can change it up real fast and we can get it printed.
   Saturday, March 12, 1-3 PM: Intersectional Feminism for Beginners
   Saturday, April 2, 1-3 PM: Garden Day Workshop
   Saturday, April 16, 1-3 PM [tentative]: Library Open House
   Saturday, May 7, 1-3 PM: January 6th Insurrection (a reading discussion)
   Friday, May 20, 8 AM – 6 PM & Saturday, May 21, 8 AM – 2 PM: Yard Sale Fundraiser

Meeting adjourned: 8:40 PM

In attendance: Jackson, Ty (secretary)
Meeting Start: 7:05 PM

1. Upcoming Event: We have the Marxist morality article reading this Saturday. We’re reasonably confident about content – just a matter of attendance at this point.
2. Library Donation: Jackson has brought the library a few donations, including multiple books by Arundhati Roy. Technically a few overlapping essays between them, but after a quick discussion on accessibility and shelf space, Jackson and Ty determined that it would not be a waste of shelf space to accept the overlapping material.
3. Collaboration email: We were reached out to by a collective based in Jerusalem. They do similar online/in-person education events to us on various topics, and provided some fliers of recent discussion series they have done. They’re interested in global solidarity and collaboration, and want to see whether we’d be interested in similar. We’ll reach out to them about this, and chat more about the prospect when we have more of our own collective members at an upcoming meeting.
4. Email: Ty is still having trouble with our official email channels. But we got into the main hosting again! So it should be okay.
5. Website/Facebook: This will be tabled for further discussion, but basically Facebook is losing traction as a platform and we need to prioritize our own website.

Tabled: Website, Spring Calendar [NEED TO GET DONE NEXT WEEK]

Meeting Adjourned: 8:15 PM

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

1. Upcoming Event – Our annual counter-protest of the Walk For Life is this Saturday. We are ready.
2. Library Donation – Jackson has two more books for the library this week. They’ll fit in nicely.
3. Spring Calendar –
   March – Open or Reading Discussion (preference to feminist topic?) OR Feminist Panel?
   Saturday, April 2nd, 1-3 PM – Garden Day workshop
   Late April – Digital Panel on Climate Change or Environmental Justice
   Early May – Open or Reading Discussion
   Friday, May 20th (8-6) and Saturday, May 21st (8-2) – Yard Sale Fundraiser

Possible discussion subject: current state of right-wing/proto-fascism; Jackson is investigating leads on a good article to build a discussion around.

Meeting adjourned: 8:45 PM

In Attendance: Jackson, Marc (secretary)
Meeting Start: 7:04 PM

Upcoming Event: Counter-Protest at the Walk for Life
– The Facebook discussion group for the counter protest has been fairly quiet.
– Jackson posted in the group asking if there was any interest in a meeting to discuss counter protest strategies and organizing. Marc is still available to host/moderate the Jitsi discussion if there is interest.
– Marc will create a Jitsi link for said discussion.
– We’ll also share the counter protest event page more often on the BCH Facebook page.

Upcoming Event: Black Musicians and Liberation Panel
– Jackson reached out to a potential panelist and is waiting to hear back. It’s possible that the email got buried in their inbox, so Jackson will work with another potential panelist on how to proceed. Otherwise, no further updates here.

Upcoming Event: Reading Discussion
– Jackson wrote up the event description for Facebook.
– We decided to change this into an online event due to the extreme spread of COVID in Lincoln. Marc created a Jitsi link for this discussion and sent it to Jackson.
– The reading is quite philosophical in nature and style, so this event could benefit from using the Jargon Giraffe shorthand (or something similar).

Spring Calendar Planning
– Wyatt expressed interest in moderating a panel about social justice in non-christian religions.
– We are planning on shooting for hosting 1-2 events/month during Spring, due to planned unavailability for some folks and potential unavailability because of COVID.
– March: Jackson suggested having a reading discussion in the tail end of March or early April, probably about gender to some regard due to March being women’s month. Additionally, we could have a gardening day at some point during March, depending on the work that needs doing.
– April: Earth Day is during this month, and depending on the panel’s topic. We still need to hammer out details for the panel topic and potential panelists. Marc and Ty will reach out to one potential panelist to see if they’re interested and have the knowledge base/background we’re looking for.
– May: Reading Discussion in early May, and Yard Sale in late May.

Meeting Adjourned: 8:10 PM

In Attendance: Jackson, Marc (secretary), Ty (moderator)
Meeting Start: 7:07 PM

Event Review
– The Social Justice in Christianity panel went really well. Marc is writing up thank-you cards to the panelists and moderator, and they should be sent out by tomorrow.
– A preliminary screening of the panel recording also turned out good, according to Ty. Ty said that it should be fairly straightforward to edit and upload to YouTube, though he doesn’t have an exact timeline when that will happen. Ty hopes to have the video finished this week.
– Jackson plans on sharing the recording with left-leaning churches once it’s uploaded.

Upcoming Event: Counter Protest at the Walk for Life
– The counter protest will happen at the end of January. The event has been posted, but it could use a cover photo. Ty will find an appropriate photo from our archives and/or from a friend.
– Marc can help host a virtual planning meeting. Interested attendees will be told to express interest in taking part in this planning discussion by reaching out to the BCH Facebook page privately, to help avoid the chat becoming overrun by bad actors.

Upcoming Event: Black Musicians and Liberation
– Jackson is writing up an email to a potential panelist. One of the folks who worked on planning the event last year has also spoken with them. We may need to find a moderator, as the person we originally had in-mind to be a mod is on the fence about doing so.
– We’ll need a separate event poster, similar to last year. Marc will take point on designing and printing it. We also need to clarify whether the event will be co-sponsored by the Institute for Ethnic Studies again.
– We would also like to explore working with another international panelist.

Library Donations
– Jackson donated a ton of books to the library. Many of these titles were published fairly recently as well.

Spring Calendar
– COVID is still raging on, so we’ll continue to consider and prioritize safety while planning events.
– Ty pointed out that we may be able to hold in-person events outdoors, in addition to online events, particularly as March/April roll around.
– We’ll definitely do a garden day in March or April, weather permitting.
– Ty and Marc will be unavailable to plan during the 2nd half of April.
– Our online panels have been pretty successful so far and drummed up community interest from outside our usual attendees. Marc proposed trying to do at least 1 online panel per season.
– Potential Topics:
Social Justice and religion beyond Christianity: We have some ideas of who/where we could ask for potential panelists, e.g. the Unitarian Church, South Street Temple, and a few individuals in mind. We would like a more diverse representation of religious belief, including pre-colonial European, Native American religion, etc. Depending on who participates, this event could be tied into ecology or Earth Day.
– Yard Sale: We plan on having our yearly yard sale fundraiser. We may shoot for mid-May for this event. Our tentative dates are May 20th and 21st.
– Reading Discussion during the first week of May. May Day would be an easy topic to read about and find an appropriate reading for.

Meeting Adjourned: 8:14 PM