In attendance: Jackson, Ty (secretary)
Meeting Start: 7:25 PM

1. Upcoming Event: We have our online panel on Social Justice in Christianity this Saturday! Dance has looked over the questions and they’ve been sent to our now three panelists, as Wyatt had successfully made contact with a Call to Action representative during our break.

We have not been able to flier as well as we hoped, but we had help compiling a list of some good churches in the area to reach out to. Jackson contacted six on social media, and had some back-and-forth conversation with a representative from one of them. At the very least, we can share the Youtube link with them once it’s posted.

We’re going to continue reaching out to who we can, and Jackson will flier around the usual First Friday routes so that those walking by will access.

2. Library Donations: We had a great many donations! Our friend Eric has donated a copy of his recently edited horror story anthology, Antifa Splatterpunk.
3. Counter-Protest: Jackson will work on the event description so we can get that event posted ASAP. We have decided not to offer child care this year due to COVID risk still being high and cases rising recently. For the same reason we won’t have a sign-making party, but we still have many signs from years prior.

Tabling discussion of seeing who may want to be involved in planning the counter-protest, and a contact person for people day-of.

Meeting Adjourned: 8:30 PM

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

1. Event Review – Our Matrix movie night was a bust!
2. Next Week’s Meeting – We decided not to meet next week. Our next meeting will be on January 3rd.
3. Janurary 8th Panel – The event is now up on Facebook and the calendar on our website. Marc has designed and printed fliers, and we need to get them up around town this week, including at some of the more progressive churches. Our efforts to find a third panelist have seemingly fallen through, and we need to explore other leads if we’re going to add anyone else to the event.
4. Library Organization – Naomi was here with Jackson and Wyatt last Friday and we have our “Marginalized Identities” books on our new shelves. We need to decide what we want to put on our former Identity bookcase. There was discussion of wanting to put something of high priority and interest there, as that case is in the middle of the room and convenient to browse. There was some thought of putting up the communist/anarchist theory stuff, or possibly the environmentalist stuff. Jackson also has the thought of having a shelf of “Greatest Hits” or specific favorites or recommendations from the Black Cats. Ty added that we should possibly put more collaborative work into our library cart displays a la the staff recommendations shelf at local bookstores.

Meeting adjourned: 8:25 PM

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

1. Upcoming Event: We’re playing The Matrix on Friday! Jackson will get the room set up on Thursday.
2. Social Justice in Christianity Panel: Marc drafted the description for the event, which the rest of us reviewed and edited. We got the bios for our panelists and moderator to include with the description. Our outreach to a potential third panelist didn’t get any response; we are going to reach out on a broader level to see if someone besides the local chapter may be interested in speaking on this panel. If not, we think the two panelists we already have are a strong enough backing to the event.

We’re going to give the questions we would like to ask the panelist to Dance first, as she is the one who’d be asking them and so she should be able to tweak the wording. Then we will send her pass of the questions to our panelists so they can start thinking on how they might answer.

Marc is working on the banner image for this event. We discussed also making handbills specifically for this event, with the link now that we have it. We’ll ask Marc whether he can put this together, then we’ll print a run of 50 and distribute, particularly to local progressive churches.

Meeting adjourned: 8:42 PM

In Attendance: Jackson (secretary), Marc, Ty
Start time: 7:15 PM

1. Event Review – We had our “Labor vs. Capital For Beginners” discussion on Saturday. It was well attended, and the discussion seemed inspired.
2. Library Donation – Marc donated three books for our lending library. Thanks, Marc!
3. Calendar Distro Update – Jackson and Wyatt got all of downtown. There’s still a handful of far-off places that are not yet done, and Marc and Ty will take the rest of our available calendars and try to finish up this week.
4. Library Update – We had to postpone our library committee meeting because Naomi was sick and we are going to wait for her to re-shelve books. She has still been very busy with investigating software solutions. Login information has been forwarded to the Discord chat. We’re hoping to get the re-shelving done later this month, if and when Naomi gets healthy and maybe has some free time.
5. January Panel – We spent some time wordsmithing an appeal asking for our third panelist. We need to get our online advertisement up for this event in the next week; Marc and Ty will start drafting that. It’s also about time to start collecting 2-3 sentence bios about our moderator and panelists. And we also need to prepare some questions for the panel; we hope to continue this brainstorming in the Discord chat this week. Marc will start designing something visual for an online banner and/or special flier.

Meeting adjourned: 8:30 PM

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

Meeting start: 7:11 PM

1. Upcoming Event: Labor vs. Capitalism is coming up this Saturday! We did seem to have a few people interested in the discussion for its intended purpose of learning new things, so we want to establish at the beginning of the discussion that people can and should interrupt to ask for definition as they need. Perhaps using the jargon giraffe? A way to lighten the mood and making things accessible. We should also ask as part of the usual icebreakers, what people want to learn as a part of the discussion in order to steer the conversation in the direction they wish to go.

1.5. Library Meeting: We are meeting with Naomi at 11 ahead of the discussion on Saturday in order to do some library organizing.

2. December Movie: Jackson put together a description for The Matrix showing. We reviewed it, we liked it, and other than some tiny tweaks to the closing paragraph, it’s good to post!
3. Calendar Distro: The calendars and handbills are printed, and looks great! Now we just need to post them around.

Jackson: Haymarket
Marc: East campus, Mo Java
Ty: City campus
Wyatt: UU church, South/17th locations, Downtown

4. Logo Designs: We looked over the logo designs that Arden sent. We love the cats! The font might not work well for the sometimes subpar printing we have to resort to when we’re pressed for time, so Marc will reach out about it.
5. January Panel: We have not yet reached out to Call to Action about whether they would have someone interested in participating.

Meeting adjourned: 8:33 PM

11/22/21 Minutes

In attendance: Jackson, Marc, Ty (Moderator), Wyatt (Secretary)

Start time: 7:10 PM

Calendar Update:

• Marc did a great job with the handbill and full size winter 2021-22 Calendar. Thank you! We reviewed and discussed final edits. We want to add “Come browse our lending library” We will get them printed this Tuesday or Wednesday.

Merch Discussion:

• Do we want to make swag? Perhaps stickers for laptops, books, waterbottles, ect. A message and graphic that represents us.
• We would like Goldenrod printing to make dedicated posters for our panels. We are considering making more dedicated posters for special events. We would like to continue to support the union-organized Goldenrod Printing Company.
• We want to add a list of “what the black cat house offers” on the back of the handbills.

Upcoming Events:

• Labor vs Capital is up on fb. The work is getting around. The event space will be cleaned before December 4^th. The draft for the Matrix movie night is in progress.
• We need to reach Call to Action and ask them to be on our panel. Wyatt and Jackson will work together on this.

Library Updates:

• We have a new very large bookcase. We want all wood shelves. Thank you Wyatt for this.
• Discussion about reorganizing the Library. We want a “not for checkout” shelf, so the rest of the books are more obviously “for checkout!” Also we conducted additional Extensive discussion about new possible arrangements of books.
• December 4th at 11am will be a library committee meeting / workday.
• We are still moving towards a digital database of all our books so we can showcase them on the website and know if the book is checked out or not.
• Jackson has a library donation. Asexuality, a book of articles. Thank you!

Meeting Adjourned 8:30pm

11/15/21 Minutes

In attendance: Jackson, Ty (Moderator), Wyatt (Secretary)
Start time: 7:10 PM

Event Review:

We had a good discussion on Women and Christianity that was in depth and wide ranging. We did dunk on Christianity quite a bit also recognized christian groups that prioritize/d social justice. Decent participation turnout, although not as good as usual pre-covid times. Our sanitation procedures were followed closely, thank you all. A couple topics we might do future events for surfaced during the discussion, such as Early history of Christianity, Queer People and Christianity, and how that is all related to the Matrix movies.

Update:

Wyatt attended the lantern making for Trans Day of Remembrance and Resilience. The lanterns will be displayed at the Hub Cafe on Nov 20^th from 4 to 6pm.

Winter Calendar:

We added February reading discussion to give people a chance to talk in a season otherwise stacked with two panels.

We decided on “Social Justice in Christianity” as serviceable event name for our January panel. We want to explore those dissident trends within Christianity that won’t allow the bigots have the religion completely to themselves. We want Christians with leftist politics to talk about their experiences with being a leftist christian. We have a moderator, a time, and two panelists (and plans to get a third). We will host the panel online.

With more work to be done and questions to be answered about our February panel, at this time it will remain TBA. We are not really happy about this vagueness on the calendar but it is where we are at.

Our winter calendar is finalized and going to production.

• Saturday, December 4, 1-3 PM – Labor vs. Capital for Beginners (A Community Discussion)
• Friday, December 17, 7-10PM – Movie Night: The Matrix
• Saturday, January 8,^, 1-3PM – Social Justice in Christianity (A Online Panel Discussion)
• Saturday, January 29, 10 AM, north side of the Capitol – Counter-Protest the Anti-Choice Walk for Life
• Saturday, February 12, 1-3PM – Marxism as Morality? (A reading discussion)
• February, Time TBA – Black Musicians and Liberation (A Online Panel Discussion)

Meeting Adjourned 8:27pm

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

Upcoming Event: Women and Christianity discussion is this Saturday. We didn’t post it on the website – oops! Ty took care of it during the meeting. We are going to have it as an in-person, masked-up discussion indoors, as it will be way too cold for an outdoor event. We will be hiding the snack table to remove a temptation for anyone to unmask.

Library donation: Wyatt has brought a couple books to donate, and we have approved both for addition to our library.

Reimbursement: Wyatt paid our artist friend $50 to create our new logo, and we approve his reimbursal for this.

Winter Calendar: Last meeting we talked about having more 101 events since we’ve noticed an uptick in people reaching out wondering how to get involved. Jackson proposed a 101 on labor vs. capital which we can use to also relate it to the strikes that have happened/are happening over the course of this year. This we’ll do on Saturday, December 4th, usual 1-3. We will postpone making a decision on whether this will be online or in-person until after this Saturday’s event.

We’ve got two panelists and a moderator for the liberation theology panel. We’ll try to get a third panelist, but now we are going to focus on scheduling. We will send some date/time options to those in the panel to see what works best for them. We’ll propose Thursday evening and Saturday during our usual discussion time. As far as the third panelist, we realized that our guest speakers have no Catholic representation and that given the Lincoln diocese is the one of the most reactionary conservative dioceses in the world, it seems like a notable oversight not to include. Once more details are finalized, we’re going to reach out to Call to Action to see if any of their representatives would like to participate.

As for the Black Musicians and Liberation, planning is still in the works. We would love to get an international perspective, and our prospective moderator may have some contacts.

Saturday, December 4, 1-3 PM – Labor vs. Capital for Beginners
January, date and time TBD – Liberation theology panel (event name TBD)
Saturday, January 29, 10 AM, north side of the Capitol – Counter-Protest the Anti-Choice Walk for Life
February, date and time TBD – Black Musicians and Liberation

Meeting adjourned: 8:32 PM

BCH Meeting – November 1, 2021

In Attendance: Marc (sec), Jackson, Wyatt (mod)

Meeting Start: 7:23 PM

Meeting Adjourned: 8:34 PM

Event Review

– Our movie showing, Nightbreed, went well. Viewers had a lot of fun. It was difficult to keep an eye on mask-wearing (probably a mix of comfort through low attendance, plus the snack table), so we need to consider this for future indoor events, should we have them.

– The discussion also went really well. Most everyone was engaged and had a lot to say.

– We also scheduled this during a Husker game day, but in the future we also need to be cautious to avoid this. It’s possible that we missed some attendees due to this time conflict.

Upcoming Event

– Women in Christianity discussion will occur on November 13^th, so we still have a bit of time to promote it.

– Wyatt posted the event on Facebook, and it still needs to be cross-posted to the site. Either Marc or Ty will take care of cross-posting.

– There is a lot to grapple with for this discussion, and we hope a lot of people are interested in taking part.

– It would be good for BCH members to read up on this history so we can talk about a variety of related issues, and push against dominant narratives.

Facebook Message

– We received a message from a neighbor who may be able to provide some IT guidance and support. Since fixing our site is a big task, having his help would be ridiculously appreciated!

– We more or less agreed that Marc would be the primary contact if we work with him in the future. We’re excited to work with him in the future. Wyatt will also offer a tour to our neighbor.

Logo Commission

– The artist we’re working with agreed to make the logo for $50 and 3 years’ worth access to the herb spiral. It should take about a month to complete.

– Marc got into touch with her to explain the final details.

– Wyatt just needs to send the payment; we unanimously agreed to pay her, and reimburse Wyatt for covering the payment initially.

Interview

– Ty and Jackson were interviewed by a grad student studying self-described anarchists tonight. Ty spoke to the interviewer for a bit over an hour or so.

– Apparently the interviewer is in the business college of her university, and is studying anarchism and entrepreneurship. It was an interesting interview and we were happy to share our perspectives and look forward to reading her thesis.

Winter Calendar & Outreach

– We have noticed a larger amount of people reaching out who are new to organizing/realize that things are difficult and want to help make things better. The garden also draws a lot of people in—likely because it’s so visible and honestly really awesome. It would be really useful to also set up a little free library/pantry so people who notice the garden will also potentially check out calendars, materials, etc.

– We also talked about needing more visual content on our site—photos/vids of events and the space, etc.

– We discussed having more 101-type events to specifically reach people who are looking for ways to get involved.

– Potential Winter events:

– Liberation Theology: Marc and Ty reached out to a friend who indicated they might be interested. Jackson also reached out to another potential panelist, who also expressed interest. We’d like this discussion to be very grassroots in nature, rather than from the perspective of more academic sorts. One of the questions we’d like to explore specifically is how can leftists work with Christian (and other religious) groups to create a better world. We also will reach out to the Unitarian Church in Lincoln to see if any Unitarians might want to take part in a panel. We also need a moderator for this panel. We discussed potential people to reach out to, including Methodists who experienced the recent split in the sect, as well as another companion who was raised in the Black Southern Baptist tradition.

– Marc will write up a more focused description to provide to potential panelists. We would also like to get folks’ permission to record the panel to add to our YouTube channel, if possible.

– In the past, panels have been really worthwhile; they’re a bit more work to set up, but they’re SO worth it.

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

1. Upcoming Event – We have a movie this Saturday. We’ve got some tidying to do in the living room, but we’re going to be alright. Ty and Marc will be bringing the DVD and an air filter. If the Facebook event’s guest list is accurate, we’ll probably have a small group.
2. Library Donation – Ty brought a book about housing inequality for our lending library. It’s a good fit for our growing section on urban issues and gentrification.
3. Research Interview – We are tentatively scheduling our interview with the researcher next Monday at 4:30 PM. Ty will pass along any further updates on the Discord chat if and when he gets them.
4. Winter Calendar –

We really should try to get this finalized in the next couple of weeks, but are behind schedule!

We discussed the possibilities of doing a Jitsi panel discussion on liberation theology for the holidays. We have a couple of friends who might be good panelists, and there’s some talk of perhaps approaching the Unitarian Church for a third panelist. We have a few other ideas of folks who aren’t necessarily within the Christian tradition, but we’re preferring left-wing Christians at this time as liberation theology is a specifically Christian.

There’s also a lot of interest in doing something labor-related with the current strike wave going on. Do we want to do a discussion event? Show a film? Wyatt and Jackson talked a bit about what we heard from the Kellogg’s workers on strike in Omaha. Could we do some videos with them for our YouTube channel?

Counter-Protest the Anti-Choice Walk For Life – January 29th, 2022

Black Musicians and Liberation event in February?

5. November Event – We need to get our Women and Christianity event up this week! We’re less than three weeks away already.

Meeting adjourned: 8:35 PM