Meeting Minutes 7/13/2020: Ecofascism, Upcoming Garden Day, Fall Brainstorming.

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

>Event Review – EcoFascism

Ty, Marc, Tanner, and Adam had a good conversation about recognizing ecofascist language. The term Deep Ecology was started by a Nazi. Sometimes people on the left use this term. Participants indicated interest in more conversations about ecology in the frame of Covid, Climate Change, overpopulation? and ecofascist rhetoric. Jackson brings up concerns that not many people showed up compared to the social media reach. Maybe we need to re-frame the issue?

Participants also followed up with exchange of readings. Jitsi online platform worked pretty well.

>Upcoming Events

Harvest Day is August 22^nd. We should post the fb event next week.

“The summer heat is here and the garden is growing! Join us on August 22^nd to harvest potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, peppers, pumpkins, and more, from our front yard garden. Eat stuff and take stuff home for you and your family. Learn about what plants look like before they make it to grocery store shelves and learn about just how good garden veggies taste. Also, check our our 1000+ gallon rain barrel system. Learn about the successes and failures we have experienced through the phases of experimentation we have endeavored over the last two years. Hear about our experiences gardening during climate change and under the City regime.”

Frame the event as an educational opportunity to explain the rain barrels and what potatoes look like. Harvest tomatoes, carrots, beets, peppers, squash and pumpkins.

>Bail fund Update

The bank account is set up and debit cards are ready. Now we just need to fund-raise!

>Fall Calendar 2020
Ty likes the idea of a community trash pick up day. Early October or September.

More ecofascism discussion ideas?

Longevity of leftist organizations and movements? Compare NoDAPL v BLM Furgeson? How to keep activist movements focused, mobilized, moving forward? Police repression of protest participants?

Whats going on with Electoral Politics? Can we vote our way out of this mess? Mid October.

We are considering giving an in person events in the fall, using masks and hand sanitizer. We have about 2 or 3 weeks to get the fall calendar ready. We may consider doing physical calendars again.

Adjourned 8:22pm

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

No one was available to meet tonight. We’ll try again next week.

In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Marc, Ty

Start time: 7:10 PM

1. Gardening Day – After working out a few details, we got the event up on Facebook. We’re excited for this Saturday.

2. Bail Fund – There have been some technical snags getting the bail fund set up. We’re hoping to have the bank account squared away in the next few days, as well as getting a burner cell phone to be the public contact for anyone who needs our help. In the meantime, we’ll start promoting on social media now and soliciting for cash donations from our friends. Regardless of how long the demand holds up for this service in the current wave of BLM protests, we are prepared to offer this service for the long-term.

Meeting adjourned: 7:50 PM

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

Start time: 7:15 PM

1. Bail Fund – We are committing to starting a bail fund to help with the legal costs of the many protesters being targeted by the police during this crisis. We’re looking into starting a bank account to make soliciting online donations easier.

2. Garden Day – Ty will try to draft a description for our upcoming garden day, now that he has a list of projects from Wyatt. There was some discussion of whether it would be appropriate to move forward with promoting this event since there is also a BLM rally happening at the Capitol at noon. Since our event starts much earlier, we’re currently planning to go ahead and also promote that rally on our event page.

Meeting adjourned: 8:00 PM

In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Ty (via video chat)

Start time: 7:20 PM

1. Upcoming Event: Our reading discussion on the “Image of the Anarchist” is this Saturday. At Bailey’s suggestion (via group chat before the meeting), we will try our luck with the encrypted, open-source video chat service Jitsi. A PDF of the reading has been posted to the event page tonight, but Ty is unsure whether he and Marc will have enough time to retype it into an easier-to-read document for those with visual impairments. The PDF is, at least, pretty clean and not too hard to read for anyone with pretty good vision.
2. Summer Calendar: We are done with it and it has been shared to our Facebook. The Garden Day for June is already coming up quick, as it will be two weeks from this Saturday. We need to get that up to Facebook very soon; Ty is willing to help draft it, but he will need a list of likely projects from Wyatt to finish it.

Meeting adjourned: 8:03 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

In attendance: Jackson, Ty (secretary), Wyatt

1. May Discussion: Marc and Ty are working on getting the article ready for online reading, and Ty will get the event up for it before this coming Friday.

2. Summer Calendar: We’ve decided to keep the summer calendar very informal. June will have another gardening day, July will have What is Ecofascism (which will be online if need be), and August will have a harvest day for the garden. Next week we’ll decide on set dates and times.