In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Matt, Salem
Start time: 7:20 PM

1. Upcoming Events – We have two events before our next meeting! We’ll meet on Saturday for our healthcare horror stories discussion, and we’re protesting Columbus Day at the Federal Building on Monday. We think both of these events will be straightforward, and we think we’re ready for them.

Winter Calendar –

January 27, 2024 – Nebraska Walk For Life (and our counter-protest)
February – Black Musicians and Liberation?
Movie for Black History Month?
Community discussion about everything being racist? // White supremacy as a foundational value in U.S. history
Billionaires being allowed to kill the planet? // Dystopian sci-fi movie? Elysium?
Something critical about Christmas (Christian supremacism/consumerism/etc); Christmas’s War On Us
uniting/organizing the left/labor organizing/been a good year for strikes
Luddism/traditionalism and bigotry
Space Sweepers (South Korean sci-fi film)?
Do we dare do something about human nature?!

Meeting adjourned: 8:26 PM

In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Matt, Salem
Start time: 7:07 PM

1. Event Review – We had a movie night with the documentary Gather on Friday night. We had a good turnout, as our community definitely seemed interested in the intersection of Native rights and food politics. The discussion was a little on the slow side, but our audience may still have been absorbing the information of the film. We may have been able to have some Native people in the room, but we accidentally scheduled this on the same date as the second day of the second-annual Otoe-Missouria visit back to Lincoln. We’ll have to watch out for that conflict in future years.
2. Calendar of citywide events? – As a continuation of the previous schedule conflict, Matt is interested in helping to build a calendar of other relevant events across the city. This would be a major undertaking, but also a very powerful resource if completed. He will need help compiling all of the events, but has technical skills to help organize this information into a calendar. Jackson suggests that we should probably start with recurring/annual events.

3. Winter Calendar –

January 27, 2024 – Nebraska Walk For Life (and our counter-protest)
February – Black Musicians and Liberation?
Movie for Black History Month?
Community discussion about everything being racist?
Billionaires being allowed to kill the planet?
Something critical about Christmas (Christian supremacism/consumerism/etc)
uniting/organizing the left

Meeting adjourned: 8:18 PM

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

1. Upcoming Event – Our movie night for Gather is this Friday. We’re late getting up on Facebook, so Ty says we need to push it hard on social media.
2. Calendar Distro – Ty has made progress on distributing calendars, but we don’t have them up yet in the College View area or the Unitarian Church. Salem is not here to ask if the Haymarket has been done.
3. Sticker Order – Our friend is still wanting to print more queer liberation stickers and is willing to front us $100 to make another order of them. We would be happy to work something out, but we have a few questions to sort out before we move forward. Ty will continue that communication.
4. Columbus Day protest handouts – Jackson needs to check the materials from last year and see if we need to print more informational zines about Columbus’s crimes.
5. Website Training – We spent the second half of the meeting over video chat with Marc as he walked us through the back end of our website.

Meeting adjourned: 8:20 PM

In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Matt, Ty
Start time: 7:12 PM

1. Event Review – We had our reading discussion about fast fashion on Saturday. The turnout was poor, with only Black Cats attending. We had a good discussion. We had some further discussion here about our below-average attendance on events this year, with some discussion of how we can turn things around. Matt thinks it would be good to have more events with co-host groups.
2. Upcoming Events – We desperately still need to get Gather advertised online. Jackson will submit a draft ASAP. It’s also about time for us to be drafting stuff for the October health care discussion and the Columbus Day protest. Ty will start work on the healthcare event. Jackson thinks we can adapt last year’s Columbus Day event pretty easily. Jackson reports that we still have last year’s signs, but we may need to print more informational handouts on Columbus’s atrocities.
3. Calendar Distro – Ty is still working on the ones he committed to putting up. Salem said on Saturday that the Haymarket still needed to be done. We’re a little behind, but we’re getting it done.
4. Website – Marc wants to host a training for us to learn how to better edit our website as he’s needing to step back on his Black Cat responsibilities. We’re tentatively planning to spend the second half of our meeting next week via Jitsi or Zoom to do that.

Meeting adjourned: 7:45 PM

In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Salem

Start time: 7:07 PM

1. Upcoming Event – Our reading discussion on the environmental impact of fast fashion is this Saturday. Salem is preparing talking points. Jackson is having trouble formatting the readings for printing, but hopefully someone can help him with that.
2. Fall Calendar Distro – Ty came by over the weekend and collecting all of the calendars needing to be distributed beyond downtown. Salem took the downtown calendars today. Hopefully we can get them all up in the next few days!

Meeting adjourned: 7:50 PM

In attendance: Jackson (secretary), Matt, Ty

Start time: 7:05 PM

1. Event Review – We hosted the documentary Hail Satan on Friday night. The turnout was low, but we had a good conversation afterwards. We’re not sure if the low turnout was caused by poor advertising, an unpopular movie choice, or the Covid scare we had at the house this month.
2. Advertising Events – We need to do a better job of getting the word out about our events. We are considering radio advertising on KZUM and/or KRNU, but their websites are badly outdated and lacking good information on how underwriting works and how much it costs. We also talked about tabling. We’re not sure of any upcoming events that we would be interested in and able to table at, nor have we definitely seen any kind of bump in our attendance since tabling at Lincoln Earth Day or Star City Pride.
3. Calendar Reimbursement/Distro – Jackson picked up the fall calendars from the printers last Friday. He will be reimbursed $23.60 for getting those. Marc will be distributing calendars on UNL campus.
4. September Events – Jackson added the Fast Fashion event to Facebook and our website. He still needs to create a draft for our Gather movie night.
5. Swag – A friend wants more copies of a sticker that we produced for Star City Pride, and has offered to pay for the entire print run. We think that sounds swell.

Meeting adjourned: 8:25 PM

Meeting Started: 7:05 PM
In attendance: Jackson, Marc (sec), Ty, Salem

Upcoming Event: Hail Satan?

• We will be showing Hail Satan? this upcoming Friday night, from 7-10 PM. We have the DVD and a working projector.
• However, one person living at the Black Cat House is currently ill with COVID but at the stage where they can be around people while masked; Salem suggested being transparent so potential attendees can make informed decisions about whether to attend.
• Jackson brought up having someone on mask-duty on the porch so that, before people even enter the house, they should be wearing a mask.
• Marc also brought up that there’s now no transparency about COVID rates in Nebraska, but wastewater trends were up before the dashboard was removed from public access.
• Ty suggested drafting a post on our Facebook/site event pages so that people can stay informed about COVID safety. Jackson volunteered to write this up, and it has been posted. Marc cross-posted the update to the event page on the website.

Pride Vendor Survey

• Star City Pride sent out the surveys for vendors to respond to. We will be sending in feedback and responses soon. Ty shared the survey questions in the Discord channel for others to respond to as they are able to.
• Ty will synthesize responses and send the survey in.

September Advertising & Newsletter

• Our first event in September will be on the 9th – a reading discussion about fast fashion’s effect on climate change.
• We will combine two articles about the topic for reading; both are relatively short.
• We still need to write up the event description for the Facebook page and website.
• Right now, Salem will take point on writing up the event description draft, and anyone can also help out with that.
• Ty suggested writing up the event description for our movie on the 22nd, so we have more time to advertise. Jackson volunteered to write up the description for Gather.
• Marc brought up needing photos for the September newsletter, and having the descriptions for the events before the beginning of September would be most useful. The newsletter would go out about a week before the discussion on the 9th.

Virtual Meeting Procedure

• Tonight due to COVID we decided to have our meeting virtually. Ty suggested that we should make a post to our Facebook page when we’re doing this, with a link to the Jitsi meeting.
• Marc also brought up some security concerns, e.g. it being easier for bad actors to join and disrupt a meeting. He suggested using the Jitsi moderated meeting. We would then share a public link and a private link for moderators, just for particular people who are able to serve as mods.
• Ty suggested posting the public meeting link just to our website, and not Facebook, due to the current cesspit of social media. However, FB is unfortunately one of our main avenues for reaching the community. We are tabling this discussion ’til later to determine the procedure more specifically.

Finalizing the Calendar and Distribution

• Marc will finish up the Fall calendar, and others will review it for errors before sending it to print. We need to get it done and ideally distributed before the end of the week. He’ll try and get the designs done ASAP.
• We’ll send the calendars to the print shop on campus, so they’ll be ready for pickup on Wednesday.

Meeting Adjourned: 8:34 PM
Tabled: Virtual meeting procedure details

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

Start time: 7:25 PM

1. Event Review – We hosted our community discussion on right-wing cults on Saturday. We had a good discussion, but our turnout was limited to the people at this meeting! Jackson wonders whether the topic may have been too niche, but it also sounds like we had a lot of competition with other events around town at the same time.
2. Advertising – We had some extended discussion about better advertising our events. There was some interest in maybe pursuing radio ads on KZUM, but we’re not sure we could afford that at this time. We also need to be doing more to cross-pollinate with other groups. And we need to get our bulletin board rebuilt out on the sidewalk, after city inspectors demanded we removed it on the grounds that it was “indoor furniture that can’t be kept outdoors.” Wyatt may be building something new for us, but there is no timetable at this time.
3. Reimbursement – Jackson bought DVDs of two documentaries that we will be running soon, Hail Satan? and Gather. He spent a total of $18.43, and would like to be reimbursed. He will be reimbursed, and these DVDs will join our lending library.
4. Fall Calendar –

Saturday, September 9th, 1-3 PM: Fast Fashion’s Impact on Climate Change (a reading discussion)

Friday, September 22nd, 7-10 PM: Movie Night: Gather

Saturday, October 7th, 1-3 PM: American Health Care: A Horror Story (community discussion) for October

Monday, October 9th, 4:30-6 PM: Anti-Columbus Day Protest (at the corner of 16th and O, in front of the Federal Building)

Friday, October 20th, 7-10 PM: Movie Night: The Young Karl Marx

Friday, November 3rd, 7-10 PM: Movie Night: Coco

Saturday, November 4th, 2-3:30 PM: Neighborhood Clean Up

Saturday, November 18th, 1-3 PM: Workshop: Difficult Conversations With Your Bigoted Uncle (working title)

Meeting adjourned: 8:25 PM

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

1. Upcoming Event – Our community discussion on right-wing cults is this weekend. Ty will reach out to Arya, as this was kind of her brainchild. We hope to see her on Saturday. Otherwise, Jackson just has a bit of cleaning in the space to be ready for a public event.
2. Donations – Our good friend Dr. Dance cleaned out her office and offered us some things. We will be using the paper plates; Ty notes that it is often possible to tear them up afterwards and compost them. There were also some books; we’ll add a couple of them to our library and save a couple of others for next year’s yard sale.
3. Website Reimbursement – Jackson was billed $34.99 for the renewal of our website domain. He will be reimbursed.
4. Fall calendar

Saturday, September 9th, 1-3 PM: Fast Fashion’s Impact on Climate Change (a reading discussion)

Saturday, October 7th, 1-3 PM: American Health Care: A Horror Story (community discussion) for October

Monday, October 9th, Time TBD: Anti-Columbus Day Protest

Saturday, November 4th, 2-3:30 PM: Neighborhood Clean Up

TBD: Movie Night: The Young Karl Marx

TBD: Movie Night: Gather

Possible Coco Movie Night on November 3rd if we do it

Probable November discussion date will be on the 18th because of Husker schedule

Other themes for events? Unions?

No movies on October 6th or November 24th

Meeting adjourned: 8:30 PM

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

1. Library Donation – Marc found us an anthology about disabled women. As our current disability offerings are pretty meager, this is a welcome addition.
2. August Movie – We still need to get online advertisements up for our Hail Satan movie night! Rae offered a very rough draft on the Discord, but she was understandably busy with getting ready to move away. Matt has seen the movie, and volunteers to work on the next draft.
3. Website Update – Marc has updated the little box on our homepage to suggest visitors check out some of the new stuff on our website.
4. Listserv – Marc is drafting our August listserv update. We want to send that out at least a week before our next event, which only gives us a few days.
5. Fall Calendar

Saturday, September 9th, 1-3 PM: Fast Fashion’s Impact on Climate Change (a reading discussion)

Saturday, October 7th, 1-3 PM: American Health Care: A Horror Story (community discussion) for October

Monday, October 9th, Time TBD: Anti-Columbus Day Protest

TBD: Movie Night: The Young Karl Marx

Possible Coco Movie Night on November 3rd if we do it

Probable November discussion date will be on the 18th because of Husker schedule

No movies on October 6th or November 24th

Meeting adjourned: 8:45 PM