Event:2015/09/17 Delegates Meeting

SWeekly Omni Delegates' Meeting - Sept 17, 2015

Meeting Roles

 * Facilitator/s: Matt & Rachel
 * Explanation of hand signals: "deaf applause","raised hand", "point of process", "directresponse"(wildcard), etc.
 * Stacktaker: Joe
 * Timekeeper: Kate
 * Notetakers: (helpful to have more than one) Patrick, Laura, Alex
 * URL of this pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/omninom
 * Vibe Reader: Joel
 * Next weeks facilitator(s): Alex and TBD
 * https://omnicommons.org/wiki/Facilitation

Delegates

 * BAPS: Stephen
 * CCL: Jacob (remote)
 * FNB: Helen
 * MPM: Kate
 * OpAl:
 * Sudo: Patrick
 * TIL: Joel
 * GWS: Rachel
 * Quorum:

Introductions
Introduce yourself: Name; Prefered Pronoun; Affiliation
 * Rachel, Global Women's strike
 * Brendan, sudo room
 * Joel, TIL
 * Laura
 * Joe, FNB
 * Matt, Finance
 * Patxu, Sudo
 * Kate, MPM
 * steven, Baps
 * alex, Baps
 * matt, sudo
 * libbie (remote), Becoming
 * jenny (remote)
 * jacob (remote)
 * sigma (remote)

Announcements
Next week on Sunday will be the full event so we have a chance to do more promotion. Do not want to compete with Police Anti-Terror Project for money/attendees Still doing the bake and rummage sale- if you would like to help bake talk to Alex (asizemoresm@gmail.com)
 * LOts of work on the building tomorrow
 * Rent party on Saturday is now 10-2 without meals/food or DJs. The reason for this is that there is an ANti-police Terror Project fundraasier at 3pm.

Bans

 * Dante Cano has been banned and was in teh building earlier this week.
 * Incident today between Robb and Jerome- tabling discussion about formal ban, in main time asking Jenny to talk to Jerome. In the mean time Jerome is not welcome into the building until he begins mediation because be violated the safe space policy.  Jenny is going out of town so would anyone else be willing to mediate?  Brendan has volunteered to follow-up with Jerome and Robb.

Building & permits
Meetings: Mondays at 8pm
 * This group needs help;https://omnicommons.org/lists/listinfo/building
 * Joe: RObb abd Jeremy have beedn doing a lot of work. We accidentally passed our next inspection. Got first layer of sound wall approved by inspector.  We are ready to kalk and get the next level of sound walling installed.
 * Laura: our door is ready but it won't ship until the first week of October because the org filling the order messed-up. It is really pretty and will be here soon.
 * Matt: we are making a lot of progess on our fire safety for the Ballroom and basement. We won't be having work parties for the next 2 Saturdays becasue of stuff goin on.Unskilled volunteer labor is what's between us and the end- that's what we need. Also, I just bought a key duplicating machine.  it is tootally lawful.I can show you how to use it.

Becoming Omni

 * Planning meeting Sunday 3pm - 6pm, then we'll send an EMAIL!!!!11111
 * We've been reaching out to different groups. Contact us if you'd like to talk about Becoming Omni!

Commons
Meetings: Sundays at 7pm
 * Laura: Not this Sat. but next Sat there is a wedding in the Ballroom- they will be here all day setting up and then the wedding starts at 4pm. jerome was going to be the main person making sure the ballroom was clean and since he will no longer be around we need someone to do that.  Please contact us- we need someone to clean!  If you need a few bucks and want to be a cleaner let us know.
 * Joel: I may be able to do that.
 * Laura: Commons has had trouble meeting the large number of requests so if you want to help out join us. We meet Sundays at 7pm.

Finance
Meetings: Every other Thursday at 7pm * Matt: Asking everyone to pay before Oct. 1st. Whoever hasn't paid Oct yet please do. We got the next bill for the 3 months of insurance required in the leaase. We will only need to pay for OCtober if we buy the building. I will check to make sure they will refund any extra time we pay for. matt finance: I sent some emails out seeing if any members have records of what they paid in rent. ballpark estimates. The bookkeepers need exact numbers. matt sudo: should get bank statements matt finance: I went to the Berk Law Practicum event on Sunday Berkeley law practicum has students who want to help out. We have to go to first meeting to get help. Sent out email to the listserv.
 * Please pay rent early this month, and any late invoices due, as money will be tight come October 1st!
 * joe: Can you give us any more exact numbers about our situation.
 * Matt: I can email a brief budget.


 * Jenny: You can now make recurring or one-time donations to Omni via Paypal or Stripe at https://omnicommons.org/donatehttps://pad.riseup.net/p/omninom

Buy the Building
Meetings: Mondays at 6:30pm * TIL may be willing to transfer their sponsorehip and MPM. BOth sponsored by Intersection for the Arts. Will have to check in with them. *We need more people, join us!
 * The Bay Area Community Land Trust met last week to go over our proposed Ground Lease terms. Waiting to hear back.
 * Moving swiftly along with our 501c3 application, one request:
 * In order for Omni to qualify for 501c3 status, we need to have 33% of our income coming from 'charitable source'. Rent doesn't count, unfortunately, even if below-market rate and coming from nonprofit orgs.
 * One workaround we're working on is asking incorporated (but w/o 501(c)3 desingnation) projects in the Omni to become fiscally-sponsored tax-exempt projects of the Omni. Omni would request a set annual amount and/or some percentage of income from these projects (typically around 5%).
 * Omni would take care of annual reports and a good deal of financial bureaucratic overhead, and projects would be eligible for tax-deductible donations and nonprofit grants.
 * Hoping to get responses from Optik Allusions, Material Print Machine, and BAPS to be consented on by the delegates as fiscally-sponsored projects next week. Sudo mesh is also interested. Contact Jenny if you have ideas for other projects that would benefit from fiscal sponsorship

Liberation Ministries Revised Proposal

 * Proposal for 'active non-member participation': https://omnicommons.org/pipermail/consensus/2015-September/000638.html
 * sudo room's suggested amendment:
 * LM will be a tenant for a trial period of 4 months (Oct 1st to Feb 1st) in which LM and the wider Omni community can build trust and affinity with each other. If the Omni community does not reach consensus to extend the trial period or enter into an official long-term arrangement with LM, then the trial period will terminate.


 * When will deliberation for the trial period begin?
 * Marc: Does the proposal invovle use of the basement or other space for their teen hangout on Fridays?
 * Stephen: They do want to have reoccuring events for teenagers on Friday nights. LM would like to hold events here Sunday morning starting around 10 or 11, have events for youth Friday evenings and have office space for counseling and meetings if available.  I think with a little planning we can probably find space for them for the times tehy need.  That is the main proposal they have put forth.
 * Laura: We basically scheduled the first 3 Sundays for Becoming Omni.
 * Do they need the ballroom for the first 3 Sundays, they'll just be starting may not need the space.
 * Matt: Stephen is there any amendment that would be neccesary give the information that Laura just brought up.
 * Looking at the propsal says they want the ballroom but other spaces would be okay if that is not an option.
 * Matt: Okay then no amendmendt is needed.
 * Would anyone want to block the year long proposal?
 * Patrick: Sudo is leaving the option open for the year long proposal depending on how the trial period goes.
 * Marc: We would agree on a trial period that is at most 4 months then they would not automatically have a space here.
 * Rachel: I haven't been invovled in this discussion but I didn't see alot of social justice work on their website. What type of social justice work do they do?
 * Stephen: They have not realized themselves yet. They have not fully formed and d loking for a space before they start organizing and actively doing more social justice work in the community.
 * Laura: My sense is that they are already doing work with youth in the community. lenise Pinkard is a minister that has done a class at BAPS called "Becoming a Spiritual Watrrior" and she gave cheryl a positive reccomendation.
 * Joe: Did you ask lynice whether cheryl's religious activities would be offensive to the structures or processes of the omni?
 * Laura: I wasn't there.
 * Joe: When Lynice taught that class, it was very well received and attended.
 * Marc: how many people have watched teh youtube video of Cheryl preaching? it doesn't give me a lot of hope that she would be a good fit for the Omni.+1
 * Joel: Why do you say that?
 * Marc: It was quoting from the Bible, questionable advice.
 * https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCTmZqcEV2F8mRiIO1eLbzQ/videos ?
 * Stephen: Cheryl never gave out this youtube as an example of what she does or what she intends to do. It is not a good example of what she intends to do.
 * Patrick: Also that was only one day of a sermon out of maybe 32 years of preaching. That is why we need a trial period.
 * Joel: I was just going to see that that is what the purpose of the trial period is- to see what the work will look like once they are fully formed in this space. It is hard to know what it will look like if they aren't here yet.
 * Matt: Is it a friendly amendment to add some sort of notice to the trial period? Maybe 30days before or 30 days after teh trail period.
 * Jazz fingers.
 * Laura: So the idea taht was put out was that there was a 4 month trial period and after that they would have time to find another space for a certain amount of time.
 * Patrick: That is not what Sudo agreed upon. Do not want to exceed 4 months- that was already a lot for some of our members.
 * Stephen: I would add that there is something in the amendment that there be a check in at a specified time before the end of the trial period to raise concerns
 * Patrick: Brendan also suggested that Sudo have representative that are very friendly towards LM that go to the sermons and check it out- that way we are welcoming them and not tip-toeing around a tense situtaion. Instead there would be continuous check-ins.
 * Sigma: Hopefully anyone would be welcome?
 * Stephen: Yes, EVERYONE is welcome!
 * Matt: How about we say in the notes that Brendan and Patrick will be ongoing liaisons to LM, and anyone else who wants to help witht hat can join them.
 * I admire LM for taking on thsi challenging situation. I would hope that we could at least give them 2 months notice if we were to ask them to leave.
 * Kate: I hope that we do not hold anyone's religious experience or affilitaions against them in predicting their activities.
 * Patrick: I want to respond to the concern that we or Sudo are objecting to is Christianity. From my discussions and reading it seems many sudoers were reacting to a sterotype that religions are like Jehova's Witnesses. Then I brought up that many of this centurys most effective radicals have been religiosly motivated - MLK, Malcolm X, the Zapatistas are holding down an automous zone, and are where a form of anarchism and religion are dovetailing.
 * Marc: I take issue with the way we have discussed this in a way because it assumes that the ppl who do not support this do not out of ignorance or lack of knowledge of the relationship between radical action and social justice and religion and spirituality. My objection is not about that- it is about using this space as aspace to preach a certain type of dogma.  If we were to use the space for that purpose I would leave and create anther hacker space.
 * Rachel: For me its not if someone is religious its more that when I looked on the website there was no evidence of any kid of work that OMni would support. Maybe this is anew direction she is gong in. I don't know enough or have enough info so I wil prob stand aside
 * Patrick: I want to clarify Marc that I did not at all mean to imply that you are ignorant.
 * Marc: You were saying that ppl in Sudo room were.
 * Patrick: That was my experience from our discussion- that some of the objections were based on a cartoonish idea of reliogion. We will address your concern, marc, during the trail period. We'll see if they are dogmatic and heirarchical etc. We won't know what kind of christian she is until we dance a bit.
 * Marc: We have some indications.
 * Matt: The things that Patrick and MArc are talking about is why I stood aside in the Sudo meeting yesterday. There were a lot of misconceptions and people were taling past eachother. Each sdie seemed dogmatic in their own way and almost like I was losing friendships. It made me sad. There have been every kind of opinion about religion was expressed, very diverse, which made it really hard for me to decide, or torepresent Sudo rooms interest. It's completely reasonable to ask for a trial period while we learn the thing we are saying here that we dont know. There are other examples of collectives having trial periods. Ther was more I didn't get.
 * Patrick: There is evidence that she is not a typical preacher. Her relationship with Lynice Pinkerd, what she wrote in her statements. I read an article by lynice Pinkard in Tikkun magazine about dismantling empire. http://tikkun.dukejournals.org/content/28/4/31.full.pdf To me, Lynice Pinkard and Cheryl Ward's Christianity looks like it falls into the tradition of christian anarchism, a strain of christianity that is decidedly anti-state, of which St. Francis of Assisi and Leo Tolstoy were members: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_anarchism
 * Marc: SHe may have interesting things to say not about religion, but my concern is that she is also preaching the bible.
 * Max: ther is already a group that meets in the basement where someone talks for 2 hours and everyone listens - Steve's class!
 * i don't get the context of this statement
 * Max was talking about dogma in the Omni and gave an example of a group that meets regularly at the Omni.
 * some baps class? maybe baps organizers should talk about it if it's pushing some 1-sided dogma
 * Steven: Im not sure if LM would agree to this amendment. She is feeling pressure from the people she works with because they want to get something started asap. SHe needs a yes or no. I'm not sure if they would be intersted i the trial, becasue they are interstedd in building a long term congregation. But if these are the best terms we can come up with that's what I'll propose to her.
 * Joe: When I first got to the bay area in 1984 you couldnt turn on KPFa whithout hearing the head minoster at 1st congregational church. Then the next pastor was the same. I would ask Cheryl to be aware that we could have resolved this very quickly if she had been able to use the ballroom for services for a couple of Sundays, but she want' able to.
 * Im worried that it will be worse to have them here for 4 months and then tell them to leave. Because there is potential for them to be turned off by this community and for their to be hostility or close to hostility becasue they come in to do something and we tell them they can't do it after all. It would be worse than if they just started soewhere else.
 * Kate: OMni has had problems connecting with the wider Oakland community. I agree with Marc that this is scary but I think it is worth seeing what happens.
 * Jenny: "problems connecting with the wider Oakland community" is really relative. We're just starting out, we have a ton of things going on every week. I co-facilitate a group that supports families of victims of police murder twice a month and we have an incredible community growing. there are social justice benefits and/or political film screenings every week. The collectives that compose the Omni are by and large not restrained to omni alone - food not bombs, phat beets, optik allusions... not to mention all the groups and projects that use this space for meetings and events, like community democracy project, positive news, sorry this is a ramble. I find that statement invisibilizing.
 * The text of the sudo amendment again: LM will be a tenant for a trial period of 4 months (Oct 1st to Feb 1st) in which LM and the wider Omni community can build trust and affinity with each other. If the Omni community does not reach consensus to extend the trial period or enter into an official long-term arrangement with LM, then the trial period will terminate.
 * Matt: If we give them a rental contract, they will definitely have to receive 30 days notice. If we give them an event rental contract, then it is more flexible.
 * Steven: My suggestions: at the 1st Omni meeting in December we put this on the agenda. And then we can give them some idea.
 * Laura and Matt amendment: that we have a 60 day and a 90 day check-in where both groups evaluate how things are going and then discuss this with each other. Then if it is going really badly we can work out how to make it the remaining month(s). If its going ok but there are some rough spots we can discuss how to work those out. If it's going well, then we can anticipate our more permanent relationship. We will negotiate a 4-month rental contract through the commons working group.

Concensus on the proposal with Sudo's amenment and Laura and Matt's above amendment

Voting In Favor: 5 Opposed: 0 Abstain: 1

CCL SEM
(if patrik is present maybe he can give an overview) Marc: We have been offered a scanning electron microscope. It might need to be in the basement Would take up about 3x3 + a table with a computer. No one in CCL has expressed the willingness or ability to take it on. But it would be cool. It costs $1000 to move including going down stairs. We have to decide before the next meeting. Stephen: this isn't really a proposal or it isn't clear if it is. There was more discussion without reaching an agreement.Time ran out.

= End of Meeting =
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