2014/05/03 Omni Hackathon/Values

Existing list of core values on Wiki:

• http://wiki.omni-oakland.org/w/Main_Page
• http://wiki.omni-oakland.org/w/Values

The Omni Collective chooses to value:

• Community over seclusion
• Consent over coercion
• Communing over isolation
• Consensus over factions
• Do-ocracy over bureaucracy
• Process over the tyranny of structurelessness
• Cooperation over competition
• Commons over private interest
• Independence over centralization

The Omni Collective chooses to value:

• Fostering radical discourse and education
• Maintaining an active, publicly accessible commons
• Providing a venue for innovative cultural production
• Striving for social, economic & environmental justice
• Standing in solidarity with all oppressed people
• Cultures of consent, against rape, violence & exploitation
  • Safe spaces
• The survival & thrival of our communities and neighborhoods
• Create a community where we can be autonomous in a non-alienating environment

Concerns with existing values

• feels apolitical
• casts equal shade on rape and paperwork
• could be more explicit
• what is the forum?
• Seeming contradiction between 'consensus over factions' and 'independence over centralization'
• Move away from the culture of head-nodding and consensus models where those who have the most privilege / comfort / loudest most persuasive voice in a group influence
• What is the motivation / aim of communicating our values?

How do we develop our values?

• What we want to achieve vs. What our process / philosophies / politics are
• Framing things in terms of being for over being against
• Broad more abstract values that include explicit examples
• Public-facing vs internal functioning
• Political vs process

Moving Towards....Moving Away From

• Activity / Engagement....Passivity / Apathy / Hopelessness / Apolitical
• Creativity....Productivity
• Community....Alientation
• Consent....Coercion
• Dialectic / Rhizomatic....Programmatic
• Need to adopt conflict resolution policy
  • Sudo Room's conflict resolution policy: https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Articles_of_Association#Section_3.2_Conflict_Resolution
• Values are often latent, and inform all of the other aspects of our functioning together
• Broad statements we can all get behind, but from there we need to define what these terms mean
• Values there as these dyadems we point at each other from across the space, all holding this orb of vague
• Maybe we should be actively articulating what we *don't* want in the space
• Definition of safe space at the Omni:
• How are we putting our collective resources behind anti-oppression?
• Value of specificity, clearly stating we're antiracist, antihomophobic, etc
• Plastic vs. non-negotiable values
• Adopting practices models - a framework for how we deal with specific situations in non-oppressive manner
• These values are ways for people to identify us when "shopping for community" - functioning in a manner similar to hashtags

Link to Safe Space / Dominant Culture notes: