Event:2014/10/02 Weekly Delegate's Meeting

• Facilitator: Stephen
• Stack: Kevin
• Timekeeper: Chris B.
• Notes: PX, Niki
• Delegates: 8?
• Quorum: Yes
• Vibe Reader:
• explain hand signals and share the URL of this pad!
  • hurry it up, irrelevant elephant

intros

• preferred gender pronoun + icebreaker question(say a word)
• steven, he: elephant
• Jesse, he: sailboat
• Julian
• Cem from CIIS: anarchy
• andre he, red star
• alana, she, fig
• jr he black
• Korl she thing
• elena neighbor
• leyya
• abby she fox
• marianna she you are art
• Gerald
• liz she purple
• troy reluctant revolutionary
• laura she nevermind
• sara she carrots
• sara shee love
• matt abujim?
• joe he basking
• mary
• tom
• evan
• niki
• mia abstaining
• noemie she subtlety
• david he us
• kevin he complicate
• alice bee lady
• ian he platinum
• chris he convivancy
• patrick he papa
• patrick he tired
• ian he bag
• laura she bubbles
• nora they linoleum
• ally she butts
• david he anarchosyndicalism
• kathleen all green
• brel he serpent

brief announcements

• new website URL & mailing lists
  • omnicommons.org
  • omnicommons.org/lists -- confidential, consensus & discussion
  • SUBSCRIBE HERE: https://omnicommons.org/lists/listinfo
    • Basically: announce, discuss, confidential, and working groups.
• roof is DANGEROUS++
  • Proposal: We lock the roof until we can collectively figure out a way to make it safe.
  • Passed unanimously
• Gerald : Building & General Announcements
  • Inside Urban Shield will be held @ Oakland High. Talk to Gerald if you are able to help (they need volunteers)
  • Trying to create electrical blueprints for the buildilng. Talk to Gerald if you want to help!
• HELP Y'ALL! MUDDING / TAPING DRYWALL PARTY TOMORROW ::)) - All 'big' holes in walls filled; now just small ones left!
  • Scaffolding generously lent by Alice of Sudo Room!
  • Emergency Exit lights working in ballroom!
  • Anytime from 9am-until it's done!

• Black Hole fun film stuffs!

We need a new CFO!

• niki would like to resign ASAP. but transfering responsibility will take time
• obsessively checking the bank account
• making deposits to the account (western federal)
• writing and sending checks: bills, loan repayments, rent
• being aware of when loans are due
• monitoring and reporting back on debt
• making sure we don't go below our month's reserves, if so, raise the alarm
• scanning + logging all receipts in quickbooks
• we have a bookkeeper who will work with us for free. work with the bookkeeper to make reports
• chasing people down when they need to pay
• maybe we need a financial working group?
• niki: we need at least one person who is ultimately responsible
• brel: agree with Niki, but maybe we should have extra bodies to shoulder rent-collection. brel volunteers to do it
• Niki: the CFO puts in at least 1 full day of work per week (8 hrs)
• troy volunteers to be Niki's understudy.
• Next Finance WG meeting: next Tues at 7pm

OMNIdance announcement

• OMNIdance gave notice yesterday that they no longer want to be a member-collective. They plan to vacate the space upstairs as of DEC 1st.
• Sarah will be available on Sat at 1pm if people are interested in talking about forming a Working Group to administer that space for dance and other body based work.
• Leyya - from Temescal Art Center happy to help
• In light of these conversations, it's important for us to allow the space to become what it wants to become and not insist it be what we imagined it would be

wg report-backs

Facilitating Collectivity

• Just sent out a survey to all collectives, to get a sense of how everyone's doing, what projects they're working on - intended to help us facilitate collaboration and collectivity

Communications

• Newsletter- simple structure proposed, October blast drafted. Who can help make it legit?
• Mailing lists and new domain are up! sudokudos to yar!
• Currently working on: Omni global calendar (prototype at http://cal.omni-oakland.org ) and ballroom/basement reservation system (prototype at https://booking.omnicommons.org )

Community & Fundraising

• Brunch potluck and filming on Sunday, 10:30 for food and 11:30 for orientation and camera roving 12–5.

building

• "If you let someone into the building, you are responsible for them as your guest." quoted from Jenny's email

print studio & TIL

Revised proposal to split TIL into two member collectives, Timeless, Infinite Light and the Community Print Studio. 1) Timeless, Infinite Light will pay $400/mo (+ util, tax, ins) to have their small press office upstairs in Bedroom A. 2) The Community Print Studio will pay $600 for the space in the basement between the Library wall and Sudo Room (Full re-Proposal to be sent to the listserve on Sunday 9/28 after the Community Print meeting)

discussion

• not a lot of time to discuss this but we'll try
• mia: how is the rent being split? TIL still pays $1000, will split into $400 (TIL) and $600 (CPS)
• ian: that's why they were paying 1k in the first place
• patrick: clarify's sudo's intent. reads sudo-discuss email.
• niki: think about omni as a larger community, not just individual collectives inside us. i.e., if you have more members later, would you be willing to contribute more money later?
• dk: needs to be a meeting about finances, space, $/sqft, etc. rise above is miffed about paying 1k for half the space when she's a single mom and CPS is a group of people
• yar: it's because that's what they said they could pay. that's how we've always done things, that's our precedent. also, FYI some sudoers, in pure do-o-cratic fashion, earlier today moved these pews out of that corner to make room for CPS tables. change all the things!
• straw poll: FNB, Sudo & CCL are blocking for now

OMP

http://wiki.omni-oakland.org/w/Event:2014/09/25_Weekly_Delegate%27s_Meeting#OMP

• 9/9 consensus. yay! WELCOME OMP!!

LA COMMUNE LOCKABILITY PROPOSAL

Posted by La Commune, 9/30/2014

This proposal is a second attempt to define hours and lockability for La Commune. We need to be able to lock our space to secure our stock & equipment against theft and vandalism, and we also want to make sure our security solution works with the needs of the Omni as a whole.

In light of feedback from members of Sudo Room & CCL, we propose the following lockability setup, effective November 1.

La Commune will be open from 12noon to 6pm. The cafe's main door, at 48th & Shattuck, will be locked at all other times. Access to the Omni before and after those hours will be through the 48th Street side-door.

La Commune is committed to ADA access. In order to maintain ADA access at all times, we will adopt the following solutions.

We will enclose the back entrance to the cafe with gates that will give access to the ADA bathroom via the 48th Street hallway while restricting access to the rest of the cafe space. This will permit us to lock the cafe while allowing after-hours visitors access to the ADA bathroom.

On evenings when ballroom events will take place after 6pm, La Commune will designate a point person who can unlock the cafe door & assist visitors who need to use the wheelchair lift. Since the wheelchair lift requires an attendant at all times, this solution does not represent any further loss of autonomy for visitors who need to use the lift.

La Commune has striven to accommodate all the feedback we have heard on the question of lockability. We need to be able to lock the store in order to open on November 1. If there are serious objections to this proposal, we hope to hear them. In the absence of such serious objections, we hope the Delegates Council will pass this proposal.

discussion

• [written comment, not read aloud] There are several entirely reasonable concerns that have been repeatedly voiced to the longstanding 'lockability' proposal as it stands that are, just as before, fundamentally unaddressed in this latest version of the proposal. This proposal only really attempts to address the issue of access to the ADA bathroom, but even that is not at all adequately addressed for several reasons that have already been stated multiple times in person and over email. I urge La Commune to actually read the concerns and questions that others have made and meaningfully address them, rather than simply restate once more what is essentially the same proposal. In short, this proposal unfortunately speaks exclusively to the desires of the cafe in isolation and exclusion to the ideas and concerns of their many comrades elsewhere in teh building, that must in fact share the same building with them, not an entirely different one.
• not a lot of time to talk about it but niki asks people for their help

safer space & conflict resolution policies

• 8/30 Proposal from the CDC to approve the safer space and conflict resolution policies, with the understanding that both are living documents that will continue to evolve as we learn and grow as a collective.
• Safer space policy: http://wiki.omni-oakland.org/w/Safe_Space_Policy
• Conflict resolution policy: http://wiki.omni-oakland.org/w/Conflict_Resolution_Policy

defining terms

1. PREJUDICE. Prejudgment; specifically, for our purposes: having a bad opinion of a person or persons due to language, facial features, percentage of epidermal melanin, etc. - it is personal, rather than cultural/ structural/ systemic. While prejudice is very often informed by, and is closely connected to racism, the two are not equivalent. A white janitor might be prejudiced against white office-workers, for example.
2. RACISM. Emerging in the 18th century as a justification for centuries of European colonial domination, racism describes an evolving set of ideas and attitudes based on an irrational belief in the inherent inferiority of those seen as belonging to other "races" based on physical appearance and ancestry. Given historical precedent, and the global distribution of political power and wealth, racism has historically - though not always - been anchored in doctrines of white supremacy. Not simply reducible to equivalent forms of cultural stereotyping or the seeming permanence of ethnic conflict in history, racist beliefs and attitudes are massively reinforced and continually recreated by racially discriminatory laws, discourses, and forms of state violence.
   • Racism was initially based on the notion that there were distinct biological differences between supposed races. As this idea has been increasingly challenged, it has been replaced by cultural racism, which posits that there are heritable cultural differences between groups that explain their relative social position, and these differences mean that they are incompatible with each other. In either case, racism remains a set of beliefs used to justify and perpetuate material racial inequality and what Ruth Wilson Gilmore has famously called “the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.” (Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, 2007)
   • thanks to Chris Chen for helping me with this!
   • prejudice + power --- i find this to be reductive, but let's talk about it - we may be able to build it into something powerful because easy to understand (chris)
   • "It appears that modern and symbolic racism are most closely associated with political conservatives, who disclaim personal bigotry by strong and rigid adherence to traditional American values (individualism, self-reliance, hard work,etc.), whereas aversive racism is more characteristic of White liberals (Dovidio & Gaertner, 1996, 2000). Aversive racists, according to these researchers, are strongly motivated by egalitarian values as well as antiminority feelings. Their egalitarian values operate on a conscious level, while their antiminority feelings are less conscious and generally covert (DeVos & Banaji, 2005)." SOURCE: American Psychologist, v62 n4 p271‐286 May‐Jun 2007(Jose)
3. POWER. Access to resources and to decision makers. Power to get what you want done, the ability to influence others, the ability to define reality for yourself and potentially for others. The legitimate/legal ability to access and control those institutions sanctioned by the state. The ability to wield unchallenged authority over others.
4. SYSTEMIC / STRUCTURAL OPPRESSION. The ways in which history, culture, ideology, public policies, and institutional practices interact to maintain a hierarchy – based on race, class, gender, sexuality, and/or other group identities – that allows the privileges associated with the dominant group and the disadvantages associated with the oppressed, targeted, or marginalized group to endure and adapt over time.
5. RAPE CULTURE. a complex set of beliefs that encourage mens' sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and mens' sexuality as inherently violent. In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm . . . In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable . . . However . . . much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change.

Rape culture in the U.S. is used to police and control women’s bodies as well as their access to resources. Rape culture silences women. Rape culture blames women for ALL the violence done to women.

breakout

~40 people here. 8 groups of 5 each?

Discussion questions for small groups:

• Why do you think it's necessary for the Omni to adopt a safer space policy?
• What are ways in which the Omni currently challenges dominant cultures?
• What more could we do to ally with struggles against racism and rape culture?
• What problems, questions, or suggestions for improvement do you have for the safer space policy as it's currently written?
  • smaller breakout conversations during weekly meetings
  • more one on one conversations

rejoin

• creating spaces for loving accountability
• challenging dominant gender paradigms
• including men and children as victims of rape culture
• if someone is on the receiving end of something harmful, it's important for them to not face it on their own - it's the communities responsibility
• need to create practical policies for keeping the space safe
• what does it mean to be responsible for people you let into the space
• the safe spaces policy will be the groundwork for everything that we do
• many of us come from a place in our politics where we would really rather not call the police. in order to make that a reality, we need to do the work to cultivate a safe community
• more small break-out meetings, more dinners, coffee dates, walks / hikes, creating relationships
• it's always our job to take care of one another
• coming to these meetings is not the most inviting (is it ok to speak? how? when?) Safety is just one paradigm with which to examine problems of power and vulnerability.
• difference between transformative justice and rehabilitive justice
• the work of challenging dominant cultures can be really emotionally exhausting. there are potent opportunities for us to turn these into opportunities for healing "dream forward a new way of being together!"
• "We can't help each other if we can't trust each other."
• Hope we can continue to experiment with new meeting structures
• Join the CDC every Saturday morning at 11:00am

Meeting ends. Things below were not discussed.

NOT DISCUSSED

dedicated BAPS space

Brought by BAPS 2014-09-25 Due to the proliferation of dedicated space, BAPS requests dedicated space in the form of: The room next to the TIL office upstairs in the mezzanine The small office on the other side of the TIL office The balcony room in the ballroom.

• Last week, Backspace expressed a reservation that a small room they had hoped to use upstairs would then be unavailable (note: which it would not _necessarily_ always be, as BAPS intends to keep these rooms open for shared use any time BAPS does not use it for a class). DK, on behalf of BAPS, has spoken with Margaretha regarding Backspace instead storing their stuffs and being able to base themselves out of a room on the ground floor instead, since this additionally speaks to the accessibility needs for a wellness collective.

PROPOSAL : KIDS ROOM & KIDS WORKING GROUP

Brought by La Commune, 9/24/2014 La Commune would like to spearhead an initiative to transform the present Timeless Infinite Light office (vacant as of October 1) into a Omni Kids room. La Commune would like to stock this room with used books available for children to read. We would like to call on our community to convene a Kids Working Group and figure out what the best way would be to create free or low-cost childcare at the Omni and to navigate the relevant bureaucratic hurdles. This proposal would reserve the present TIL office for such use, and would reflect our collective desire to have such a childcare space there -- further details to be developed by a nascent Kids Working Group.

• Awesome idea but to note there are a lot of other groups who have been thinking about that space, and also there has been no investigation as to what further building modifications would be required by the city for officially taking kids (such as making further building exits and fire stuff, mostly). Also the insurance will have to be talked to as this is not part of our current policy. IE, we want kids here but the due diligence has not been done and it needs to be first.

splitting allocations

• PROPOSAL (Sept. 2): To split equally between financially contributing collectives and tenants, expenditures which delegates have voted to allocate to projects. Finance WG will send funding request proposals to member collectives for an equal share of any non-invoiceable costs

building modifications & bans

• since these now must be considered at meetings, let's always keep a section here to remind us

Proposal for Proposals

• Suggestion for how to do proposals*

   Before submitting: Write out your idea. Show it to as many people as you can who have a stake in your idea and consider their feedback on your proposal. Revise. Don't submit it until the folks you have talked to think it's fully fleshed out, clear, and acceptable. 
   When submitting on the pad, please include: the date you put it on the pad; your name, or the name of the working group that developed the proposal; the name of the person who will be at the meeting to present and take questions.
   Does anyone have any other suggestions?

flag

We propose that the Omni raises a flag from the main tower of the Omni, over the 48th & Shattuck entrance. It could be a red flag. Or it could say "Omni". Whatever the collective decides. Perhaps it could be the Omni logo?

• Alternatively, a big "OMNI" sign above the entrance, with each of the letters made by a different group (dibs on the "I" for CCL). Can be lit up from battery powered by small solar panel on the roof.
• sudoroom proposes we build a shed. we could store bikes in it?
• sudomesh proposes we put a node on the roof and blast some free wifi to the neighborhood!

PROPOSAL: Let's only meet every OTHER Thursday!

• yar's counterproposal: let's all do more work throughout the week so there's less to say at meetings
• danny suggests: WG's/committees leave each meeting recognizing decisions made & action to take