Event:2015/03/22 CDC Meeting

Attendees

• Julio, Amgo, Dusty, Sarah

Agenda

• Check-ins
• Brief Visioning of CDC
• Racism, Intersecting Oppressions at the Omni

Brief Visioning of the CDC

• Amgo: cdc has been conflated with conflict since I started, came to cdc to discuss a conflict. My entre' into Omni. Hard time teasing out. Maybe we can create a blurb, just for us, what we are trying to work on here. Anyone want to propose how to do that?
• Julio: I'm confused.
• Amgo: Don't know how to start the conversation, maybe we already have that mission...
• Sarah: There have been a few thematic things with cdc. One is conflict, then other buckets like burn-out, dealing with intersecting oppression, how the omni interracts to the neighborhood, resisting gentrification, these have come up over and over and pushed back due to urgency of conflict stuff. We can define..what are the topics we feel energy in addressing right now? Spend two months spending energy on this and this. We can come up with tactics about how cdc can address the issue. Talked about hosting pot-lucks and speakers for the Omni. We can figure out what are most appropriate tactics to address topic.
• Julio: Are we listing things? We could list everything and prioritize it. Like talking about money, helping laura with survey results, interpersonal conflict and between collectives not sharing info. For me, I got involved because I saw a lot of conflict with people being excluded. More I think about it, a symptom of, not burnout, but an escelation of work not being done that needs to get done, and this impacts the way we interact with each other. I've just started trying to work with people on events and such and it's really hard. Some people are working with like 10 things. Also, trust. Even for me to do it, it required other people knowing that I had the right intentions...I think there is a threshold to trust of people that's high. Maybe doing potlucks and other things to get to know eachother is good.
• Sarah: Yea, I call that building solidarity. There is a high threshold to trust. Part of it is, ....this project is so precious and precarious and we can't let anyone in and....a fine line between this and unwelcoming culture.
• Amgo: Seems like there is an interesting combo, I came into the finance group and got immediate trust, but almost a desparate need. Maybe it was like, if you're dumb enough to step into the role go with it. I also hear, I want to talk....the organization, decentralization of information, like that being a trust issue or just what that is. Why is it difficult to decentralize information and making it difficult to get done by multiple people. An example, finance are a few people and then there's building who is in my mind David Keenan, who is trying to do everything and overwhelmed and not getting a lot of help. There are emergency style issues that need to be delt with and in part this is because he doesn't have the help he needs. He needs a committed working group person and I feel that there's a bottle neck there. Can't onboard committed members but there isn't an entrance...not many entrances.
• Sarah: That makes a lot of sense. Not clear for people who want to get involved
• Julio: If i can interject, there are some things that just need to happen and some things that we just try to rush. I try, when, I know when I'm going to get overwhelmed and I think people don't do that. I think it's important to try and foment that culture. It causes, not that it was a bad decision, but if you get to a breaking point you're making decisions based on this, not carefully. So much buildup to trusting people, don't know if they're committed and not enough people are donig the things.
• Sarah: Totally a visious cycle. When getting burnt out it's easy to get super protective. An unwelcoming culture, so nobody volunteers.
• Julio: This is why welcoming is so important. Would be good to have more of that, to do some more specific things, if they could be the funnel of non-specific work, to be a sort of HR department, to vet people in a way. To have this be a more structured piece.
• Dusty: good to have a central point (HR department/volunteer coordinator/etc)... would have loved that if it existed when I started coming to the Omni. Had an advantage because already knew Niki and David from BAPS, which others don't have that advantage. Talked with Niki about questions on prefigurative politics. Suggested to just get involved. Went to two delegates meetings, but required some patience.
• Amgo: We have a how we organize group and if this was more structured it would be great. What if we had optikal illusions create a PSA or sorts on the website. I keep having thoughts about how we have to organize our priorities. Maybe the onboarding of new people hasn't worked because we are dealing with disagreement as to what is most important to be doing right now. Two possibilities in conflict, is it openning the building up or getting more people?
• Sarah: Is there a visioning process happening now?
• Julio: Laura said that they are going to gather some answers to the survey and we are working to get this together but it may be around May or so.
• Dusty: Goals of the CDC ... to burnout, how to get more people involved.
• Sarah: Maybe we can say, We are working on burnout
• Amgo: adding work around the decentralized processes in relation to this.
• Julio: This is definitely related to dominant culture
• Sarah: we valorize and reproduce the things in our culture which says, in order to be good subjects we have to work to death. This is capitalism, this is the protestant work ethic.
• Dusty: There is a problem, too, with the notion of the bottom liner...that this is a problem.
• Amgo: There is this piece about being burning themselves out and the valorization. It keeps happening with kinda everybody, I really have a strong appreciation for people who are putting in a lot of time. I haven't thought of it within this idea of the paradigm because it feels that it is outside the system of gaining something back. This is a thing in a lot of the conflicts that have happened. Somebody disrespecting somebody's efforts and undermining the value of those efforts. The burnt out person is like, fuck you I've been doing all of this work. I'm curious about this liminal, appreciation versus resentment, or entitlement, there's something in the middle there. There is something to appreciating, and as soon as it becomes a reason to be not-gracious the value declines.
• Sarah: There is an unequal way to see and value labor. Some is more visible, other labor just as essential goes unseen.
• Julio: I have a job, right, a corporate job and try to minimize it to have mroe time to be here. People derive some value of always being busy, even if it's not productive. Think this is something to thing about here. Are we doing a lot of important things because they are neccessary or are we just doing things that are not neccessarily useful? I do this all of the time.
• Sarah: This is why visioning would be so important. Do we want to shift to talking about how cdc can address this? Beginning of the brainstorming.
• Julio: We still have this agenda item about racism and such, do we want to table that? Is that related to kwic?
• Amgo: I think so
• Sarah: I'd stay to chat about that.
• julio: Seems that we're discussing burnout and maybe shift to the other discussion.
• Sarah: David Brazil described burnout as the jording knot of the omni.
• Amgo: speaking with Kevin about this dialectic between restorative vs. punitive culture is something that the cdc should keep discussing.
• Sarah: Isn't that a conflict thing?
• Amgo: I think it's relavant.
• Sarah: Feel that it's part of this issue, just having conversations with those not sitting at this table, asking what a transformative approach mean to you? From the conversations we have I think we're very aligned toward transformative...and not having the capacity and that's the impetus of starting a new group. Maybe you have diff perception
• Amgo: Thinking abou this in terms of preventative stuff,
• Julio: They are related things, Mary is going to have restorative justice folks give a speal, Laura mentioned a NCV thing, all related to the notion of preventative. Not exactly a conflict thing
• Dusty: Part of visioning work? the larger work of figuring out what are priorities . People are being careful or scared of the dychotomy.
• Amgo: I'm trying to pinpoint....this is something about challenging dominant radical culture, working and applying and such.
• Julio: All of these things like nvc and restorative justice has a notion that we don't know. Just because we are here doesn't mean that we can't be challenged because we are outside of some of dominant culture. I want to accept people's perspecitve but want to have folks challenge themselves to challenge our own culture. just because we want to do something that's radical it doesn't mean that it's better. Could be making things worse. A lot of anarchist culture is oppresssive, something that is well-documented. Part of it is not being willing to challenge ourselves.
• Sarah: Segway into intersecting oppressions conversations?
• Julio: Leave time for action items.
• Sarah: I really agree that there's soething about the call out culture aht perpetuates a dynamic, like, you're a racist and the whole of your person is reduced to the problematic behavior that is exhibited and I get to be the innocent person who's done her work. we're all in a process. In some days I feel that I'm a good anti-racist ally and other days I suck at it. That's how it goes. Anything we cna do to chip away. Part of dominant radical culture.
• Julio: Have to do this every day, not a thing on resume.
• Amgo: Maybe we could leave as potential goal, may never be fulfilled, of developing questioning practices for omni. Inspired by Julio sayning everyday. What is a practice look like? that is somehow working on the work of anti-oppression and the work of humility toward that work.
• Julio: Recalled to me soemthing a month ago...proposed to change in safe space policy..."

https://omnicommons.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Safer_Space_Policy%2FProtocols&diff=3070&oldid=3059

• What do you need for Omni Commons to be a safe, comfortable environment where you can fully self-express, based on mutual- and self-respect?

What are the specific, relevant actions or patterns of behavior that have prevented Omni Commons from being this kind of space for you?

• What needs to change, what actions need to be taken, and what behaviors need to stop in order for this space to be welcoming and safer for you?
• Sarah: There is a toll on emotional work and we need to think about this. Have said outloud that the kwic issue is a race issue and I fear that I'll be called out as an anti-feminist and I feel like I am stymide about how to consistantly bringing out complexity.
• Julio: I don't know a whole lot about it and I was feeling something a bit similiar, there is this notion. I didn't get the sense that kwic and paula didn't understand the values of the space. I was told that kwic would solve all of our problems and I told her, nobody can do this. He may feel that this is true and that he wants to be a strong leader but this somewhat clashes with values here...and perhaps this is a clash in culture or value or whatever....that speaking over people is a cultural experience and when a man speaks over woman in the space we have this conflict.
• Amgo: Right, like anarchist white culture atempting to overcome power and oppression and domination and how this is unknown to people who don't come from an anarchist perspective......

burnout

• Sarah: what can we do?
• Amgo: Have a joint meeting with how we organize, and welcoming.
• Sarah: could always propose a different time for our meeting too.
• Amgo: We could try to have all of these working groups meet up, they have so many of the same people.
• Sarah: Just put out a call, aim for two weeks
• Sarah: We go in with a specific and organized agenda. Like idea of indentifying specific relevant working groups.
• Julio: Yeah we could try just to meet with one group first.
• Amgo: Thursday April 2nd, how we organize, cdc, and welcoming?
• Sarah: My sense of this conversation is not that we will solve it, but strategize...how we organize, your funtion is what and how can you do that to address the problem? etc. Very specific to each working groups.
• Dusty: Like seeing each group and figuring out which.
• Sarah: Next week we come to some ideas for how to do this so we can go into the meeting and share what we're doing.
• Amgo: May be out of town in that meeting time.

how-we-organize@lists.omnicommons.org welcoming@lists.omnicommons.org

• propose thursday april 2nd 5:30, one hour. how they envision their work in the organization as a whole, and issues of burnout and how they can plug-in as a working group.

Conflict