Event:2017/03/28 Security Culture

attending

• Julian - BAPS
• Lori - GWS
• Alan - CCL
• Nicole - friend of CCL
• Steve - BAPS

checkins, meeting security, & agenda review

• how are you? if we don't know one another, let's introduce ourselves
• meeting security
  • at the last meeting the issue of names appearing in notes and of notes being published openly was discussed with some amount of concern – what are ways forward on this?
    • Lori - minutes are perhaps less useful for without names them?
    • Steve - what are notes for?
      • Julian - keeping a record of what was discussed and decided so that a group can move forward taking such into account
    • Steve - if we are going to keep minutes it should be with an eye towards keeping them towards educational value for folks not at the meeting; minutes as a project
    • Julian - keeping names in, but putting them off the record?
    • Lori - keep in mind there's nothing really secure about the omni as a whole, so if we're not putting names in these minutes it seems not that big of a deal
      • tell people this isn't a secure building; that already heightens people to the issues.
    • Julian - make a reminder that the minutes will be public along w/ the ability to be kept off the record
    • Steve - if we do want to discuss things that may need to be secure, we should go somewhere else
    • Julian - let's send these as a proposal to the delegates committee for delegates/working group meeting practice, namely: omni delegates and working group meetings that will address items of sensitive concern should begin with a reminder that the Omni is not a location that is secured from possible surveillance. if private things need to be discussed those discussions should occur elsewhere. additionally, anyone attending a meeting should have the right not to have their presence at a meeting or things they say at a meeting recorded in notes, as they choose. meeting participants should be told they may ask for both particular and general instances of their name and their words being kept off the record. for example, "i would like my name kept out of this whole meetings' notes," "i would like my name not to be associated in the notes with what i just said," "i would like what i just said not to be put in the notes," etc
  • agenda reviewed, sounds good to folks

updates

• Alan - CCL meeting resulted in decision favorable to this working groups consensus with respect to the matter of concern from the recent past. future practice remains undecided.

security/know your rights resource review

• folks introduce the resources they brought
  • Alan - Don't Talk to the Cops – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik&t=34s
  • Lori - National Lawyers Guild (NLG) "You Have the Right to Remain Silent" https://www.nlg.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/kyrpamphlet-Eng-May-2015-FINAL.pdf
    • NLG are extensively involved in supporting the movements
    • roughly, if the FBI or police come, step outside, close the door, asking for their card, my lawyer will call you.
      • that should be our practice
    • Steve - NLG history - ACLU would only take on constitutional cases, 1st ammendment etc. Communist Party Emergency Civil Liberties Committee - they would take on cases. ECLC & ACLU became over-burdened; NLG emerged then out of the New Left. ACLU not so left oriented
    • Lori - this document covers ICE, Grand Juries, etc.
  • Julian - Anti-repression committee's trifold - https://antirepressionbayarea.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/KYR-Trifold-2-pages.pdf
    • the "principles of solidarity" there might be a good example of something we could adopt as an addition to our statement of solidarity
    • they key point is that we don't talk to the police concerning our comrades.
    • Lori - in the case of GWS, e.g., in the case of a rape some women would want to report this to the police, & we don't want to control folks on how they seek justice
      • we probably won't want to flatly adopt the anti-repression principle "we won't talk to the police aobut our comrades" - we could have a policy: "we as the omni don't talk to the police" but its hard and probably undesirable to control the speech of individuals associated with the omni
  • Julian - proposal: we send out these resources with the notes & ask folks to review them for our next meeting
    • people should bring back thoughts about what the context of adopting protocols or policy's for the Omni would be, what would need to be
  • Steve - if we're talking about not talking the FBI except maybe in certain circumstances, that needs to be contextualized within a broader context of collective self-defense & self-reliance, so that in those possible exceptions the police aren't the only or first option; that contacting the police would only be set as a very very last result

legal advice on security protocol

• can our lawyer comrade come next time, or is their further word from them?
  • maybe meet a couple times before?
  • what questions do we have?
    • Julian - how would you adopt these kinds of general practices suggested by the various security/KYR resources to the specific circumstances of the omni?
    • what kinds of policies should we adpot? what practices? how do they fit at the omni? what do you suggest in the case of any emergency?
    • Alan - perhaps we have somewhere clearly specifying our policies? on the website
    • Julian: perhaps to integrate the practices we're discussing in the the "safer spaces policy"
    • Lori - we should also make sure to invite folks beyond the working group to this discussion with Ben

omni know your rights training

• Alan - much will be in the video
• Lori - developing practical tools should be our primary goal

collective self-defense

• Julian - last time we discussed possible risks of non-state actor attack's that may provoke need for self-defense messures
  • how do we build omni's capacity for self-defense?
• a possible proposal for the delegates assembly – if your group is contacted by law enforcement then you should check in w/ omni before moving forward; if you plan on contacting law enforcement you should check in for omni consensus before moving forward
  • Alan - this potentially presents difficulties for emergency situations
    • Steve - we should not report to law enforcement, but get name and photo & spread around to the movements. the movements and our own collectives provides a great number of folks with great self-defense experience & familiarity with armed or dangerous people
• Julian - having communications systems (currently worked on by Jenny in Comms working group) for urgent call/response would help too!

political education

• if composing radical politics and ethics among commoners will make protocols / procedures (especially, e.g., punitive ones) less necessary, how do we incorporate that into these other security culture practices (or is it a separate process?)
• Lori: what if BAPS took political education project around this matter on to bring to the Omni & delegates committee? its not that it's not important, its more of a question of where does it in all the work; potentially very nicely for

next steps / action items

• Julian - send out meeting proposal to consensus
  • security/Know Rights resources to working group & solicit response
  • follow up with jenny & ben
  • will coordinate w/ folks to plan the next meeting