Event:2014/04/28 Inclusion Task Force Meeting

First meeting of the Inclusion & Bias task force

Details

3:30pm @ Black Spring Coffee (2930 Telegraph Ave, Oakland)

Notes

Why we are here

Letter from Kazoo

Do-Ocracy

talk about what could imagine the group doing

Troy- librarying interest in the omni as a space to move to orientation process fit them in, inclusivity around skill sets with people who are like-minded

• myers- briggs
• learning styles
• different ways we learn to figure out what we are interested in
• in order to achieve specific objectives, we need an organized structures
• develop a structure on our interests.

Kazooo

• African American and Latino community
• really needed
• still feeding gentrification in that neighborhood
• Screen printing shop/studio
• half-vocational training
• Representation of POC

Margit

• inspired to call this meeting out of two delegates meeting

David Brazil - Omni Appeared White

• Something that I was concerned with personally
• How to create an environment which is successful and accessible for POC, Diversity, queer, trans,
• How to engage with this project.
• Open to how we grow together
• How to have an anchor
• Empowerment
• I have worked a lot collectively and shit always comes up around race, sexualty

Danny

• Thrilled that this one of the first working groups
• run a few cooperative non-profits
• anti-oppression
• bringing training into the work I do around anti-oppression/ inclusiveness
• this group, in particular, hoping to bring some of that( experience) into the group
• constantly differing to groups whoa re successful in real outreach

Stephen

• I am not officiated with the collectives
• very much interested in the idea
• here more to listen and observe and slowly start participating in issues of anti-oppression
• micro cinema

Sarah

• Part of Dance collective
• have been coming to some of the omni meetings
• excited about the project in general
• majority of the collectives are white
• pretty concerned about that
• really excited that this group is happening
• begin to be really intentional about how we are talking about/ handling these issues
• agree with margot, these issues do come up.
• invested in how the omni can resist white supremacists, who owns land, who has access to these
• It has some to do with who we are inviting in and how we are dealing with each other as organizations, and how we are looking at our own collectives critically to improve our own culture.

Anna

• helped run sound at Silvia F event
• inspired by the idea of a space for visionaries to construct alternatives to what we’re living in
• a poet, interested in a space for expression
• some experience with community organizing, less with diversity outreach

Margit

• Do we want to meet again? Half a hour, we will go to that.

Kazoo

• Concerned about diversity committee
• if we are taking a stance of radical activism, we should be doing this work all the time
• it should be in our culture
• individual responsibility rather than one group’s sole responsibility
• problem is so big and deep, how are we going to make this change happen?
• omni perpetuating whiteness and power

Margot: What is happening in the collectives that we don’t know about?

• These things take time.

Danny - cult consciousness

• happy this working group exists because for logistics exist
• bottle neck of information
• there needs to be a place for that conversation to reverberate/ held
• legal/financial/space/flood of elemental stuff being worked on outside of the once-a-week thursday
• sensitive to the information structure that holds that bottle neck tight
• this for me involves my attention to bring the conversation back to the group widen that look

Stephen

• haven’t been in oakland for a long time
• hold out / kilombo
• details of their restructuring process

Kazoo

• white people involved in starting it
• academics who have a certain lingo
• a way of interacting and being
• same functionality of the hold out
• people who hold that space do not function in that way
• hold out called out for being white culture domination
• “we don’t know what to do.”
• it wasn’t already this thing
• people weren’t doing the internally
• white person who is living in an
• restructuring is sort of like a coup
• huge falling out
• highly technical academic world

Anna

• processing that, and a problem with BAPS being highly theory-based
• people assert theory is critical to action
• in activism, it’s vital to see language domination
• and that’s BAPS’s strength
• and it’s important and it needs to be mitigated
• how can BAPS and technical/academic theory participate??

Troy

• Plain Talk, a book for lawyers
• we’ve been acculturated to believe and act with… vulnerability
• can we say, I don’t know?
• and hold ourselves accountable to finding agreement?
• I want to see different areas (not divisions or hierarchies) where we can overlap
• I learn that spending a whole entire day with people is the best way

Margit

• Value of having this group and the concerns that are around that
• The genealogy of the organization
• There are a few groups that started, a few months in, a crossfade from a few people doing the work, into something that is more collective
• the technology savviness
• how each of the collectives has its own unique and beautiful language
• How we can see that as something that is crossfading, how we have to learn each other’s languages.
• Just by naming the challenge of learning the languages of the different collectives.
• I find that when we talk about diversity, it becomes very easy to go into places that are safe, but I feel that it is harder to talk about race, class, education.
• How are we going to get into with the implicit bias we have? ( within a predominately white group)
• As a facilitator, how do we keep this conversation in the biases we experience?

Kazoo

• not to meet in public space
• talk about uncomfortable issues in private

Troy

• anti racism tool kit
• Kazoo’s house as a potential meeting space

Danny

• Going to meetings for other organizations which are doing exemplary works
• rocky terrain bringing those folks to omni meetings
• strong holding back urge to bring folks that are way more talented to bring folks who are taltened with demographics
• holding back because we can do this ourselves
• a nod in the right direction
• strategic coalition, inviting people who are exper

Anna

• what about going door-to-door?
• maybe, once we have the lease?

Sarah

• we’re still trying to figure out how we talk about ourselves
• part of that is the crossfade (of a few ppl doing a lot to more people doing a lot)
• putting intention into articulating how we present ourselves

Kazoo

• making it “for” the neighborhood, not “with” the neighborhood so it “fits”

Margit

• calling this strategy sessions for self-definition and identity?

Stephen

• strategy .. for what goals?
• there are different levels of risk people face, the idea that there’s something we can reach
• and that can be very white

Nikki

• that goes back to the kind of language, which I experience at BAPS and in this meeting, too
• I see this when people who are not part of the “academic” community … dismissed!
• that is the problem of language, of being open to the possibility the conversation may go where you didn’t intend

Anna

• a question is, how to make people feel welcome?

Danny

• Fundraising - intentional event for folks to bond a little bit
• not about raising funds but as a means to feel comfortable with each other
• Challenging dominant culture
• The owning class owns the housing plays out interpersonally

Nikki

• non-academic conversations dismissed

Kazoo

• conditioned to lead and direct
• how to find ways to share leadership and direction

Margit

• in facilitating this, I hope that we can rotate facilitators
• coming to this open,
• the group provides the material

Nikki- there is never a perfect time

Everyone- we can meet on the 12th

How to give space for people to say what they want to say without being shut down.

Some ideas gain more momentum than others unintentionally.

Sarah

• Second kazoos request of meeting in a private space

CONTACT KAZOO FOR ADDRESS

• 330-5.

Sarah will facilitate

Kazoo : the idea of doing outreach before we get the space

troy: point of process:

• over descriptive, have three idea chunks, etc

Anna: I have fear going about a neighborhood only once we are confident and secure

Sarah: these things take time, and having requirements for next steps may burdensome

• we don’t want to lose trust — we need to be reasonably sure we’re getting the space

Margit: anything doing outreach ought to involve the delegates

• a report-back to the delegates
• there are steps — seeing a one sheet and getting feedback and so on

Nikki: what if it was less “we’re coming in” and more “what would you like to see in the neighborhood”?

a conversation

Danny: One positive thing in our favor

• Landlord has good standing in the community
• appeal to him and his partner about outreach

Margot: accessibility in the building

Do-ocracy

• the rational that anyone who is able to do something ought to do it.
• sometimes that is done with how it is crowding folks out
• fixing work without any openness open

Margot

• resources
• do-ocracy

ANOTHER VERSION OF MINUTES WHAT THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DYNAMICS OF THIS PROJECT?

HOW CAN WE SHIFT OUR THINKING SO WE CAN DESEGREGATE RACIALLY

( Kazoo... works predominantly with african americans)

OMNI IS WHITE/ PRIVILEGE CENTRIC AND WORK TO ADDRESS THE ISSUES OF CREATING MORE OPEN TO ADDRESS

• sex/ sexuality
• race
• class

DANNY S.

• WORKED IN NONTRADITIONAL TRAINING PROCESSES...ALWAYS NOW DEFERRING TO MORE ESTABLISHED GROUPS TO DO INCLUSIVE WORK ACROSS DEMOGRAPHICS AND

ISSUES OF -DOMINATION - LAND OWNERSHIP -WHO HAS ACCESS TO THESE MASSIVE RESOURCES WE WISH TO HOLD IN COMMON

take a look at ourselves as a collective and how we want to build

Anna

• expression space
• poet
• not much experience with diversity
• looking help with that

preliminary aras of focus for the group

• envision to address institutional privilege
• create resources archives
• advocate how to advocate the allocation of resources ; an anchor

---> culture and practice of inclusivity and desegrigating our lives

Read the book " the myth of Whiteness"

white privilege, shame, and guilt and oppression centered around racial segregation and unequal power dynamics.

less technical language and practice

"Plain talk" book

we must not hide behind language

just because we need to cognitive mapping or divide

DEVELOP A PROCESS OF INTEGRATING CULTURES

• ( languages and stories... learning each others languages)
• develop an open processes to engage in creative and communicative activities within the community that build across perspectives and cultures

Get to know your neighbors first ( after we get the loan)

addressing self definition

before developing strategy we need to asses and address and the power dynamics at play so we can help people feel welcome and a part of the group.

DEVELOP A METHOD TO ASSESS AND INTEGRATE LANGUAGE STYLES AND ARCHETYPES VALIDITY

the direction of conversation controlled is a part of the dominate culture which can be challaned by