Event:2021/09/02 Delegates

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Omni Delegates' Meeting - September 2, 2021 7pm-9pm

Meeting Roles

  • Facilitator/s:
  • Stacktaker:
  • Timekeeper:
  • Notetaker/s:
  • Next meeting's facilitator(s):

Delegates

  • ANV: inactive but silver was on for a bit
  • CCL: patrik
  • CSC: active but nobody here
  • FNB: helen
  • FYE: inactive
  • GWS: rachel
  • LL: inactive
  • Sudo Room: active but nobody here
  • Sudo Mesh: active but nobody here
  • Quorum (2/3 of active groups): 3 out of 5 is 60%, we need 66%...

Agenda

intros

  • We are front-loading most of the meeting into these intros! Now is the time to put forward any of the following things, many of which used to have their own meeting sections
    • introduce yourself: name, pronoun, affiliation, if you're a delegate
    • do you have any unmet access needs at this meeting?
    • what meeting roles you'd like to help with
    • discussion topics or proposals you'd like to put on tonight's agenda
    • report-backs from any of your working groups
    • updates from your collective
    • any brief announcements
    • updates on any conflict mediation
    • if you've asked anybody to leave the building due to safe space issues
  • please be BRIEF! Less than 4 minutes per person! Anything that might take longer must be put on the agenda as a discussion item
  • rachel, meeting would be more accessible with a written agenda, it's hard for her to go to a meeting without that. delegate from gws, she/her. not much to report. we've been on august break.
  • patrik he/him ccl. next members meeting in 2 weeks, will decide whether to open events for the public. will still have max 12 people in the space.
  • sarah bookkeeper commons/finance/building
    • fire inspection today went pretty well. inspector gave us a handful of things that need to be fixed. we've fixed most of them, and are making arrangements to fix the rest of them. and since robb is here, i'm going to leave the meeting.
    • robb: am i banned from meetings?
    • patrik: that'd be a yes
    • rachel: what kind of rule is that?
    • patrik: People who are asked to take a break from Omni should also stay away from electronic platforms where they might meet the people they are in conflict with. sarah left becaues he's in the meeting. that's the exact reason why.
    • From the Banned page https://omnicommons.org/wiki/Banned: "The Omni Commons is dedicated to creating and maintaining a safe space for all. Unfortunately, this means that we must occasionally require certain individuals to leave and stay away from the Omni's physical OR VIRTUAL space."
  • Maryann: Not much to update. people have been on vacation
  • helen: i wasn't expecting to be delegate but joe doesn't seem to be here
    • fnb is not taking a break. we're involved in effort to preserve peoples park, which is under threat. there are lawsuits against UC expansion plans and effort to put it on register of historic places. i don't usually attend the 1st meeting of the month. but i'm interested in the proposal to set up a different system for when things go wrong that'd be more [effective?] than just banning folks. a 2-tier system that would depend on the severity of the problem. there was no formal proposal but i want to help.
  • yar she/her - burned out
    • sudoroom folks are still doing stuff but it's inactive because no delegate has come to 2 meetings in a row, because i quit at the beginning of last meeting
  • joe he/him fnb, ready to find out what's going on
    • yes we passed fire inspection, just a few things needed to be fixed. yar's understanding is that we get approved on good faith.
    • wants to hear a financial report covering the options david & sarah were talking about. can we start having events in ballroom? can we make some money? open for business?

Improving Omni’s safe space & conflict reso policies

  • DK would like to work on this, would prefer to work on this collectively. Please contact him if interested.
  • helen is interested in participating

Fundraising

Conflict

  • Conflict resolution/mediation process with Silver and Rob is restarting
    • Meeting with SEED planned. including 3 observers
    • Yar is the de facto conflict steward - SEED considers her the Omni liaison, and she gives us updates on progress
  • Separate conflict with Sarah, Jenny, Yar to be resolved after that
    • Is DK still conflict steward for this one? Handed off to someone else?
    • Sarah: plan was to have Toan do it? DK talked to Toan
  • joe wants to know what's the deadline. hard for a person to be in limbo for so long. like how they hold people at the border.
  • [notetaker missed a lot]
    • yar thinks this is not a good analogy. ban from omni is not immigration detention. he's still free to live his life
    • maryann agrees with joe. no human is illegal. feels that way about robb's ban. believe it's unjust to ban a person for verbal disagreements. i understand they can be hurtful sometimes but i think immediate bans that don't have to go through any kind of due process screening / passing a smell test, i don't think that's appropriate for verbal disagreements. i do for any thread of violence, any actual violence or any crime or hate crime or overt racism/sexism/etc, i do believe the immediate ban is necessary. but i think there's different levels. verbal arguments/disagreements/ so forth are on a different level. to me, banning a person for their speech, you kinda have a constitutional right to that, and tho i know that doesn't apply to a private corporation like omni, the principle of banning people because of speech is very difficult for me to accept as just.
    • sarah: it got to the point of harassment
    • maryann: WHELL! when we were harassed nobody gave a damn
    • sarah: it's an unpleasant feeling
    • maryann: absolutely it is.
  • maryann: i've also heard a lot of harassing speech that was directed at robb. but if you folow the logic of the safer space policy as it is now, virtually all of us could ban each other. almost all of us have had verbal conflicts with someone at omni, disagreements with them, been lied about, been harassed. i could ban some of them myself if i believed in that
  • patrik: of course we ban people for what they say. racist speech, threats online. i agree there has to be a gradation, and there is. there are people we've wakled out the building and said "you'll never come back here" and that was on a moment's notice without consensus process. this whole process we're going through now is for when there's more complication going on. in this case we try to take it offline and resolve it between those people and then bring it back to the community to decide if we need to ban somebody permanently or is this resolved. that's what's happening now
  • helen: however, the process now does involve banning someone int he meantime. somehow i think the thought is that we need to be a little more subtle, have more options, more different things that we can do. i think maybe the thinking of some people is we need to set up a system that's a little more flexible. let the punishment fit the crime.
  • patrik: part of it is that we've been really bad about documenting the policies we agreed on years ago. the idea is that when people are asked to stay away from the conflict they might also stay away from wherever they meet people online. now maybe that's hidden somewhere in the archive so we need to do a better job on the wiki.
  • rachel: i agree with maryann and helen. i think there needs to be more of a process than "i don't feel safe therefore this person is banned." no. there needs to be more of a process. more knowing what the issues are and spelling them out. we've asked, give us some examples, and never been able to get any. i just feel it's unjust the way it's happened to. violence yes, defenitely ban somebody if there's violence or threats of violence, but not so open ended. anyway. i dont' agree with that ban.
  • maryann: i think one of the problems is the time. it doesn't really take any great amount of sophistication to find out that the length of time this mediation that was asked for between robb and silver, i became aware of the need for it, request for it, last october. it's now september. it's not happened yet. it's about to happen, but that just doesn't cut it. there has to be some kind of immediate response before peoples' emotions build up and increase and things get exaggerated and people get put on sides. joe's said this before - where the origins of all this started. and nothing's changed. i'm gonna make a commitment to work on changing the policy because i don't feel it accomplishes what we needed so that all of us can work together coopertatively to overcome the enormous challenges we face. we have huge decisions to make - how do we make those decisions if people are fighting with each other?
  • yar: strongly disagree with things people are saying, wondering if it's even possible for this group to work together. but still willing to talk to you all to identify the specific disagreement points and think it through. with respect and search for truth. [yar said other stuff but cannot talk and take notes at the same time]
  • sarah: i agree because i feel like i elaborated on my reasons and the things i was frustrated with. when people say "we don't have evidence, nobody's given specifics" i feel like i gave a lot of specifics but maybe people didn't read them. i came to omni ~6mo ago to solve problems and to help and i feel like there are a lot of issues and problems just from a completely neutral observational point of view in terms of having spending many years organizing spaces and dealing with groups and personalities. i feel like there, i mean, i don't like inherently the idea of robb wanting to be a part of omni yet being unable to. however, there's so many things he's basically obstructed and prevented from happening that need to happen. he's alienated people that are valuable to omni and have done a lot of work. he's obstructed actual work from being done based on citing various codes or requirements or policies that, idk whether he intentionally or unintentionally misinterpreted them. he routinely would block almost any commons booking activity from happening. jsut today at fire inspection there were things he personally installed that were violetions, we had to unto. things i asked him to fix or repair or undo for months and he hadn't done it. it's not like he's obligated to do those things. but at the same time when i see someone saying "oh it's a shame.."
    • rachel: I THINK THIS IS INAPPROPRIATE, we're not gonna have a hate-robb session. we're talking about the policies. why are we getting into everything that robb's done wrong? it's outrageous. i don't hitnk we should be doing this. let's get to the agenda.
  • sarah: it was disrespectful of you interrupting me stating actual experiences and actual facts
  • rachel: this is about safety, i don't think it's relevant
  • sarah: if we let robb do whatever he wants in that space omni would fail inspection. it's hard when you care about someone and don't want to hear it.
  • maryann: well how come we passed inspections so many years when robb was in the space?
  • helen: we need a moment of silence and change topic. this is going off the rails.
  • joe: one of the problems is things build up and they fester too long. if things were clearly and publicly announced the time they happened, and we sat down and parsed/talked it out, got to a point where at least we understood what each party expereinced and what we should do, we could have more trust
  • rachel: if a mediation doesn't work out, we need to sit down and figure out our expectations from people / behavior. we should have some expectations for each other so it doesn't keep on going.
  • we're gonna stop talking about this tonight. yar and sarah both were interrupted for various reasons and didn't really say their full pieces.

space reorg

  • david fire inspection update: sarah did so much work prepping this month! Daniel & Angel & Silver too. a lot of work ends up invisible/unseen. electrical crew. our new inspector is brand new and used to be an electrician, so he focused mostly on electrical and nothing else. he searched top to bottom. he wants new exit signs on more exits. not expensive so let's just do it. wants a cover for tiny entrance hall subpanel. also repaint the awning. as soon as we do that, he'll issue the assembly permit. and report to fire dept that we're in good hands. clif is coming monday to do that. exit lights are in the mail so probably finishing next week.
    • also inspector didn't like the extension cord to the keycard system. made us remove it right then and there. Electrician will install an outlet Monday. Was deactivated recently but we'll figure it out. Door computer down, but can be plugged back in
      • yar: poorly communicating about this leads to proliferation of physical keys. already started happening. not what we want...
  • moving library to entrance mezzanine - schedule or organize a process to decide on this/where to put things?
  • using A/V storage space more efficiently - reconfigure/re-arrange 3 rooms -- is this something that delegates want to delegate to Commons WG or other subset?
    • sarah proposes quality control work party
    • david: there's a lot of stuff in these 3 closets (left of stage if you're looking at stage). it's about going through stuff. if it can't be used we'll get rid of it. rooms are too full to get into. a wall of 6 projectors. other part is putting sound equipment up in the mezzanine room. remove the library and securely set up the sound board & amps, just leave them connected so ballroom can come online with minimal setup.
    • yar: want to clearly communicate that part of the proposal is to turn the crow's nest room into 100% storage and remove the tables
  • joe: should fnb still leave the basement room even tho nobawc doesn't want to join omni?
    • yar: fnb can vacate in a couple weeks notice right? if we do find another group
    • joe: yes. fnb is just worried that if we move back into the pantry we'll have to move a 3rd time if kitchen money appears
  • also the library would function as a green room
  • sarah: most of the library would be in the entrance hall mezzanine, but a couple smaller shelves in the entrance hall for prominently displaying some books/etc
  • joe: april 2022 anarchist book fair gave us 1k already!
  • sarah: idea is having things near where they'd be used. for a variety of types of events. plug n play.
  • in summary, here is what we agreed on:
    • moving library mostly to entrance hall mezzanine, plus a small section downstairs.
    • Making crowsnest and other AV rooms pure storage, and well organized. also includes nearby closet & under stage
    • getting rid of stuff we don't need - old stereos, excess projectors etc. Make sure to notify collectives about working gear that Omni doesn't need.
    • instal some of the AV gear in ballroom mezzanine / former library
  • Yar: ideas to make closet larger by using more of the under-stage space
    • Patrik: Could lower the floor to below-stage floor - more headroom
    • Sarah: stairs to storage room very janky

Fundraising

End of Meeting

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