I’m out of town for Christmas - who’s here this week?
I’m at the space at the very least on Monday and Tuesday -
More and more people are asking about having a meetup at the Omni commons - they’re often at company offices but would be willing to focus on open spruce as the women who code east bay day when we did the stable diffusion isntlalfest
Sent from my iPhone
Sorry for the short notice, Pi.BerkeleyLUG starts in 20 minutes at
Sudoroom. Please come out support Tom in this great initiative for Omni.
-Peter
tom r lopes <tomrlopes(a)gmail.com>: Dec 16 11:59AM -0800
Sorry for the late notice.
Tomorrow at SudoRoom 11am to 2pm.
Press the buzzer for access (white button in black case) or call or text me
at 5109842455.
My probably agenda will be to work on the pole of Chromebooks. Bypassing
the enterprise enrollment and installing Linux. Not sure what distro to use
as these are limited machines. 4gb ram but only 16gb storage. I've tried
Lubuntu but it fills storage real quick. Others have tried more minimal
distros (AntiX?) and they have trouble with hardware drivers.
Aaron, maybe you can take a look. Free Chromebook for you.
As always you are welcome to work on your own projects.
Thomas
(sending to sudo because I don't think I am on other lists, please forward
as needed)
Just had a conversation about the current situation. It sounds like
People's Programs essentially want to completely take over legal and
administrative control of Omni Commons. I would be against this as it seems
it would spell the end of Omni Commons. I also want to put up front that
Omni's Lawyer has made clear we have more than 90 days to resolve this as
foreclosure cannot take less than 90 days.
But what I wanted to talk about was the assets of the Omni Commons
organization, specifically the building. Using very rough numbers, Omni
Commons owes $900k on a property worth roughly $3m (I am told).
It seems to me that would mean that Omni Commons has $2 million in assets
by way of the property. Even if the bank foreclosed on the property, the
value of those assets does not disappear! If the bank foreclosed on the
property and sold it, one would expect that after they take their $900k and
some fees, they would have to pay the balance back to Omni Commons. This
would leave the organization with no building BUT with $2 million dollars
in cash. That seems to me the worst case scenario we should accept! Worst
case Omni vacates the property and then looks for where to spend its $2
million for a new property.
So we have a few scenarios ahead. One option is to find a new single large
lender to give us a 5 year bridge loan to continue in this property, or to
do the same with an LLC and multiple smaller community lenders (low risk
bridge loans from a number of supportive community members).
Or we could let People's Programs spend $900k to acquire a $3 million
property, essentially giving away Omni's $2 million in assets?? That seems
like a terrible idea.
We absolutely should not give away $2m to any organization for any reason,
and any support we receive must be contingent on Omni Commons maintaining
legal and administrative control of our assets. It seems the best path
forward is to form an LLC and seek low risk bridge loans from community
members, with the backstop option of taking our $2 million somewhere else
and setting up a new location.
-Taylor Alexander aka Sequoia
Sudo Room has been discussing the possibility of securing the $876k by
pursuing multiple lenders, rather than just one.
The idea proposed is below, but the proposal for the delegates is to ask
our lawyer to help us write up some sort of structure like this, to present
to potential lenders.
LLC idea
We create an LLC who's charter says it exists solely to buy this building
with the money of its lenders, and collect interest on that loan. We try
and get enough people to buy in, before Omni's foreclosure begins. Right
now, Jake says they knows of 5 people interested in putting up 5 digits
amounts, so in the $50k range. Proposed would be to have a minimum $10k
requirement to join LLC, with option for individuals to join together and
pool money to get a share.
If all goes well and Omni pays off the full loan + interest, those who are
part of the LLC will have received back the money they put towards paying
off the mortgage, along with interest (and then the LLC would dissolve?).
But if the borrower (Omni) fails to pay, then the LLC forecloses on the
property, and the LLC can then choose to liquidate the property to pay back
members or do something else with the building. If some but not all LLC
members decide to do something else other than liquidating, they have
ability to buy out other members.
One concern is our lawyer would say that it would be inappropriate for them
to create an org that would then lend to Omni (should have more
separation). Another idea proposed to get around this was to issue bonds
instead, since this would not require a separate entity, and we could work
with our current lawyer on setting that up.
Another concern is potential sabotage of the system, by getting overwhelmed
with lenders wanting and working to get Omni to foreclose, in order to get
control of the building. To work around that we might require anonymous
lenders to be vetted by known trusted lenders.
There is more discussion on this idea in sudo room's meeting notes:
https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Meeting_Notes_2023-12-13
Paige
I just got back from Argentina and.
Is there a quick summary of what’s going on? I cannot make it this Tuesday because I have to go to a Noisebridge meetup to ask for collaboration with another engineering group.
Is there a Wednesday meeting after 7:45pm
The idea to form an LLC which could represent a coalition of individual
sub-lenders to bail out Omni Commons has been suggested by several people.
This would make it possible for people to lend an amount less than the total
$876K that we need (but not less than $10,000 lets say) to be a co-lender to
provide a new mortgage for Omni Commons to keep the building.
The LLC would be formed to represent the lenders in a way that they would be
paid back (with interest) according to the portion of the loan they put in,
and in case the Omni failed to pay its mortgage, the LLC would liquidate the
building to pay back the lenders. Or the members of the LLC could agree on an
alternate plan, and buy out anyone who didn't agree to the alternate plan.
If anyone is interested in helping CREATE this legal structure please let me
know.
In the meantime though I still think our best bet to keep the Omni is to find
a single lender willing to give us a bridge loan right now.
-jake
*People's Programs submitted a proposal to take over Omni Commons with
their authoritarian group as the leaders of the New Omni Commons.*
People's Programs has deep connections with Community Liberation Programs
(CLP), as they share very similar politics and end goals, with this
specific posted written by *Rafiq Ali of CLP* on the topic of *supporting
Iran against all enemies* foreign and domestic (the current Iranian state
regime as the model that People's Programs and Community Liberation
Programs both support):
https://medium.com/@PeoplesPrograms/the-legacy-of-the-iranian-revolution-
2c7de74b3df8 (CLP article published on People's Programs site)
*The leaders of People's Programs are Abbas Muntaqim and Delency Parham.*
Here is some interesting background info on this group:
Abbas and Delency are strongly connected to pro-Iran and pro-Russia
propaganda.
*Abbas Muntaqim works for PressTV, the English language arm of Iran state
propaganda.*
https://medium.com/@PeoplesPrograms
"He is also a host and producer for Press TV."
https://www.famsf.org/events/tales-of-the-town-film-screening-art-exhibit
*(description
mentions that Abbas Muntaqim works for PressTV, propaganda channel of the
Iran dictatorship)*
-----
*Abbas Muntaqim, leader of People's Programs, posts from a
pro-Russia/pro-Putin perspective (Putinist Russia as allies of the Iranian
dictatorship.)*
*Abbas views Ukraine as a Nazi Fascist country that is attacking Russia and
that Ukraine needs to be "liberated" by Russia.*
*This post by Abbas puts forth the argument that** anarchists are working
with neo-nazis and Al-Qaeda to attack Russia...:*
https://twitter.com/Abbas_Muntaqim/status/1504853626426036226
[image: image.png]
*People's Programs, in alliance with Community Liberation Programs as
comrades, will quickly remove all groups at Omni Commons that do not submit
to their authoritarian patriarchal leadership to bring in groups completely
loyal to their Marxist/Stalinist/Maoist model of hierarchy and unquestioned
subservience, also known as "Democratic" Centralism
<https://www.britannica.com/money/topic/democratic-centralism> !*
Lua
*Please spread this on any other Omni Commons communication platforms to
have a collective of collectives conversation on this important issue !*
