[sudo-discuss] Omni collective statement re: CLP boycott

Hi Sudo Room, This is a collective statement addressing the CLP boycott, written today after discussion in this last Thursday delegates meeting. If you are interested in reading the many previous drafts over the last few weeks, I can point you where those are, and encourage you to join the omni consensus email where there is more discussion. We hope to make this public Tuesday morning (we've talked about sending it to people who rent Omni, but also may be put on the website? I'm not sure). Dear neighbors, We've been accused of racism - sadly, this has some merit. For nine years omni has tried to include, support and empower communities of color - and often failed. This has led to continued white dominance. We want nothing more than to end this feedback loop, repair this harm, and be a project where all people can take collective ownership of this building and its resources. We are actively seeking accountability processes with those who've been directly harmed at omni. Nonetheless, there are still QTBIPOC and mutual aid groups doing important work at omni, as there always have been. This is the core of what we want omni to be, and the movement to improve omni should be led by people who’ve been doing it all along. We urge the community to stand behind our most vulnerable members. We are determined for this to be a safe space, so that QTBIPOC-centered projects can grow and thrive here. We're also accused of zionism - this we strongly deny. Try to find anybody here to say anything nice about Israel - you'll have a hard time. While some of us may have been complicit with apartheid in the past - because its institutions prey on young Jews especially - all our feelings today range from deeply critical to abolitionist. We want to embrace and center Palestinian community, and welcome accountability to that end. We're now collectively studying the steps to formally comply with BDS and become an "apartheid free zone". Some of these accusations were made by a former member collective. We removed them because their behaviors were causing great harm, actively driving away members of color. Their public "boycott" was a campaign of retaliation, harassment, doxxing and lies. Even so, it has brought attention to our very real mistakes. We wish to focus on those, and center the majority of our community's concerns - without engaging directly with this former group, because the harm is just too fresh. We've taken this opportunity to give long time volunteers a break. Almost all our groups have new delegates. None of the people mentioned in the call outs have any formal power, and all of them are stepping back from decision making roles, to focus on passing institutional memory to new people. Meanwhile, we have a few vacant rooms - we'd love to share ownership with more queer, trans, Black and indigenous led groups! Please contact us if you'd like to help build an anti racist, anti zionist future at Omni Commons.