Meeting Notes 2023-10-05

10/04/2023 meeting

Participants paige jems andy yar jake sudoer sierk carl

new member

==

jems used to be involved. bio-art, help out with friends battle bots, background in physics weird art stuff andy - anything you are interested in doing volunteer wise. right now stuff just happens sporadically when someone has the energy to do stuff. things needed - organizing an event, or a clean up day monthly jems - saturdays i was in the space all day watching bots and organizing and working. down to help more. hosting a blender wnb night. yar and andy confirm they know sudoer and can verify is a sudo room member jems - some questions, what are the responsibilities or expectations of delegates. Im interested in that and live close by. Also interested in helping with grant writing and fundraiser andy - if youre interested in being delegate i would be enthusiastic about that andy - delegates meeting are every 2nd thursday. first wednesday is the most reliable meeting day for sudo room meeting but there may be some interest in moving it. as for the finance stuff, pretty informal. No specific structure, mostly automated. I think it would be good to have a treasurer or finance wg. omni has a finance wg. could have a rep from sudo to go to the omni wg. lots of opportunity, lots of thing are derelict. jems - another new member jade is also excited about helping with things i mentioned. Not sure if they are looped in through email. andy - i would be happy to help debug that project. They should get onto the discussion mailing list, thats the main way to get info. yar - discussion list can sometimes be a scary place. good to have someone hold their hand welcoming them into the space, email list not always the best place for newcomers

= how to make sudo room more welcoming

andy - ive been trying since ive joined a year ago to slowly gain support for things. i think we should be willing to consider more structure. an example would be to have a board structure that most volunteer orgs have. i.e. president/treasurer. i dont think we need to deviate from nonhierachical idea, not titles that would grant any powers, but could help make things more maneagable. create some system for establishing a board jake - what's the purpose of this? andy - to establish an easily identifiable person who exists with a purview. absence some structure, we end up with an ol' boys club. all power rests with knowing someone. if we have elections or groups to join, offers new ppl an avenue to leadership jake - no leadership, we are horizontal andy - i think that is a myth, absence organization, your space's power is given to whoever is loudest or tallest yar - i agree jems - do we have a charter andy - bylaws and code of conduct (general set of what u can and cant do) jems - when i was with dsa sf, i liked their charters for their subgroups. had built in affirmative action. ppl had to have effects in the community, number of POC or women in leadership. if not meeting the quota, that group could not exist. those charters for subgroups, i dont want to speak for all of wnb, but if they had organizational structure, they could have a delegate to come speak for them at events. still keep horizontal structure but have a constant known person people can go to yar - those are ideas worth copying and i appreciate you bringing energy to the conversation about it. my experience of sudo is that it is not horizontal in practice. few people tend to collect power, that is partly because it is a doacracy. some people have more time and energy to do. i am speaking as someone who did end up holding a lot of power there in the past. i tried to use it for good, but dont want to repeat. identity of a tiger tamer. a toxic dynamic

carl joins meeting

jems - role for a steward type position. hard to have a neutral position. we could think about thinking how we handle restorative justice yar - balancing act between creating positions and making sure there are people to fill them

gloria offers everyone salmon

jems - may be a good idea to create a list of things of what we'd like to have/what needs are

andy - cleanup the spacce, try and get influx of people (bring your friend), people would feed off each others energy. yar - Andy that sounds great just wanna boost how much invisible labor goes into a really good event. Full support for people doing it. But it's not easy! sudoer: i support all these great ideas to make the space more welcoming, thank you. sudoer - do board members have to be delegates andy - thats for us to decide. sudo room as a computer program, we are the admin, code defines how it operates. jems - are any events paid? paige - no, but media lab is doing that if we want ideas andy - radio model, encourage ppl to donate if they are using the space/ appreciate it jems - how do we market andy - romy post events to meetup, and someone posts on instagram, but vast majority is through word of mouth yar - and ppl who just moved here and google hackerspace ELT - I am against adopting hierarchy at Sudoroom. A "board" sounds alarming hierarchical to me.

== appointing a new delegate andy - clear nominations. I was nominated, paige was nominated, normally we wouldnt nominate someone not yet. I nominate Jems, pending completion on membership. andy - proposal: delegate committee as jems (by next meeting as a fully fledged member) as paige. What do people think? yar - approve ELT - i like Jems but I think we should stick with people who have been around longer. just because they may understand the space better andy - can i propose to adopt that as an amendment to the proposal: ELT could you act as delegate for one or two meetings? ELT - yea we can alternate Jake - elephant in the room is nobody is asking me about . i feel underappreciated for both my work as delegate taking a lot of fire in the recent episodes with CLP. Due to yar's villification with me, which is because of a longstanding conflict with yar, I was focused on by CLP, everyone focused their rage on me. "Now we are looking for a new delegate because Jake's name is tainted" -- I want to call this out so everyone knows what is going on here. Andy - anything you would formally request? I would just like to say that I appreciate all the work and sympathize with the abuse you have taken. I want you to know that I am grateful Jake - i want people to recognize that the vilification of me by CLP and Yar was invalid. people who have opinions based off what i've said in meetings, rather than just basing opinions based off what yar said. reason i have not been defending myself as much -- im tired of it, everyone is, i want omni to stay, and sudo live. Just because im not bringing it up, it doesnt mean its a problem. ELT - do you still want to be the delegate jake - doesnt matter, in the past nobody would step up to be delegate despite me asking. so i did it because nobody would want to. nobody else was joining the omni mailing lists and keeping track with the omni stuff. so i kept doing it. great, now that other people are stepping up to delegate. not because they want to help out, but because they heard jake is cancelled, and they want to get him out of the position. im glad we are having another delegate, and i invite said person to ask me what is like. andy - i appreciate what youve done and the continuity you have offered sudoer - (in the chat) sudoer says:i vote for restorative justice to untaint jake's name andy - that is a very thoughtful idea. we don't have time to discuss that right now but i want that in the minutes.

Carl - Jake, I appreciate all the work you've done for sudo & omni and I don't believe what was said about you. jake thank you Carl I appreciate that jake - we really had to drag this shit-throwing group out kicking and screaming and they were covered in shit and so shit got all over me

show and tell =

jems shows off visual synth and its super rad ELT shows raspberry pi running joust. playing music. joust uses these old playstation motion controllers, and the goal is to knock someone's icecream off their cone. and we can have ice cream fights in the ballroom couldnt have pulled it off without jake, appreciate the help

and ELT made a fire truck

discussion about moving sudo mesh

turning sudo mesh into space under the stairway jake - what would we put up there? Im thinking of a carpetted cat tree ELT - would be nice to have more of a special space. secretly envious that noisebridge has had that jake - lets do it, please contact if you want to help doing the dirty work of cleaning and ratproofing.

property tax issue. city has been responding slowly. sarah lockhart absolutely indispensible. in terms of events, we have only recently start paying Billy. Billy left events group immediately after CLP removed. but ultimately, everyone Billy was booking removed their bookings. now we are going forward, discussion about who we pay going forward carl - has omni paid for cleaning services in the past jake - not to my knowledge carl - lot of square footage jake - what we need is more volunteers. i recommend everyone join the omni consensus email lists.

this is the archive for the consensus link. (dont have to join list, can just read) https://omnicommons.org/pipermail/consensus/ but if you want to join it, click link at the top. jake - in the past weve had trolls come onto the pad. was a long time ago. hard to tell who put stuff at the top of this pad. can be crude and gross. just good to be aware of.

paige - i agreed to be delegate because we needed de-escalation. people have been hurt by you. it was conflated with clp. was hoping we could get past that. what do we need to do moving forward because there is still distrust of you in the delegates meetjng and people hurt on both sides. jackie and yar were calling for.. jake - yar is not a delegate, she's someone who i've had a conflict with for years. paige - daniel jake - dzniel is from clp and boggs paige - daniel will be at next meeting paige - i think yhe wsy forward ux.. jake - i want to address daniek is a clp member and sent sn email written by rafiq. doesn't make sense paige - other ppl saw u hurt dznirl in the meeting jake - what happened was i asked daniel if she was clp, then rafiq said jake has no respect for black women. it was clp not boggs. jnterrupting happens in meeting for point of order. askinv slmeone if member of dif group paige - clp getting antagknized so it came off as threatening. if you are clp i will smear you. people have bern critiqukng how you speak, and jake - im not suggesting i wanna be delegate. outrsge was manufactured by rafiq and yar paige - i dont trust clp but i have nk reason not to trust yar. mulriple ppl claiming you hurt them and are not takjnv accojntAbility. this needs to be discussed. a new boggs. the last meeting people were less charged, they voiced opinions about how you talk tk people. it went somewhere so i thjnk we should continue gojnv somewhere wiyh it. jake - im choosjng not to pursue this stuff as much as i woould like to. i feel strongly that yar... she sent an email saying she wants me bsnned from delegate meeting because clp attacked her. she was talkinh with rafiq aboyt me before reslizing clp is bad. 8 days ago today. (reads email) carl - i don't understand how yar can ever side w them again. thus was a toxic group. you should discount everything they say if they are untrustworthy. jake - i've been going through this with yar for years. she's extremely distrusting of me. lived in my house 2013-2015. even though we went through mediation. a year ago, i sent yar stuff. yar said fuck you i'm not listening to you about identity politics. yar told rafiq i was the person who zdvocated criticudm on clp. now today yar safs i am the reason clp is attacking her. frustrating because people think yarnis hreat but my experience is stuff like this (shares screen) i said yar you are falling asleep and runnjng yourself into a ditch and she said no. paige - i asdume tgat's because she didn't want to work with you jake - we work together and i forget she did something wrong, then she goes and sends an email (reads email about racist anti-blacn begavior) this is serious accusation. dmed her can u cite specifjc examples. she said the church in 2015. pastor cheryl ward wanted a church at omni. i said no, it had nothing to do with race. any other examples and she had nothing.someone talking about me without any examples is fucked up and its frustrating paige - yar said (reads) im talking about jake's tendency to priorotize himself over others who have been harmed. carl - word racism has bern thrown around. never understood justification for it. paige - murien was talking about obligation we have tj commjnity dhsplacing people. black woman. "more rain". white peolle. anti-racism means we need to reach out and try to make an attempt. chromebook and laptop project. partner with gloria and local schools. insular group, people don't think they cxn take active leadership. don't agree with board but excited about having that conversation. friends of friends means its a somewhat insular community. meeting on topic of racism. islamophobic to call leader of clp had nk merrit. you took accountability sayjngbj reslinze my emotion about these issues is more than people want to experience. if you didn't mean to hurt danielle it's a gut feeling that makes the space safe. jake - dsnielle was puf jn z terrible podiyikn, and j thjnk it was done by clp. they took advantage of her at her expense. sentvemail she didn't write. j recognize harm was done to daniel but j don't thjnk it's fait to blame me for that. paige - your frustration is you are recieving all the blame. their frystratiknn is they dkn't see you taking accountability. you were baited. jake - i was skeptical of clp before they joined and yar pushed them in. if not for yar acting as a delegate we wouldn't have let thfm kn jake - is clp peoplebof color? idk their numbers paige - yar didnt trust when yju voiced ur ckncrrns and thsf has tk do partially with how you talk about people. jabs. u need a sense of urgency, but .. yar was able to put out the fire. not by thtowinv yoj under the bus, but talking to iranian people jake - that was dntirely becausebof my wotk paige - i hope we can get you two to trust eachother again jake - i trusted yar many times and she repeatedly made me regret it. mark yule. singlehandddly bullied jenny. it was super fucked up. it's not clear what she did. said jenny can't hold positions of power anymore. not a delegate. yar had an ally, aj frkm phi collective, living at omni, upset rob couldnt live there. jenny not allowed because yar said so. didn't make any sense but it happened. it was absolutely bullying, i can't think of any other way to describe it. forgotten when yar did somethjng gucked up, trusted her,... my email had bad tone, but j was the only one doing it. yar forwarded it to rafiq. jake banned from delegate meeting. really frustrating. paige - the rest of the delegates csn vote on thst. discussion might be jf yoh and yar are banned from somethjng. jake - was going to write an email. i'm not gonna let her keep doing this to me. i have other stuff besides yar attàcking me after she brought this group. she put us in this situarik. snd now she's targeting me. paige - sounded like rafiq was getting harassed. april or may 2022. i see someone was engagkngbin a political debate and i don't know how they went about doing tgat. if someone makes a complaint on tgat level it has to be taken seriously jake - stalinist tankies. rafiq said i sent someone to harass him. rafiq opened the floodgates. i had to cower and beg forgiveness for suggesting that these people were stalinist tankies. one of the reasons i'm upset. paige - u might say tone policing but it is very important. how others percieve it. people from pym. it goes along way to be civil and thoughtful about accusation. when we're just... jake - i agree with you. but i was stressed out of my mind about this situation. yar is ruthless, made me the villain. no allies. yea, i didn't hold it together. paige - if more people are involved it doesn't just have to be your word against yar's so i hope we are moving in that direction. jake - ya paige - think about what meetjng notes we want to knclude given the sensitive nature of talking about oyhrr people. paige - open to mediation with yar? jake - did it before and it didn't work. ya i would like to do mediation, and i'd like to do it by email paige - i'll decide what notes to put up? jake - yes ok paige - new people involved jake - when i see people unsubscribing from the discuss list it's discouraging. just keep bringing in new people.

(will fix all typos on these meeting notes asap. need a break.)