Meeting Notes 2023-11-02

attendees

paige
elaine
carl
anglea
jake
jems
E
sierk

discussion on public omni collective statement

paige - should we talk before voting?
elaine - theres been talk of waiting to release the statement until we have a revised code of conduct. Do we want to talk about that or a separate discussion?
paige - ive reread safer space policy, doesnt seem that bad. seems mostly an issue of just "doing" it to me.
elaine - i tried to work on writing a new one given that was a stated goal. I first tried going off the city of motion one, tried modifying that to fit omni, but then i went to google omnis, and i saw we already have a code of conduct that is great in comparison to this one. a lot of the complaints are things that could be addressed by the code of conduct. but whats the deal, are we not referring to it, enforcing it?
elaine - one thing someone brought up is we need to be more explicit about... revise it include harm of doing nothing when someone is talking about experiencing racism or sexism or transphobia or bigotry... standing by and doing nothing is a problem. Maybe we can put that in there. im open to changing my opinion if somebody has a good argument, but writing that up is another big time commitment. lots of work to add on in this already drawn out process of approving a statement.
anglea - time more important than having the statement perfect now
paige - do we have quorum
sierk - i dont think we need quorum given we are just giving advise to delegate now. but i will ask to see if more sudo room members around to join
jake - i think okay to just vote here without concern about quorum
sierk - this is just advice to our delegate, not a internal sudo room deciscion. I haven't heard anyone raise any important concerns
jake - ive been editing on this collective statement doc for a while, there are a lot of voices, one thing that im going talk about is that a lot of people have a different ways of looking at this situation. This document starts with talking about omnis shortcomings, in terms of not welcoming non-white people. even though it says a couple paragraphs in that its "not a response to the callout", thats bs, it is a response to the boycott of CLP, and that boycott is because we didnt let CLP take over omni. We are being dishonest about this in this statement. I think the statement is being formed by people who have interests in show themselves as allies more than anything else. i dont think thats the same thing as actually doing the work of maintaining this space and holding it together for the community of all people. but im out numbered and have already said what i care about this document. a bunch of people with their own agendas, and these people are putting their agendas into this public statement. i dont have any intention in trying to delay this or talk about this longer, i just want to put out what i think. im glad that its moving forward and looking forward to time moving on
jake - i agree with everything that is on this doc just it doesnt work as a response to CLP. And that is what we need right now
elaine - im not convinced at all that theres anything that we can do to make CLP decide to lift the ban. This is them to get revenge for removing their toxicity from our org. no amount of arguing is gonna make them change their behavior. maybe im wrong about that. our goal is not to engage with clp, it is to engage with the community that CLP is pushing away
jake - im entirely in agreement, this is response to what CLP said about us, not to CLP. anything in the future who thinks about booking with us, they are going want to look at the response. and if they read our
carl - im kinda late into this so take it with a grain of salt. I think i agree with jake - we need to start off the document like in jakes version, to be upfront about CLP. because sometimes people dont read the whole document. We should put that right and center, and even make longer. im not really to happy with this newest version.
paige - are you unhappy with the content or the ordering?
carl - ordering, and would like there to be more detail about while CLP was removed
elaine - i hear you but, i think in this situation is such a mess, that responding to it will be so difficult. the more that we give all those details, the more chances there are for us to misspeak. inviting people who dont know internals of situation, to engage. if they want they can go read through the delegates notes.
carl - yea maybe shorter statement would be better...but ordering i would still like changed
E - ya shorter is better. average person isnt going to dig through our meeting notes
Paige - ya thats the hope that is people who want to know more can ask us
Paige - SR can also make its own statement
E - i dont think its a bad idea to do a sudo room specific response. My preference is if we dont name CLP directly, just refute the claims. dont engage - give them what they want.
Jake - SR doesnt need a statement because people at Sudo Room dont follow CLP, and if they had concerns they would reach out to SR
Paige - i dont agree, I think new people might find out about it and then get scared off from getting more involved because fear of harassment. a lot of the people CLP reached with boycott are people we want to be involved at in omni, like groups like peoples programs and PYM.
Jake refers back to PP at the in person meeting. Some dispute over what was said to Iranian omni member
Jake - the problem with these groups is they reposted CLP's boycott without reaching out to omni to fact check
paige - If omni had a better reputation/was more known for its mutual aid and events then groups would be less likely to believe CLPs accusations. we should try not to assume enemies, theres not this sharp divide like its made out to be, theres conversation and overlap between groups on "each side" and we should be focus on supporting the people doing that work, not starting with distrust.
elaine - goal? that we can genuinely be a better committee that orgs would want to endorse,
elaine - theres probably some truth to that statement that we should be making the space more available and publicly accessible to the community, but i have also talked to other ppl in mutual aid groups in the bay, and they know about omni commons. I definitely hear people who say we need to be doing a better job in outreach, but also sometimes people just need to search a little harder. we have online presence
jake - its all volunteer effort.
jake - reading the current response in order, it seems like its agreeing with the current boycott. CLP discussion at the top needed to give context. also i thought it was important to note that the reason we invited CLP in the first place was to improve diversity. but maybe thats too much detail.

seems to be consensus that SR does not object to the content of the newest draft, some like and approve it as is, but some would like it to structured differently such that it addresses bad faith boycott before omni's accountability. rewrite part "To be very clear, this is not a direct response to a former member collective" because we actually are responding to that. Think about how to make the letter be clear that it does not support boycott or accusations in it from the beginning. Nobody offered to draft but encouraged to.

omni finances

jake - omni is out of money and is going to need to make a county property tax payment that happens twice a year. we got on a payment plan in may. though a lawyer is pushing the city to move forward in evaluating our exemption we still will have to pay this. sarah our bookkeeper is in the process of spelling out where the numbers are with everything, but delegates and people at omni in general dont understand where we are with money. like $10k for roof, i wanted to DIY it but shot down. But we dont really have money for this. Need to seek more concrete numbers, and ask our delegate to advocate for more awareness to delegates and people of omni, as opposed to just going on and thinking everything is fine.
jake - our lender gave us an extension til end of year. If our lender doesnt extend it this year, almost a million dollars, they could foreclose on us and it could be the end of omni. this is what i want more people to be aware of.
paige - could roof money even be used for taxes? Isnt it part of the hellman grant?
jake - bookkeeper has said we can free up some money for things in hellman grant. i think the skylight payment was a good idea, but the roof payment i think makes more sense to have sudo room people do it for free. but generally money i think should all go to the mortgage if possible
jake - also surprise fire inspection. everything good minus fire extinguishers out of service. Sarah from proarts and safer diy, got all those serviced and sent to fire extinguisher. my point is - we are now at the point of choosing between paying mortgage, property tax, electric bill water bill. severely curtailed event budget, boycott, no response, so lots of cancellations
E - this is pretty grave sounding but i wanted to share some uplifting or more hopeful news. I brought someone from EBPREC, permanent real estate company. They have track record of buying and holding community building. They have interacted with omni but didnt work out, but happy to talk with us again.
Paige - thats great
E - do you want to be put into contact
Paige - sure but im probably not best person

show and tell

Jake and elaine talk about donated lathe tailstock.

paige talks about calibrating laser cutter. also got some laser cuttable vinyl and made a laptop skin and stickers, so if we want to do that sticker event/laptop decoration event jonathan proposed, this is a good option. turn it into laser cutting workshop
eric we got a donation of raspberry pis with gpu. will use to identify wildlife as racoon or not racoon. worlds first ai racoon feeding system
jake - jetson tx2. mobile ai platform. can use them for other things if so interested