Sudoroom Meeting 2019 04 03

sudoroom meeting Wednesday, February 13 2019

Intros

name, pronouns, your favorite mom joke

• yar, my favorite mom joke is your mom
• maria, she/her, not part of the meeting
• charley, asking google hold on.... your mom's so ugly when she entered an ugly contest they said no professionals
• melissa, your mom's so ugly her nickname was damn
• dante, fav icebreaker question: what's your fav icebreaker question?
• ian, comedian, laney carpentry program, access to technology
• robb, she dresses you funny
• jake, your mom doesn't work here so pick up after yourself
• jenny, seconds jake
• null, something about being fat :(
• kiwi, no your daddy joke

announcements

https://github.com/gocolly/colly/blob/master/_examples/basic/basic.go

• robb: sudo's a mess but we've gotten rid of a lot of junk
  • looks better than before

Agenda

GCEA proposal

• kiwi: i'm a GCEA member, outreach person. I connect homeless people with people with housing, for example. Defend people in immigration cases. Help people with paperwork, interface with lawyers. Domestic violence cases. After school program. Kids who don't have refrigerators, recent migrants. Give people food, home visits. Connect people with jobs. Came to Omni meetings to have GCEA be "active". I felt Robb was hateful towards GCEA, every time we try to do something, felt disruptive. I want to change the white supremist attitude, have a good relationship between Omni & GCEA. That's why I'm here. I've had a good experience with Jenny. If you say shit, I'll let you know, as nicely as I can. But won't tolerate racism. People complain about Almaz, but she serves people, she volunteers. You've shared food with us. You've breathed the African air. It tears me apart. I don't care about your issues with Almaz, I care about the work we do. Right now if she goes people will not be served. The work on the ground that GCEA does. People have written grants.
  • Jenny: and if we make agreements...
  • kiwi: if you know there's economic difficulty, you need to work with people. Let's work together. Agreement is written by human beings, and human beings can change it.
  • Jenny works in the office, but also on the ground with unhoused folks
  • kiwi: folks i work with are silent, don't speak english. black, immigrants, poor. i'm spending money out of my pocket to treat people nice. the competition... each organization is here to serve the community. when GCEA proposal is put on the ground, then you ask them to pay. Racism is so sneaky, it goes that way, this way... we need to work together to get the job done. I don't want to see any blocking or stupid shit with GCEA. so let's finish with the GCEA proposal first. Jenny getting paid comes after.
  • robb: i would say they are totally unrelated
  • kiwi doesn't want to hear robb: today it's us (GCEA) tomorrow it will be another group picked on. are you in your head? drunk?
• dante: this is the first i've heard of these issues
  • kiwi: i keep hearing about black folks leaving because of racist attitudes
  • dante: it's not just robb & jenny coming into your face?
  • kiwi: no. it's in your face. straight up, where you can see. sneaky ways too. there are many people in the community who are uncomfortable to come because of the racist attitude. GCEA members (african & african american). 3-4 people at least.
  • dante: there should be someone you can report it to. anybody can ask someone else to leave.
  • ian: it's extremely important
• yar is concerned that jenny left
  • robb: this is hard for her, i understand why
  • yar invites robb to respond
  • robb: i understand you felt my behavior is hateful. i do get upset when a subject with her comes up. i had good relations with almaz until one point - after that she was completely against me. she'd come demand i set up a/v for her events - no notice, no payment. she's taken advantage of that. she disappeared to africa for 6 months, didn't pay rent, didn't tell anybody, then showed up, came to me for a keycard. i said i don't make keycards but you may need to talk to delegates first - thought that was reasonable. but in response she called me a white supremist. it felt unreasonable, like she used that as a defense every time someone gets in the way of getting what she wants. if you can bring up any actual incident where i was racist, i beg you to do so. come forward.
  • kiwi: almaz i've experienced as very professional. she doesn't talk about people behind their backs.
  • robb begs to differ
  • kiwi: if she accuse you of racism, experiences it, she has the right to feel the way she feels and say so. so people who experience that will not come. i accept you and have a dialogue with you even if you're racist. but most people don't speak, and it's very sad to feel that. you haven't heard anyone saying they've experienced that?
  • robb: i didn't say that, can't speak to that
  • kiwi: in the meeting last time (thursday) someone said so and you left the meeting
  • robb: it was personal attacks. i'm fully willing to go through mediation. i've sat through countless meetings
  • kiwi: it hurt me when you just leave the meeting
• null wants us to take a break
• dante: there's an issue of robb and jenny specifically being racist to almaz and also others being racist towards GCAE members? this specific and a broader cultural issue
• null: i don't want to get into the racism thing, i know that's a big deal, there's a lot of logistics, professional mediation coming
• yar reads proposal "Addressing Structural Issues"

more discussion

• robb: almaz and GCEA are one in the same. she's their prime representative. i don't know. both - it depends which thing you're talking about. GCEA is no longer fiscally sponsored, that arrangement was null and void. we don't have a legal lease with them. they've broken so many of our rules so blatantly, including trying to take $1100 from omni, being a point person for events that didn't even start until amplified music is supposed to be off (contract said so). got complaints from neighbors, put building at risk. i don't see how we can allow them to have events & occupy space until mediation happens and we can come to some way to actually hold people accountable because any attempt at holding almaz accountable - thus far the only rep of GCEA - has resulted in her blanketly accusing that person of racism. these are legal contractual agreements that all other collectives follow, and if there's no process of accountability idk how we can continue for 3 months
• kiwi: we have an assembly, we have a delegate that votes. that's up to the delegates. GCEA is not almaz - all members are not almaz. not "they". i consider this a character assassination. having robb saying in the hallway "GCEA is this, almaz is that". all the details - do you work in the office? how do you know this?
  • robb is on finance & booking working groups
• patrick: we need to have more communication with people from GCEA who aren't almaz. more we do that the better.
  • kiwi's been around for a year
• dante: people are agreeing with parts of the proposal. maybe we should split it into smaller proposals.
• robb: we should limit how many hours
  • yar: absolutely. 100%
• sudoroom members who agree with 1-3: dante, robb, patrick, charley, yar
  • abstaining: melissa
  • blocks: zero
  • kiwi agrees but is not a member
• robb: until they produce a legal lease, idk how we can continue to let them use the bldg without subjecting ourselves to liability. the lease is invalid.
• yar is having trouble taking notes
• patrick: i agree their current status is problematic. we could treat events as if they're an outside organization
• robb: i would remove my block if they can produce proof of being a 501c3 w/insurance by next delegates meeting. and if finance wg is willing to work with them to change the lease.
  • patrick: there's a lookup function
• juul: it is very troubling that they/she has lied about legal status and hasn't informed Omni about the termination of the previous 501c3 sponsor.
• dante: for these 3 months, we'd be ok with them using the little classroom doing their work, but they'd have to legally do it as an outside org until we can prove they're 501c3 and get it straightened out
• juul: honestly for me it's more of a problem of deceit than it is of the bureaucracy. the bureaucracy can be sorted out but having someone who continually either doesn't inform or lies about critical things like this is not a good thing for Omni and is unfair to everyone else. the problem here for me is that Almaz is the face of GCEA in all interactions with the rest of the Omni and she has broken agreements and not acted in good faith too many times to the point where there is no trust left. I cannot expect Almaz to act in good faith going forward. Any time she has perceived someone as not doing what she wants then it seems that they become classified as an enemy.
  • kiwi: it's not deceit
  • yar to juul (juul didn't say that): the time to talk about this is in facilitated mediation, not at this sudoroom meeting
    • juul: I disagree. I don't really think that mediation is a good way forward when there is one person who has a conflict with a lot of others. In these cases I believe we have usually ended up discussing the issue at meetings. I don't think a one to many mediation like this is likely to work out well for anyone.
  • yar: you think it won't work out but you're not blocking that part, correct?
  • juul: assuming there is a hard limit of three months, but it is not clear from the phrasing. If there is not a hard limit on #4 of 3 months then I block. Otherwise I abstain. I want to see the phrasing clarified to say that any deferral has a 3 month limit. I also have a big problem with the fact that there is undefined compensation involved in this but other more critical aspects of running omni day to day are uncompensated. I do not consent to anything about compensation. So I guess I'm blocking the second part of #2
  • yar: it will be a hard limit. we're all ok with that. i will talk to katrina and julio about clarifying that. we will have details about money next thursday

• yar: assuming the insurance, lease and 501c3 status issues can be taken care of with the finance working group, who would consent to #4 of the proposal?
  • consenting: dante, patrick, melissa, charley, yar
  • abstaining: robb

juul: BTW: I am absolutely not ok with this proposal dragging up previous conflicts that have already had a mediation e.g. with people who are no longer active at Omni and have not been active for a long time. These other individuals have already taken up more than their fair share of time and effort from the community. If this is going to rehash previous conflicts in an attempt to paint Omni as a racist organization then we are going to have several other people leave and possibly orgs move out.

juul: Oh I see now that "reaching out to parties in prior conflicts within and outside of the Omni" is part of the proposal. I'd missed that. I block #3. I'm willing to go along with this if it's relating to currently active members of Omni or its collectives only. Anyone who has not been part of Omni recently have already taken enough of our time and energy previously and there is enough to get through with the issues currently at hand. If we allow this to include people not currently part of Omni then this could easily become a parade of prior assholes (of which Omni has many) selected for their skin color in order to prop up an agenda.

paying jenny

• jnny: i am rescinding my proposal and resigning as treasurer. i don't have time for volunteering to be disrespected and manipulated.
  • yar: i'm sorry. is there anything we can do to make you comfortable coming back to the meeting?
• all in favor: robb, dante, patrick, melissa, charley, yar. 100% consensus other than jenny :P