Barrington Collective General Membership Meeting (and Birthday Party!)

Minutes for Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Attendance: Lotta folks

Future BC Meetings

There was general agreement that plain ol' meetings are not much fun. Future BC meetings will now be combined with the Skillshare and Adventure Club on Tuesdays at Fort Awesome.

Food not Bombs + BC Saturdays?

Some people talked about the possibility of doing a Saturday event that would combine food and "doing stuff" (tm). For example, this could be a Brunch, or food served during a gardening project. The idea would be a more fun, less institutionalized activity, perhaps on the order of once per month. There was also the idea of having the event in a relatively ritzy or gentrified area of the East Bay in order to help demystify the idea of "homeless people." Nothing has been planned yet, but the idea is out there so think about it! 'kay?!

New Member Involvement

The general feeling that people tend to stay in their spheres and that this not cool. So there were a few idea suggested:

• Do door to door solicitation. Crow mentioned an excellent example of a guy named Daniel Miller who went around a neighborhood, gathered signatures and turned a section of land near some railroad tracks into a community garden. Door to door seems to work because people tend to open up a lot when they understand that we're not asking for money.
• Talk to people (and flier) places like farmer's markets where there is some (but not total) overlap in views, outlooks, etc.
• Do once a semester/year presentations, e.g., puppet shows, in the student co-ops during dinners/councils to encourage students to get involved in co-ops, collectives, B.C. This is a perfect inroad for the internship project, for example.

Nothing concrete has been planned yet, so keep thinking about this...

Co-op Housing Directory

So it's been observed that the BC website gets most of its hits for the co-op housing directory. This means that a lot of people are really interested in this thing! John has decided to bottomline the project, as opposed to just being a technical lackey. If you want to help, please email him at jingoro at casa-z dot org. He will need help doing:

• Web graphics
• Going co-op to co-op introducing the project, doing house interviews, taking pictures, etc.
• Organizing pot-lucks/parties for co-op houses so that people get to know each other.
• Offering constructive ideas

There is also a list of worker co-ops/collectives that Anders grabbed that will be put on the website soon.

Santa Cruz Skillshare

There is going to be a skillshare in Santa Cruz hosted by insane, crazy Mike this February 5-6. If you're interested, contact Crow or Anders who are planning to go down there. I don't know the details so Crow and/or Anders should make an announcement with more information.

Meetings at Nabalom

Crow has offered space in Nabalom for future projects like skillshares, events, even meetings (blech!).

A comment from John about taking minutes

Minutes are really useful for people who don't attend meetings. A lot of people are connected with the list and web site and can offer advice even when they don't do any work with the BC. If minutes aren't taken during the meeting, a brief summary can still be totally helpful and awesome-like.