February 11, 2021 Community Village Minutes

Community Village Minutes, February 11, 2021

Council present: Tim, Sara, Kim, Nathan, David, Brooks, (total villagers: 29)
Council not present: Diane, Karla

Minutes by Sam Rutledge

Facilitators: Sara and Kim

Hello’s (20 Minutes, everyone) (everyone to say name, booth, and three words to sum up 2021. 

Tim – On council. so far it’s a good day. Three words for 2021, good, pretty good, almost great.

Kim – Council shadow. 2021 so far is conflicted, community, fuck Facebook

Nathan – Wild Edibles & Medicinals and Council. Three words – Getting better every day. 

Sue – Going through old pictures, some CV pictures from long ago. Little village. Sick of Covid.

Horst – Doors of Expression, I make up my own rules. I started with new eyeballs in 2021. Curious how COVID is impacting the Fair. Looking forward to vaccines.

Sam – Info. Mindless self-improvement.

Ernie – Info – healthy, busy with work, bored.

Cheshire – Wild edibles

Adrian – 4A and Virtual Fair – proud, pixilated peaches.

Laura, coordinate Areas and work Registration – focusing on my health.

Lareina – fruit and facilitation – fun focused and yoga

Brooks, rainbow village and council, thriving to survive. 

Jain – little village – in the basement.

Plaedo – intentional communities, strange terrible terrific

Linda – Youth Power, very excited to invest in our youth, youth, grow, and connect. Woodsy (who did the Lego video) anyone who wants to contact him and tell him how cool he is, awesome.

Emz, she/her, rainbow village, new exciting and texting

Kelsey, little village, eventful, lazy, thoughtful

Mike. Seems like it’s closer than six months – just shared Woodsy’s video on Facebook, winner of best low tech video. Grateful, Forward thinking.

Dyan – Three words are hopeful, warmth, and shenanigans

David – Council, master gardeners, vegemanic, paranoid, spiritually hopeful.

Joy – Little Village, hopeful (just got vaccination yesterday!) retired, so feeling like she has freedom, that’s it.

Chrissy, Doors of Expression and Mind Freedom, Vaccine, Hopefulness, and Cold

Kat – green earth coordinator, timing is everything

Rich Ross – introduced on Chat. Tovi and Rich, health and healing co-coordinator. The booth has collapsed 😦 three words, I am Alive

Margaret – Arts booth co-coordinator with Eric, less and more stressed.

Arthur and Anita – Village Info – Two sets of three words. Too many naps. Miss you folks. 

Karen – 

Sara – facilitating with Kim tonight, and on Council for the first time. Vaccinated, yogi-ish, almost-40

Set Intention (5 Minutes, Facilitator)

What we want to share with all of you is what the group in a recent facilitator meeting discussed. To get on the stack, type “hand” in the chat. If you can’t do that, text a buddy to get you on stack. We’re not planning to have consensus decisions this month, but we want to talk about the plan. We’ll agree with twinkle fingers, state the proposal before we agree, and add space for concerns using language “are there any hesitations, reservations or concerns? “ If not, we have reached consensus. If there are, we work through them. If a call for consensus produces concerns, we can talk about them then, ask a smaller group to work on it, or bring it back at the next meeting. The host may turn off noisy microphones. 

Question from David about an announcement in the chat. (Response, we are going to move on now).

We are only going to use the chat function to say “hand” or “concern” which makes it easier for Kim who is keeping stack. If you want to send a private message to the host, Tim, that’s okay. Sometimes for the flow of conversation the facilitator may choose to go out of order, but mostly we will go chronologically. “Thank you” or “check” it helps the facilitator know they are done.

Agenda Review (3 Minutes, Facilitator)

The agenda was reviewed. Requested to add Workshops. That will come under the FairEz Report.

Fair Announcements (5 Minutes)

Jain – Two workshops coming up. On Saturday February 27, CEDAR will do mini-retreat. This is like the “get-along” retreats that used to happen at Alices. It is from 10-4 The next saturday there will be Arbitration Training. Both can be accessed on oregoncountryfair.net

Kim – Would like to open a can of worms by asking people to read our mission statement and write what they think about it on the drum. Thinking a lot about mission, purpose, vision, and values. Our mission statement is wackadoodle as far as I’m concerned. Read it and share your opinion. Last night the booth coordinators hung out, but it wasn’t very well attended, wanted to talk about Booth Breakdown and how that might look in Zoom time.

Site Report (5 Minutes)

David – From Path Planning: power with solar at the HUB, momentum with sustainable solutions reported. Most carbon is driving/hauling on and off site. Huub needs more electrical infrastructure to install panels. Many trees down. Three floods so far this year. Shady Grove Maple lost a big branch going toward the stage, showing internal rot. Danger of other branches – the other big branches came down toward the village path blocking the path. The tree has pruned itself (it’s been in decline). Erosion in new planting areas around Shady Grove. A foot or more of bank loss. Tree took out the back of DeFrisco. Talking about foot candles as a lighting requirement for food booths. Mapping project ongoing. Shady Grove replacement location discussed. Committee recommends smoking kiosk at Ritz eliminated. Rainbow Connection DEI consultant hired for fair. Physical space on grounds essential for that work, maybe at work-it-shop. Politics park may be decommissioned, or radically changed. ADA improvements discussed. Alt. locations for impacted zones. David will post notes to CV Drum. 

Village Theme brainstorm (10 Minutes, Kim)

Kim – We should have a theme. We always have a theme. We usually talk about ideas around this time. We usually brainstorm one month and try to agree the next month. It’s fun for the booths to have a sub-theme. 

Jain: idea for a theme – Sue Theolas is in booth with a crafter buddy. There is a sign in that booth that says “I miss you all so much.” That could be our theme. 

Tim: Higher than ever.

Crissy: With us having to be all digital and online – head in the clouds.

Kim – Will we have tee shirts?

Tim – probably 

Sam – something about together even though we are apart. Someone says “together in our hearts even though we are apart.”

Linda: I love the word Ponder, Connection. Just Ponder is a nice word. Ties in with Transponder.

David – something like apart but together, together but apart. 

Tim If anyone thinks of something during the meeting, maybe put it in the chat? Don’t let it get away. Send it privately, 

Kim (not wearing facilitator hat) – since we heard two things about apart and together, with potential for play on words. Can we spend some time thinking about how to get the word Heart into Apart and Together. 

Margaret – A play on “together apart”:  “Hearts a-gather apart”

Summary of suggestions:

I miss you all so much
Higher than ever
head in the clouds
together in our hearts even though we are apart
Ponder
apart but together, together but apart
“Love in the Quantum Field”
Hearts a-gather apart

Topic added to agenda

Jain – Would like to get something on the agenda if there’s a little time. If you are not an elder and would like to be an elder someday, and what your village years to count – you can’t just say “I was in the Village for 20 years” and give them contact information for their booth coordinators. Write it all down. If you have any contact information for those people, write it down. This discussion may continue at the end of the meeting if there’s time. Will be on the agenda for March11 meeting.

Discussion: Should participation in 2020-2021 virtual fair be factored into eligibility for the next physical fair once it’s scheduled? (10 Minutes, Sara)

Sara – we don’t want this to trigger intense feelings, we want to open this for a discussion.

Kim – the way this is worded reminds me of issues the Village has had in the past about “top down” rule making. That’s how it felt to me. Giving some background of how this came up – how do we preserve a sense of community during digital virtual times. Personal question to booth coordinators about guidelines that make people eligible for a camping pass. Invitation to booth coordinators to discuss with groups and individuals who participate in their booth who will be invited when we come back to in person, is there some way for people who have been active in virtual fairs be – not exactly prioritized, but considered. Maybe this is booth to booth and not a rule for the whole village. 

Sara – How do we stay engaged though we’re not in person. How do we have incentive to stay engaged with our community in a virtual way. The way it was phrased was, should it have anything to do with participation or weight in physical fair participation, or not? Bringing it to the village to ask how we will manage this as booths. Some booths have meetings to continue engagement. 

Tim – We talked about this, maybe before fair last year or in the fall. At the time we didn’t expect the Pandemic to be screwing us again this year. The question was raised about whether to have a requirement to engage in the virtual fair to keep eligibility. People didn’t join the village to be involved in a bunch of zoom meetings, so it wouldn’t be fair to add eligibility requirements at that time – again in the fall it popped up in discussions. It’s unlikely we’ll have a physical fair this year. Thought we should revisit it. One of the opportunities we have this year is to do outreach to diverse groups, and if people are new to the village and get active this year and there are people who were not active for two years, do new people have a position? 

Adrien – I’ve been working hard with CV and OCF virtual efforts. A lot of people get a lot out of participating, and it’s important to engage with, but there is a substantial learning curve. Because of the pandemic and the learning curve, I don’t advocate it being a requirement. That said, technical limitations should not be a barrier: anyone who needs help participating in a virtual village event is free to contact Adrien who will try to help. As we continue developing we will put out submission forms. Can discuss figuring out how to best integrate everyone’s offerings to the virtual fair. (Note: If you need or want tech or gear help to participate in our virtual meetings, please check suggestions HERE or email your needs HERE.)

Lareina – Appreciated Kim’s explanation, more like booth coordinators checking out. Important to look at diversity and how people are different. There was cheerleading to get people involved from Fruit Booth. Many people shared that Virtual things are not part of their values. These times are unprecedented. There shouldn’t be punishment or negative backlash to people who don’t want to be part of the virtual event. We’re missing some of the magic. People can feel passionate about how people make this happen, we can come up with creative ways to get engaged, but it’s not part of CV love that if you aren’t involved in virtual fair there will be consequences. We can be positive about people who do participate. We can be creative. 

Sam – People engage in community to get filled up, not to fulfil requirements. When we add requirements, it gets hard to feel fulfilled because we’re stressed about meeting requirements. Communities engage people by inviting and providing a fulfilling experience.

Plaedo – echoing what others have said. Don’t want to punish people or treat participation as a carrot on a stick. Do want to honor people who put in the work and make sure they get honored in future years.

Sara – synthesizing what others have said as facilitator – what I’m hearing is that we want to be a good community and support one another through whatever process we can contribute, and we don’t want to hold it against people who can’t contribute. 

Kim – Honoring the people who participate and appreciate them, without putting burden or stress on villagers who can’t communicate in this manner. Making it fun, engaging, I think for booth coordinators – to ask people who participate what they would – just check in with them, see where they’re at, reach out – let them know it’s happening, that they’re not required. 

Brooks – Agree that I don’t think anyone should be penalized. There is a distinguishing factor between contributing/creating content versus calling in to village meeting. Physical is not the same as in person, and making a phone call is just as easy (maybe easier) as showing up in person at a meeting. Concerns that if we invite new people in to Village during pandemic times under the impression that they may be able to get passes, but we keep the passes the same, we may be burning bridges with queer and BIPOC communities. Don’t want to invite people in to contribute for years, let them get involved, then say “just kidding” and have passes go to people who have not been around. This is a bigger issue, and is part of this issue, this is a catalyst to talk about the diversity issue, how do we get passes on the wrists of BIPOC, Queer, and other marginalized communities: we either have to give up our own space or get more passes. Until we talk about lotteries with our passes or perks that we get, our talk about diversity is empty rhetoric. We need to name that and say it out loud. Talking about land and passes is asking people to carry the community through the pandemic, and then act like the people who held that candle don’t count when it’s time to give out passes. We have to acknowledge reality and think about how to proceed. But punitive is not the way to go.

Sara – direct to Brooks – Reminder that when we were planning last year before everything fell apart and we went virtual we had (5) passes that we were able to newly allocate and were going to discuss what to do about those passes. We may be able to talk about that in another meeting. That will not be off the table next year or the year after. 

Tim – To speak to opportunities for getting involved this year. Every non-profit and activist is invited to participate in this year’s fair by filling out the form on our website to get attention to their activities all year round. We’ll have hosts again, people can be a host. We can have videos and presentations and workshops. More opportunity than we have during the physical fair, all day, dozens of them. People have to step up and say they want to do it. There are opportunities to participate and advance the causes of non-profit activist groups. Those areas like Little Village and Areas – opportunities to make interviews with kids. Opportunities to do it.

Kim – sometimes we have to keep the meeting moving. It’s a bummer but it happens. 

Lareina – Briefly to mention that in Fruits and Nuts, if people take a year off we invite people to come in on a one-year basis. Agree with the diversity umbrella we have and need passes available for that How can we weave that all together? 

Schedule an in-Person/virtual meeting combined? (15 Minutes, Tim)

Tim – We discussed this a little last fall. Since then, Tim reached out to Whirled Pies. They’re happy to have us meet there, hook up a laptop to their projector system, a screen could show the Zoom windows with a microphone for people on site to talk in the hopes that in spring there may be enough people wanting to come together in person while others can connect on Zoom. Is there interest? Should we try to do that? 

John F. – It would be a great thing to do an in-person meeting. That would be safer outside. The best thing that can be done to reduce transmission is to be outside. In May or June, we should find a park to hang out and observe distance but be together and talk with each other and see each other. 

David – last Spring, veggies wanted to meet. As long as we are outside, it is safe. 

Sue – Who knows what’s going on in the COVID world by June. If we had 100 people even outside. We might not be able to hear each other. Maybe we can have it outside with Zoom for people who did not feel comfortable. Like the idea of letting Whirled Pies know this is tentative, but keeping it open. We don’t know what’s going to be going on.

Sam – On site work parties might be a possibility when the weather gets nicer.

Tim – we have access to a wireless mic, so if there was power we could set up a sound system and do that. Whirled Pies is good because they have the ability to have a big Zoom screen. It wouldn’t cost us any money. It is tempting to stand close outdoors. 

Kim – speaking as herself, not facilitator. Like the idea of booths getting together. There are enough people in Intentional Communities. Maybe 15 people could get together. If a couple booths did that, creating some sort of intra-community, sending a rep to meet in some space at a work party at fair or from each booth or something, so we know we won’t get too many people.

Sara – as facilitator summarizing suggestions so far: checking in with Whirled Pies, in person outdoors, having booths meet in a smaller setting. Other ideas? Work party. 

Brooks – theme of whether a work party or booths getting together, creating opportunities for in-person socially distanced community, getting parts of the village together multiple times throughout the year. Maybe committees. Maybe other ways to foster community beyond a whole village meeting.

Crissy – Another idea could be smaller and more frequent. Instead of one work party or a booth meeting, break it up to 5 or 6. Maybe meetings with childcare, maybe meetings for elders, smaller meetings to make people feel more secure. 

Activist report – Centro Latino by Emmanuelle Avalos! (15 Minutes)

Ems – I work with Centro Latino Americano. What we are doing lately. We have moved everything toward online, very limited visits. One new program is about taking food to folks in the community and people who have tested [COVID] positive who are quarantined. We continue doing addiction and gambling counseling, not in person, all online. We are helping a lot of people who are not documented to get some form of financial assistance through the pandemic. We are able to help with that through the Oregon Worker Relief Fund. We are doing about 100 people a week who get service, or make applications to get grants. All of that information does not go to the government, making it safe for people to participate without fear of being tracked down. It goes through a group that’s a non-profit law firm that takes all the money and information, keeping it private, and they can give the money to the people who need it. This helps people who are usually unable to access help and are very vulnerable. These are people who work in the agriculture and timber industries.

Doing counseling and service for families. The Student Success Act contained the Latinx Student Success Act, giving money to schools to help Latinx students succeed in the classroom. Many families in the Latinx community lack computer literacy, so we can go to people’s homes to set up computers and get students hooked up with class, and connect families with community resources. Social workers can find resources from other organizations and also internal resources that Centro has. Emz’s job is to target Eugene and Springfield area districts, including Junction City, with the idea of creating a plan that will last longer than the grant period in order to become more sustainable.

The Centro Latino Americano is also working on creating a leadership program, like an academy or a center, knowing that our families have skills and we want to teach them how to use those skills in different ways. For example, Emz’s parents did not know how to navigate the US school system. So we are helping them to be more involved in these systems, so they can sit on school boards or city boards and create change for the community. Centro, Huerto De La Familia, and Downtown Languages are all joining into one organization through Centro Latino. Several programs under one management.

Centro Latino is growing a lot – have hired the most people we ever did in the last five years, showing the amount of work that we do and success that we are having, getting grants. Very proud to be working there and proud to share all of this – it is just a speck of what we do, trying to boil it down to a short presentation. Open for questions. If anyone has questions, what programs we have. 

Sue – thanks for your report. I am working with some asylum seekers, help with rent is an issue, is that something that Centro can help with? 

Ems: The short answer is yes, but it depends on the individual. Some programs are just for rent and the check goes to the landlord. That can get tracked through local or federal government and can prevent a person from getting legal status in the future. You can always send someone to Centro Latino to find out more. Two funds are the quarantine fund and the relief worker fund. For the quarantine fund, you can have documents in the US and also apply for it. The requirement is that you needed to take or go in quarantine because you were exposed or had COVID, or were in a high-risk population. Also, you need to work in food, or agriculture. The other one is for undocumented folks, and it’s for most jobs. We have some exemptions. If you know families, you can send them to Centro Latino and get them help.

Tim – do you use volunteers? 

Ems: we do, at the moment not so much because of COVID, we are using staff. We have been hiring a lot of volunteers. We don’t want to expose volunteers to COVID by taking meals to houses. When COVID goes away, we will get back into more volunteering. A program planned is a leadership institute, this will rely on volunteers. Want the parents or community members to come and get new skills, learn skills, and teach the people coming in again. 

Tim: what kind of workshop might you present at the Community Village? 

Ems: I have a lot, I will be able to present something like about implicit bias or bias within your own community. We have a lot of that within the bias community. Educate ourselves to identify bias in our own communities. 

Kim – it is so nice to hear an activist report after not hearing one for so long. Really cool. How do you put the call for volunteers out? 

Emz – it will be on our webpage. We have a YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, we are trying to get at every single platform. We will also have it on our own webpage. 

Village Cloud FairEz committee report (Tim et al, 15 Minutes)

Tim – Members of the committee will share what they are doing. Adrian, Brooks, Sara, Kim will have a turn. We scheduled another meeting on Zoom for March 2. Meetings are on the CV website. If you are interested in following along it’s on the web. Adrian will share plans for coordinating with the Fair and the on-site needs for the day of.

Adrian – Working directly with web team for virtual OCF efforts. Establishing a vision of what’s going on. Room to figure out how CV will integrate with other happenings. I think we are set up to be a primary feature within that event. That said, at this stage we’re looking for digital artists to get involved with our streaming efforts to improve production values and add village flavor around the video stream we’re likely to produce. Also, people more versed in the physical arts to make backdrops or foreground materials to be on camera with people to have more than a drab studio surrounding hosts and materials. There are some roles to fill for day-of. A stage manager to help coordinate in the weeks leading up to the event with entertainment hosts and all day the day of managing the, being the primary point of contact in making sure the show runs smoothly. Email Adrian if you’re interested in that role. 

Tim – entertainment. Last year we did the live stream at the WOW Hall with acts toward the end of the night. WOW Hall said that booking for non-profits at $50 an hour. This year, it would cost over $500. We are also looking into doing something at Whirled Pies. Kim Still (*former entertainment manager at Sat Market) has an entertainment venue in Cottage Grove. We may be limited to just hosts set up somewhere if we can’t find a stage space. That’s a little up in the air. An email from Bob to acts has gone out asking them to visit our website and apply. So far, 7 people have applied. One stage crew member posted that on a Fair Facebook page and it was shared a lot before he took it down. It freaked everyone out, Crystalyn called Tim up and chatted at a meeting about saying “possibly not having a country fair.” We weren’t supposed to announce it…

Crissy – Workshops. Finished creating the email and sent it to booth coordinators. Had an individual named Mike S who wanted to participate, wanting to encourage booth coordinators to see who is interested in putting on a workshop or a demo. That was just sent out, hopefully some responses. (Workshop / Presentation video or live stream idea or finished file. 2021 Workshop Form HERE. E-mail ocfcvcc@Gmail.com if you need additional information.)

Kim – booth hangout element. People would come onto our website, the main page, and go to a hyperlink and click on it like you are at that booth. Intentional communities talking about intentional communities, pictures, resources, maybe set up interviews or short videos. The idea is that each booth will have a way to interact. 

Nathan – Website addition. The idea of the booth hangout is to provide a space where people can visit with the booths and boothies in a hangout chat space. One thing Nathan will work on will be to build out CV website to include pages for each booth, and links to all the participating organizations, maybe videos from YouTube, images of the booth in action during the fair. Nathan will drop the link in the chat, and will reach out to booth coordinators individually to see about getting momentum behind this effort. Hopefully all the booths can put a page about who they are and what they do. The Areas team each has a task they do for the village; the Areas team page can have pictures of the Areas tasks. This could give a nice sense of the people behind the scenes who help build the village. Brooks is reaching out to a broader set of entertainers.

Brooks: Entertainers, people to do workshops. Stream of diverse consciousness. Working on ways to integrate the village into those efforts. How can we engage the kids? The Lego tour was so popular. Village children might have some good ideas that people might be into. 

Sara will be a point person for gathering that art. Just talked to Margaret, arts coordinator, it sounds like they can reach out and see if arts people can contribute. Also, Sara is working on publicity. Crystalyn, Jair will work on getting information out and getting more people involved. OCF will focus more on fundraising this year than last year.

Sam – Village in Minecraft. My kid wants to do it.

Karrie – my kid wants to help with Minecraft.

Sam: Let’s connect offline.

Kim – village people idea – highlighting a person and what they do in that booth. This is beyond virtual fair; people can come and see these links about what we do. I think it’s a great idea to have this, more people can figure out what your booth is about online. 

Unfair Announcements (5 minutes, All)

Emz: We are about to start hiring at Transponder for an Executive Director. Exciting News Coming Soon!

Jain – I’d like to get on the agenda for next meeting about elders. 

Call for volunteers to facilitate next month. Lareina says we usually discuss at a facilitation meeting. May be available to help out in some way. There is a facilitation group. cv-facilitators@googlegroups.com

Strokes and pokes (5 minutes, All)

This is hard to do on Zoom and you two were great. 

One of the things we’ve been trying to do is have the meetings be entertaining so people would want to come, we are going to have fun here. I thought the activist report was informative and entertaining, liked it being longer. What do you think? Are you going to say “we had a great meeting?” What can we do? Breakout rooms? 

It’s hard to facilitate on Zoom. Kudos. Bravery and focus. A few things. Important to keep intention setting as the love, spirit, love language stuff. It’s like date night, you say “we can skip it,” but changes your relationship to let go of that. Put the logistics in a separate agenda topic. No One Fun Thing! That’s important. Get up, sing together, hokey pokey, be silly and crazy, incorporate these things in. We are very mental tonight, and the value of our zany faerie vibe should be present too. Last thing; we don’t always have to fill the whole time. If there’s less time needed, move on.  

Sorry the elders toot was so long. I thought I had the go ahead, and thought it would be a shorter toot.

Maybe there was too much framing of some issues, going beyond facilitation into “putting a thumb on the scale.” 

Maybe writing “hand” in the chat could be directed to the facilitator? One advantage of zoom is the chat feature. It can make it more fun; a little cross talk can make it fun. Nice to use the chat feature for chat. Can we raise hands as private message?

Something hard as the facilitator; there’s a difference between facilitating in virtual versus in room space. It feels awkward and less fun and it’s harder to look to the co-facilitator and read body language. Then the framing thing, because I think our intention was to prevent it from spiraling and say what it wasn’t – sometimes in a virtual space, many hands will go up. May not have been as necessary to build so much of a container. Thanks. I am going to put that feedback to the facilitators group and we can digest it. 

Echo good job, it is hard. Adrien good job on the graphic, entertaining and fun. Can we reach out to someone we have not seen and engage them and get more people here? Encourage us all to do. It sounds foreboding to get on Zoom, once you get here it’s not the same but nice to see everyone and hear from everyone. If we can reach out and ask folks. I

It’s hard, especially later in meetings, to see people coming in. Good job on that! Happy to be on the facilitation team at some point. 

If you can push a button and see everyone’s hands and know whose hands are up on the side as a co-host. Facilitators met to see what the best way to take hands would be. There are many ways to do it, pros and cons to each.