Business Meeting Minutes 11/1/21

 Minutes - Business/Planning Meeting

November 1, 2021

 

 

Present: Murray Bennett, Michael Brunt, Lauralee Carbone, David Curley, Brenda Dundas, Naomi Gary, Judy Kasper, Tom Kirchner, Claire Lending, Cat McIntyre, and Donna Starr

 

We welcomed our visitors from Blaine and Mt. Vernon, Donna and Brenda

 

Anti-Racism Minutes:  

         Nov. 7       Naomi Gary       

         Nov. 14     David Curley

         Nov. 21     Henry Ohana (added after meeting)

         Nov. 28     Donna Starr

         Dec. 5       Claire Lending

 

The speaker should remember to alert the person running the service on or before the Wednesday before the service that they will give the anti-racism minute at the service. Also, send the script of their minute after the service to Lauralee Carbone and Deb Cruz to publish in Midweek Update and on blog.

 

Program Meeting.  The program meeting on November 8 will be the RadioLab podcast, “The Vanishing of Harry Pace,” on Zoom. We will be able to listen to it together during the meeting. For December, we would like to have a conversation about anti-racism and Beloved Community more broadly, following up on a discussion that began during our October retreat. We will also get to know more about our neighbor congregations, Blaine and Skagit.

 

January Training: The first training will take place the last two Saturdays in January, and may be compressed into two, four-and-a-half hour trainings by zoom. The contract with Courtney Wooten is in process. Also in process is another grant which would allow both trainings to be free. As soon as information is complete, notifications will go out. We expect to encourage participation by personal invitations. 

 

Follow up to October Retreat.

-       Survey of 46 people on BUF Black Lives Matter mailing list is underway by Naomi and Henry. Naomi reports some initial feedback:

o   People appreciate getting minutes when they are unable to make it to meetings

o   Monday nights don’t work well for some

o   Most believe Black Lives Matter at BUF is important

o   Some did not feel our meetings were as welcome as other social justice groups they attended

o   In general, they were happy to get a call from us (this may be something worth repeating a couple times a year

Cat reported that she had heard from Henry that some members feel that Black Lives Matter is too narrow a focus, and that we might expand, for example, for anti-racism minutes to include other SEJC groups concerned about anti-racism.

 

We decided to try this for December, with each Sunday anti-racism moment from another group (Community to Community, Immigrant rights, Native American connections, and Black Lives Matter) as an experiment.

 

-       Charter. Our new charter is nearly complete, based on discussions during the retreat. It includes a new list of activities we wish to address over the next three years. It is attached to these minutes. Also attached is the anti-racism minute given to the congregation the Sunday following the retreat.

 

-       New facilitator(s). Cat will be moving to Tacoma in the spring and asked to be replaced as a facilitator of the group. She would like someone named soon so she can pass on all the records accumulated over the past four years.

 

-       Meeting with Paul. David would like to begin the twice yearly meetings with Rev. Paul and BUF staff to discuss what we are planning, what we need from them and what they need for us.

 

Next Program Meetings on Zoom: 7 pm on both November 8 and Dec. 13

Next Business Planning Meeting on zoom:  Dec 6, 6 pm