CAIROCKstars, here are the notes from last week's meeting (March 10).

We started making plans to present Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha as
a speaker. sb and emiko are in communication with her to work out a
date, likely in early April, to do a presentation. Also to discuss
what kind of subjects to get into in the talk. Some themes we talked
about - transformative justice, community accountability, Disability
and POC justice, and its relation with mental health.

We agreed that a 200 dollar stipend would be a good minimum for Leah.
This brings up the issue of an event space -- on the one hand, we have
CIIS. We have a relationship with CIIS, with some money coming out of
it -- money from CIIS Student Alliance can provide the 200 or possibly
300 dollar stipend. The CIIS community could get a lot from Leah's
presentation -- this is an opportunity for Icarus Project to bring
some power for a new movement to the world of CIIS. People with more
to say on this, please chime in ... much more was articulated by folks
who know more about the CIIS world and have good ideas.

On the other hand, hosting Leah at another venue, such as Unitarian
Universalist Church in TL, or east bay some place, could let us branch
out and make connections in other worlds and let us not just be part
of CIIS. The race and class aspects of the CIIS crowd got talked about
as one aspect of doing our events there.

We have a good thing going with CIIS, and staying with its problematic
aspects and working it out can allow us to nurture that good thing. It
seems to make sense to do more events there. At the same time, at some
time it would be great to start building community points in other
places on the bay area map. Icarus has so much to offer to stay in one
place only. And building relationships with other communities can
inform and give us strength for our relationship with CIIS.

How did the relationship of Icarus project with CIIS get its start? It
seems like emiko's role in CIIS gave us the beginnings for a fertile
relationship for Icarus. Are there other communiites that we work in
that have potential for a relationship? How is CIIS a unique community
institution, what commonalities are there with other communities and
institutions we know or will know in the future?

**

We talked about the relationship and connections between CAIROC and
the weekly sunday meeting. The plan to write up a few sentences about
CAIROC to read on Sundays with the meeting agreements was revisited:
Kathy, are you still interested in writing this?

These notes are coming right on the heels of our CAIROC mini-retreat
Sunday where we talked about CAIROC and the sunday meeting's
relationship.

CAIROC began partly because we were taking on more organizing work,
much more than we could squeeze into a support meeting without
crowding out the support. the existence of cairoc as a separate group
continues to allow us to take on bigger and deeper projects than we
previously could.

One consequence of moving the organizing work to a separate group is
that our Sunday meetings, which are the introduction to the Icarus
Project for many people, and where people used to be able to
participate in organizing from their first meeting, now don't have
that organizing component. Another consquence has been the creation of
two groups of people, as the cairoc organizers get more deeply
involved in that organizing work, the folks who come to Sunday
meetings are increasingly removed from the decisions on organizing.

Look out for more notes on this issue coming from the cairoc retreat.

**

We talked about the Mad Arts Festival in 2012, marking the 10 year
anniversary of the birth of the Icarus Project. Some thoughts were
that we can host it here in the Bay and that everyone can converge
here from all over the world. Jacks has a connection with a person who
could help us get a heavyweight headliner for a performance, along the
lines of Ani Difranco. This could bring some draw and raise money, to
pay for the festival itself, have funds for icarus, or something else.

We propose that in May we come up with a working group for this event,
which we plan to make happen around May 2012.

*

We can have a Bay Area Caravan to the Allied Media Conference in June,
including an Icarus contingent. June 23-26.

+++

In solidarity ... mad love