Recap of last meeting:
o 7c working on getting insured painting, etc
o Aaron looking to step back from the amount of responsibility he holds, and will do more ‘overseeing’ and delegating
Aaron will (at some point) make a statement regarding this
o Year-long breaks for people to get their shit together maybe? (Year memberships that can be pulled)
- 7C Veterans:
o Social & Restorative justice not wanting to post these issues in a large group to too many volunteers (avoiding burdening the full volunteer crowd)
o Since this seems elitist (esp as it pertains to decision-making), there is not a veteran group on the Discord, and “veterans” are not yet doing decision-making w/o others
Avoiding cutting out ppl who want to be involved, and not trying to limit decision-making that should be brought to everyone
o Potentially making a locked channel visible to ppl in certain roles (maybe making dealing with these issues of a role of its own)
- Restorative Justice, Sexual Assault Allegations, etc (how do we handle them?)
o Banning first came up in 2014/2015 w/ regards to nazi punks
No nazis, no alt-right kids, no hate groups; obviously necessary for 7C to be a safe space complete bans for these ppl made sense, and resulted in lifetime bans as a strategy
o Dealing with sexual assault allegations, etc resulted in similar lifetime bans this not being the most effective means for every single situation
And then, naturally, they just went elsewhere for shows (they are not always being held accountable and are instead just being exiled) How should we deal with this? Is it fixable for the space? Is it our responsibility?
Full Convo:
- Is it our responsibility?
o For 7C as a collective, what is our responsibility with regards to this?
o As a DIY space, we should give victims a safe space, but we should also be available for people looking to do better…
Who are we trying to serve? Victims, perpetrators, etc What would restorative justice look like?
Are there resources for reform/restorative justice in terms of bigotry or abuse?
• Potentially reaching out to other organizations more qualified for this
o Potentially responsibility should be on a case-by-case basis with what we can handle and what people are comfortable with
o We should be aware of what 7C’s job is with regards to different questions what things are abuse to the extent that we should do something about them
o 3 potential approaches:
1) Dealing with things internally, no cop involvement, etc. This kind of worked, but obviously biases, friendships, etc played a role in this
2) Handling it all ourselves This is really difficult, but there are organizations in place to mediate, and 7C is not one of them
3) Ban people based on true shows of being genuine dangers (nazis, ppl with a history of assault/rape, ppl consistently causing problems at 7C) and give others the option of mediation through organizations who work with this
a. Nazis are less of a problem right now, so the focus is more on abuse and assault allegations (physical, sexual, etc)
o What is 7C’s problem? And how do we draw the line with people with regards to this?
Maybe moving to just banning dangerous people, rather than banning people b/c of interpersonal disputes
Can we clearly define these boundaries? (Enumerate them and put them somewhere at 7C?)
We need to keep people safe, so our primary responsibility is a response to dangerous people
• 7C may not be capable of creating justice
• What is the difference between comfort and safety? How do we avoid just providing comfort when we’re looking to provide safety? Not wanting ppl to take advantage of our safe-space and setting our boundaries to avoid that
o Starting this game plan now, rather than trying to figure it out as we go
- How can we do more for people who need it?
o Email or groups of people we can connect others with when they have a concern (queer groups, etc)
Doing things like queer shows or shows for marginalized communities increases our ability to be our safe-space
o Booking people, people in positions of power at 7C will be held to a higher standard
o Moving away from terms like “abuse” because inner-social interactions can be abusive and still not be dangerous to our community
Dangers to our community are our problem, but sometimes technical “abuse” might not be
o We need to focus on 7C as a community and provide the support that we can outside, but the actions we take as a collective should pertain to 7C as a space
o Can we bring mediators into our community to run groups, etc?
Potentially we’ll get professionals to come in and give us a short training (for people who want it) Sasha’s thing?
o Have a prompt or system for identifying severity of abuse for every individual (set levels of abuse with set responses)
Setting out standards of responses, use of outside resources (like restorative justice ideas), etc
Certain things are intolerable (like sexual or physical assault on 7C property)
o We should identify 7C boundaries in a way that also supports volunteers, esp with regard to having to interact with shitty folks
o Action plan needs to include victims reaching out to us
o We should try to have productive conversations with people on both sides of situations, because when these conversations go well, the situation doesn’t get out of hand
Working with people who want to work with us with regards to this
o 7C’s reputation is not our fuckin problem if people get pissed with our responses, let them
o How do we make resources available to people coming through as volunteers, people coming to shows, etc? How can we make this easy and accessible?
Maybe some non-volunteer community communication
Putting something like a community email or phone number in the bathroom for people to access easily QR codes that lead to an email or a community chat?
o We have a set of rules, and we need to kick people out for (at least) the night if they break the rules, and if they break them consistently, maybe their membership could be pulled If you are unsure about kicking someone out, message the Discord to crowdsource
Consistent breaking of rules should result in not booking their band
If there is a true statement of genuine danger (something ‘official’), then they get a lifetime ban
Everyone who comes to 7C can be held accountable for breaking the rules (maybe we can have people sign for a membership that they have read and consented to the rules or point out the rules when people come in)
• Maybe we can have the rules on show flyers
o For assault allegations, maybe we need to get a statement or something of the like
- Actionable things (and voted responses to them):
o Everyone on door should be 18
o Volunteers can tell ppl coming in to review the rules, giving us good reason to remove ppl who validate them
o Rules:
Weapons (use or threat of use with actual weapon involved) on property
• Perma-ban potential (Removal for the night to be reviewed)
Violence resulting in serious injury or meant to result on property
• Perma-ban potential (Removal for the night to be reviewed)
Sexual assault on property
• Perma-ban potential (Removal for the night to be reviewed)
Harassment of minors (not leaving them alone after being told to)
• Perma-ban potential (Removal for the night to be reviewed)
Violence off-property
• Not perma-ban potential
• Not one-year ban potential
Known weapon off-property
• Not perma-ban potential
• Not one-year ban potential
Sexual assault with a weapon off property
• Perma-ban potential (Removal for the night to be reviewed)
Rumor of sexual assault off-property
• Not perma-ban potential
• Not one-year ban potential
Victim accusation of sexual assault off-property
• Perma-ban potential (Removal for the night to be reviewed)
Physical assault off-property
• Not perma-ban potential
• Not one-year ban potential
Verbal assault off-property
• Not perma-ban potential
• Not one-year ban potential
Financial abuse off-property
• Not perma-ban potential
• Not one-year ban potential
Pattern of violence/assault off-property
• Perma-ban potential (Removal for the night to be reviewed)
Pattern of sexual assault off-property
• Perma-ban potential (Removal for the night to be reviewed)
o When perma-ban rules are broken, someone is banned for the night and it is sent to the discord for review
In any situation, a volunteer can send someone home for the night and bring it to the group
o For any of these that are not perma-ban potential, the person does not need to be immediately removed, but the information can always be sent to the discord and volunteers are able to make these decisions
- We will have another meeting with regard to actually coming back to volunteering and more actionable ideas will be solidified there volunteers will be held responsible for completing the actions we agree on
- Making the Discord both available to volunteers and to show-attenders/community at large (one private, one public respectively) encourage community
- If volunteers are trying to remove people from a show because they have the ‘clout’ to, this should result in discussions of whether or not they should volunteer
- Next meeting topics:
o Year-long membership stuff
o Opening the Discord to the public
- Next meeting date:
o Sometime between August 8th and 20th to be brought to Discord as a poll for actual scheduling
- Prior to beginning shows again, we need a meeting about how to actualize volunteering, etc.
o Nothing is booked until September, but everything is up in the air, so all shows are able to be put on hold
- Create channel for issues in the ‘scene’ where you can take on the role of helping with it, rather than it being ‘veteran’-based
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