Epic Meeting!

Today we (Harriet, Sine, and me: China) met at Harriet’s Blurple house. On our Agenda was:

1. Harriet report back from going to the last IDKE* Meeting

2. Sine shares about prospective childcare volunteer people she met

3. How to communicate w/ prospective members & others about events we are up to - making one email update list

4. Planning a brainstorming community gathering to talk about gender, justice, and the children’s programming.

5. That YES - our theme for the youth stage is going to be “What is a Hero?” For the two days before it we are going to be having workshops for children building up to this, with discussion, working on costumes, voice, dance, etc. to do an elementary Glee style mash-up for the Youth Stage - that everyone is invited to, and will be a good time to get all ages together and share what we have been doing with the larger conference

6. Idea for a coalition that could get together to do a workshop on racial justice for children as well as a personal discussion on race and privilege

7. Different names and ideas of creative people, artists, and organizers who we can put a call out to send something for our coloring book.

We wrote down notes, with little action points; and things were starting to come together more. AND Oh yes - we talked about the US Social Forum**, how there will be two radical childcare workshops there, and the discussions we want to have, and how we hope this is going to help us in growing our group and where we are right now, the questions we have.

Both my collective members were really excited/inspired when sharing their news. Thats good because I feel worn down (its hot and muggy in Baltimore; and I lost my job, have no money) and need some of that energy. Once again I remembered why I love this collective, I love talking about the things we do, and trying to do something about it. We haven’t been able to get together, not all three of us, much lately and had been calling this the day of the “epic” meeting. It was! We hope to move forward in different ways and keep putting things together. I’m going to try to start blogging more about our process. Sharing stories about things as they go along.

*The International Drag King Community Extravaganza (IDKE XII) asked Kidz City, at the very start of their own planning (which is the ideal way we encourage all to follow their example - reach out for childcare at the very start and don’t leave it to the end!), to join with them in creating children’s programming and coordinate childcare. This is a huge event taking place in October. We are in the brainstorming stage to create a stellar program, much the way we did with The City From Below Conference, to support youth and caretakers access to radical events as well as work on places where different issues intersect. For more info on IDKE -http://www.idkexii.com/about/main.html

**coming up soon in Detroit - http://www.ussf2010.org/