Kids’ Council 06.07.2021
The Village School
June 7th, 2021
Forest Garden
Present
Kids - Stone, Irsa, Forest, Ramona, Luca, Gaia, Max, Willow, Oakley, Luuk, Meira
Adults - Gabo, Mirna
Agenda (60 minutes)
05- Meditation
05- Announcements
05- Task Review
Proposals/discussions:
15- Kayak run concerns
20- What does it mean to be white?
10- Work party prep
Announcements
Meira: Sam has ducklings! One hatched this morning.
This week, week after, one more week, then we have summer break for two weeks!
Open House is postponed until the end of the session. We have 13 more weeks, so we can develop some especially exciting projects!
Poison Ivy work party is today!
Ramona does not have a haircut.
Meira turns 8 this Thursday the 10th. Party is the 11th. At 5:30, a campout at Hidden Valley on Friday.
Announcement, not quite an invite -- need more details. Trout pond fish-out next Wed.
Tasks:
Max and Luuk to ask Carmen if chicks’ disease is contagious- in process. Fo asked, Carmen doesn’t know, and seems irrelevant now. Task obliterated.
Irsa to talk to Liz about work trade for chicken feed- in process. Irsa talked to Rachel. Liz emailed Gabo saying no one reached out. Rachel needs to talk to Liz. Who can make sure that happens? Mirna will email Rachel.
Stone and Luca research about strawberries- in process. Luca says no books at school have the needed information. Now is a project anyone can join in on. Task moved to project time. Resources needed not at school . No one working on this.
Luca went to Mulberry Madness and will be giving a report - Luca did attend. Will give a report.
Oakley and Stone asked Sylvan to play music at the work party. He will come.
Kayak run concerns
Nobody has done anything wrong, Carmen just has some concerns and wants to address them.
Luuk: The run doesn’t work. Creek is too low.
Background: Some kids re-arranged the rocks in the creek to try to make space for the kayak to go down the creek more easily. It begins just below Willow Bridge.
Carmen noticed, especially 2 weeks ago when we hadn't had rain for some time, that the water was very low in the creek. That’s what made her notice that now all the water in the creek is only going down the kayak run, and the sides where water would normally flow ran totally dry. Many creatures live in that side area, and are no longer getting water. Their habitat has been disturbed.
Also concerned that if we had a big flood event, unknown impacts of water being funneled like that. Perhaps another kind of damage.
It could simply be put back how it was found (ie dismantled).
Perhaps there is not a huge loss to that, given that it doesn’t work.
The upper part in the deep spot is the only part that works.
Disagrees. It goes down there pretty easily but does not quite work with a lot of weight in it. There are more spots downstream that the kayak does work. They are natural pools, these spots.
Clarification, I only know of one spot that works.
I didn’t know about the other side, I have been in the deep part. Willing to help, but need to be shown where the run is.
I’ll also help if someone orients me.
Let’s add this to a task list to restore the creek in some way by dismantling the kayak run.
judge of “back to the way it was” would be to move rocks around, experimenting with trying to get the water flow to be as wide as possible.
suggest just clogging the narrow part so the water goes to the two sides.
Suggests kids work around for a couple days trying to make the best animal habitat it can be.
suggest we designate where we can kayak and where we cannot kayak in the river.
I think I can tell which rocks were moved by how they look. The dark colored rocks seem to be the same as those that are underwater. Some with moss on top. So it’s a bit of a puzzle, but could be pieced out.
Could we make an even better animal habitat than what was there already? Open question. Perhaps we couldn’t, but perhaps we could.
Task: Redistribute the rocks in the creek to create a better animal habitat. Stone. Meira. Irsa.
I feel that the people who were involved in building are not offering responsibility or acknowledgement.
Maybe there are scheduling conflicts going on for those people.
What does it mean to be white?
Listened to the songs Becoming Whole (feat. Dr. Ali Michael) and They Say I'm (feat. Nimrod Speaks) by City Love as a starting point for the following discussion
This is confuzzling.
Overwhelming for me. Really Loud.
Things went so fast I didn’t remember anything.
Fo speaks my mind.
Heard a lot about different skin tones in the music. That’s basically it.
It was hard to understand. The music was overwhelming and loud.
What Luca said spoke exactly to how I felt.
Luca speaks my mind. I felt confused because they were talking so fast, and it was played really loud.
Any words you did understand and hear?
Not really.
It was really overwhelming for me, so fast. I might have gotten more out of it if slower, more quiet. I caught some things, but forgot them. I may have caught that white people can make the whole situation better, but I’m not sure, it could have said black people.
Things are unfair for black people.
I agree with Fo again. And many people think white people are more beautiful than black people.
I agree with Fo, it’s unfair.
I agree with Fo that it’s just unfair. Also the music was speaking too fast. I only caught skin tones.
I heard at first that this person said “I didn’t know I was white until a certain age”.
For a lot of her life, the speaker in the recording didn’t know, she didn’t know she was white, or that it meant something.
Fo, Luuk, Gaia speak my mind.
It said white people can do more things, are allowed to do more things than black people are.
Didn’t know she was involved in racism.
Didn’t know she could speak up till later. Speaking up makes her more her.
She was thinking that race was something other than her. Other people had race and she didn’t have a race. That made her feel like she wasn’t a part of her community, and couldn’t know herself.
White people are hurt by the disconnection of racism. Unable to be connected to community, as friends.
"Racism hurts this community" thoughts on how that is true at Earthaven?
Anyone have any responses to this question: “What does it mean to be white?”
How hard it is to talk about whiteness for white people. I grew up in Oakland, CA where there are many people of color of diverse backgrounds. People of color seem to have an easy time talking about race, they are familiar and used to it, even if painful. My experience is that white people have a hard time talking about race. That’s why we’re starting now, so that y’all have capacities to navigate these convos with skill and ease. Being able to account for how whiteness shows up in your life, and talk about it, is a way of working against racism.
When I first really understood my whiteness, I felt really bad. I felt so bad. I felt angry, I felt guilty, I felt a lot of shame. I wanted to separate myself from whiteness because of how much harm has been caused by the construct of whiteness. I even feel a lot of emotion right now sharing this with you all, and I continuously navigate these feelings as I take ownership of my whiteness. I work to accept it, bring it into myself so I can acknowledge those things. I didn’t hear her feeling shame or guilt, I heard her acknowledging her whiteness and its reality and taking ownership of it. Being in a healthy relationship with her whiteness. I know I’m on a journey of striving towards that. I think that part of the reason it’s hard to talk about is that these feelings come up. Perhaps feeling like you’re bad, or you’re on the bad side of this thing that’s a super painful problem for a lot of people. Generally it’s hard for me talk about that which I’m ashamed or guilty about: I don’t want others to see me feeling like that. So I want to tell y’all that for one, it’s ok to have that reaction, and this is a great place to be able to talk about it.
Chorus from the song: “We didn’t make it start / but we can make it stop / white does not mean bad / but white can’t be on top.”
Work party prep
Didn’t happen. Other sections ran over.
Addendum: Work Party Debrief (after the work party)
What went well?
Brandon is still here, to work more
Only had a few people but got a lot done
Had a musician
Made good tea
Snacks and drinks
People had fun
What needs improvement/ what would we do differently?
Plan earlier, get signs up earlier (not many people came)
Get the time right
Somehow make the signs more effective
Put them up earlier
More signs
Email and voicemail, earlier
Spending more time making the email awesome
Invitations in mailboxes
On door
Taped to packages in purple box
Taped to purple box door
Personal outreach, talking to people in person
Position musician(s) so that they are playing for the people working
Multiple musicians in different places
Ideas of things to plant in place of poison ivy:
Burdock
Anise Hyssop
Dog Hobble
Comfrey
In the Box:
Bell agreements
Hut Hamlet playground
Bike workshop
Human powered school shuttle
Nature museum
Dairy delivery cart 2.0