Just an update to let people know what we are doing to support the striking workers in our area!

Lots of news for October. Iowa City DSA is taking over organizing the community meal on the 1st Saturday of every month, so now we are back to two monthly community meals. Be sure to sign up to bring something to the October 2nd meal. We will post reminders on our social about the 16th.

We wanted to remind you that our September potluck in this Saturday. The topic of the conversation after the meal is going to be organization and getting back to our roots as a mutual aid group focused on meeting the needs of our members first and working on external projects second. If you want to contribute to the meal, sign up here.

We decided to cut back on having the community meal to once a month on the third Saturday, which is tomorrow so if you are planning on coming and able to bring food, sign up at this link.

Reminder to join ICMA at Wetherby park on Saturday at 6pm for a community meal and conversation.

​Sign up can be found here. https://tinyurl.com/7-10communitymeal

“When these orgs are encouraged to collude with the ICPD to secure city funds they are perceived as part of a power structure that sends tanks into residential neighborhoods and subcontracts out to demolish people’s belongings. Because we all know that the council has more power over these situations than they have let on.”

“Jail support is the cleanup after a march or action. It is a crucial part of taking care of ourselves and standing up to state harassment of activists through the use of an increasingly militarized police force and judicial system.”

ICMA is going to have a floating member on the steering committee so we can let people know what support we can provide and hear what the community needs. We are excited about to be a part of it. The TRC will help us plug into where our support is needed.

Wanted to just put a quick reminder out there about the May Day bonfire. Please feel free to join us for this socially distanced event. The folks hosting the event are all fully vaccinated, but we are still asking that people wear masks. You can check the Discord for the address, and if you have a camping chair please bring it with you.

The first announcement we would like to make is that ICMA has a Discord server now. We will still be updating the Samepage but people requested the Discord, so you can join that if that's a better way for you to communicate.

Other than that spring is here and those of us who are interested in food security are all talking gardening. We have seeds started from a seed grant and will be passing some of those along to the CCAN community gardeners and coordinating about gardening

February 26th @ 7pm Food Security Discussion We will mostly be talking about garden planning at this point, but I also want to talk about seasonal preservation classes.

March 1st @ 7pm New Member Orientation We will be using this time to answer questions from new people who want to get involved and cover information about delivering lunches. So if you want to start signing up for that, please attend.

March 26th @ 7pm Food Security Discussion We are getting close to the time we can get into the garden so please be sure to attend this if you are one of our people who garden. This meeting will be longer than usual

We try to post enough information in the Dispatch and on the Facebook page that people who want to help can do so in a fairly self-directed manner.

We will have Zoom meeting set up for people who want to help with the project. Watch the Facebook page for those or as we have mentioned a few times in past Dispatches, join the Samepage. There's even a New Members Start here page to help you get acclimated to how it works.

I think people are caught off guard by how quiet we are. I tried to keep things as low-key as possible over the holidays because we are not some non-profit who constantly has to fundraise or pester people. I worry about you all. We are not here to add to anyone's stress. And do you know what? Enough help came in to cover what we we needed to keep the projects going without us having to bug people. A small group of us still had our bartering session,and we had a good preliminary garden planning session.

December's newsletter is going to to be pretty to the point, because it's a busy month around our household - lots of birthdays and winter holidays. As some of you might recall, last December we hosted a fun holiday event that ended with bartering some things we make. We have a very talented community.

Our ICMA foods projects are worthwhile and important, but we also need to remember that we organized because we know that people whose needs are not being met, are not able to actively participate in activism.

Not everyone in the group is involved in every project. Any member can bring an idea for a project to the collective and ask other people to help them bring it to fruition, but members aren't obligated to help with things that don't appeal to them...

A grassroots "food for the people" initiative has to dig deeper and look at what we need to create food security in our community. ICMA believes we need three groups of people to make this happen...

A grassroots "food for the people" initiative has to dig deeper and look at what we need to create food security in our community. ICMA believes we need three groups of people to make this happen...

Think about how disempowering it is to purchase things FOR people instead of allowing them choices. This type of non-profit nannying undermines individuals' self-determination and autonomy..

Right now we still sending out lunches to our unhoused neighbors and are offering hot meals people impacted by the storm, for pick-up after 5:30pm. If you have any other needs text us and we will see what we can do..

Over the course of the next couple of months the outreach goal is for the group to really dig into what the term “solidarity not charity” means. One of the best ways to do that is to first explain some differences between mutual aid groups and traditional non-profits and social service programs.